かがみの孤城（2013 - 2014 / 2017）／辻村深月 "Lonely Castle in the Mirror" (2013 - 2014 / 2017) by Mizuki Tsujimura

The blurb of "Lonely Castle in the Mirror" boasts that Mizuki Tsujimura won nine literary awards for this work, including the 2018 Japan Booksellers' Award. It certainly deserves it. Because it was also made into an anime movie and a manga series, it is very easy to trivialise it and consider it a generic YA fantasy. The language and prose are indeed straightforward, but reading it as an adult adds a great level of complexity to it. The story is about a number of children who avoid school for various reasons. One day, they are invited to a mysterious castle by a masked "Wolf Queen" to participate in a game to look for a special key that will grant the winner a wish, and as with any game, it comes with a set of rules. So mystery and problem-solving are the first layer of the book. As the story progresses, it gets very dark and through the back stories of the children, the author examines bullying, primary and secondary traumas, negligence, sexual abuse, low self-esteem, poverty, isolation, loneliness, grief and death, in very direct terms as well. It makes a great impact not just because of the frank depiction of the children's (and adults') issues, but it also heavily underlines the importance of how people can support each other. During the adventure, these broken children learn to face their inadequacies and fears, to become more confident, to live with and support each other, and to go through adversities, but the most remarkable and heart-warming scene is the one where adults admit, and apologise for, their mistakes to children, to stand by the children and to bluntly confront the other adults who fail these children. Young readers will find the story epic and grown-ups will appreciate how the author emphasises the importance of education, rapport, empathy and sympathy. It is not without its flaws and can be slow at times, but the plot twists and conclusion make it a very satisfying read. Its success and popularity are absolutely justified.

鍵のない夢を見る（2012）／辻村深月 "Seeing Dreams without a Key" (2012) by Mizuki Tsujimura

Mizuki Tsujimura won the Naoki Prize in 2012 for the short story collection "Seeing Dreams without a Key". It was also made into a TV series in 2013. It consists of five independent stories, each told from the perspective of a female protagonist. The five stories are respectively about burglary, arson, murder and elopement, murder, and kidnap and child negligence. When I read the first two stories, I wasn't quite sure why it won a major literary prize, but by the end I was very convinced. If you read the stories in succession, you will quickly appreciate Tsujimura's narrative magic, how she organically unfolds the stories and smoothly reveals key information. Perhaps the most unique and charming aspect of her writing is that she writes a lot about provincial communities and local people. International readers might not necessarily connect with specific sentiments of Ibaraki or Yamanashi Prefectures, but emotional portrayals of the dreams and challenges of everyday people can surely resonate with anyone and that's the strength of these stories. Your best friend's mother is a serial burglar in the neighbourhood - what's the internal struggle of coming to terms with that? A firefighter deliberately burns down the fire station - does he do it just so he can meet a certain clerk? Troubled relationships, broken dreams, post-natal depression and anxiety - all so ordinary, yet all so emotionally impactful. They probably don't work well in translation, but through these stories I can understand why Tsujimura is so celebrated locally. They are great entry points to her more substantial and developed works.

London Literature Festival - Sayaka Murata: Vanishing World

22nd October 2025
Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, United Kingdom



The Akutagawa Prize-winning author Sayaka Murata 村田沙耶香 was on a UK book tour to promote the English release of "Vanishing World" (消滅世界) and her last stop was the opening night of London Literature Festival at the Southbank Centre. As it happens, a movie adaptation of the book is also coming out at the end of November in Japan but I doubt it will be released in the West - the ending would very likely cause some serious controversy. It's always interesting to attend these book events having read the book because you get to hear discussions from multiple perspectives that are almost always different from your own. There is a very strange boom of Japanese literature by female authors in the UK since the pandemic and the works chosen by the publishers to get translated are either the "healing", cozy, casual type of writings about coffee shops and cats, or "feminist" works about independent women fighting for emancipation from oppressive, conformist society. What I find particularly fascinating is that, as was mentioned by Murata herself during the event, a lot of these works are not necessarily set out to be deliberately feminist, but are interpreted as such by the West. Her works ask a lot of questions about what is "normal" in society and collective consciousness and her thought experiments stretch the limits of morality and can touch upon any themes from cannibalism to paedophilia, but somehow a lot of these discussions always end up going back to the female body and soul, as was tonight. "Convenience Store Woman" (コンビニ人間), which has now reached cult-following status, actually has a gender-neutral original title but because of the English title, the whole focus has shifted towards the female protagonist. I actually learned more about book marketing and narrative-shaping in these events than the books and authors themselves, and it's particularly interesting for me to look at a third culture (Japan) via a second (UK) and to experience the cultural clash. It's incredible. I will discuss Murata's books in series of IG posts at a later stage, but you are most welcomed to have a look at my blog to find some reviews that are already online, including "Vanishing World".

Mizuki Tsujimura in Conversation with Filippo Cervelli

9th October 2025
Foyles Bookshop, Charing Cross Road, London, United Kingdom



Last night I had the great pleasure to meet the multi-award-winning, bestselling Japanese author Mizuki Tsujimura 辻村深月 (big thank you to the Asian literature specialist at the Foyles language department who invited me in June), who was on a UK book tour organised by the Japan Foundation to promote the English release of two of her works - "Lost Souls Meet Under a Full Moon" (ツナグ) and its sequel "How to Hold Someone in your Heart" (ツナグ 想い人の心得). Tsujimura is a fascinating author who successfully bridges serious literature and popular culture, so the event attracted people ranging from university professors of Asian literature to anime otakus. She has practically won all the major literary prizes in Japan; she made her name writing horror fictions; her mystery, romance and coming-of-age works have been made into bestselling movies and TV series; she was the screenwriter for one of the "Doraemon" movies; and she was even made into an anime character in "Bungou Stray Dogs" next to all the other classic authors. It was never meant to be an in-depth discussion due to time constraint, but if you paid attention to what she mentioned within the hour on top of what we know about her, it was incredible - Jane Austen, Agatha Christie, Seichou Matsumoto 松本清張 (Akutagawa Prize-winning author of detective fictions currently very popular in the West), Ango Sakaguchi 坂口安吾 (a post-WWII decadent school author whom she cited as being liberating), the "Persona" JRPG series (which is in turn inspired by Jungian psychology; "You'll never see it coming" indeed!), her native Yamanashi Prefecture and the delicacy of writing about small towns and local people. I am in the middle of going through several of her novels, and this talk just added a great extra level of complexity to it. They are very emotional works and it's not difficult to see why she is so celebrated. I have much more to say, but I will share them at a later stage.