Dear reader, today I have something a little different in store for you. Over the last year I have read several short stories by Japanese authors and felt moved to collectively talk about all of them.

Most of the short stories in today’s blog post have the characters coming together around a certain theme or object. For instance in What You are Looking For is in the Library, the characters all encounter a particular librarian, and in Before the Coffee Gets Cold, the characters all start their individual journeys in a certain coffee shop.

Another theme that all the short stories share is how each character encounters a seemingly innocent situation or thing, and that blossoms into an altered life, a change in character, a new outlook, etc. For example, in Sweet Bean Paste, the main character, after learning a new homemade recipe for red bean paste from an elderly lady instead of the pre-made store bought variety he was using, goes down a path of self-discovery , gains a new friend, and learns the dark history of a nearby dwelling. Unfortunately, Sweet Bean Paste is not in the Monarch system, but can be found in Wiscat, as well as Hoopla, one of Mead Public Library’s apps for online reading. I will also mention several other short stories that are available via Monarch, so have no fear, dear reader!

Revitalized lives is a third main theme in these short stories. Characters who, at the start of the stories, were at the end of their rope, the outcasts of society, viewed as failures, but by story’s end are living with purpose and even fulfilling a forgotten dream. This is the case in Lonely Castle in the Mirror and Days at the Morisaki Bookshop.

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa

Hidden in Jimbocho, Tokyo, is a booklover’s paradise. On a quiet corner in an old wooden building lies a shop filled with hundreds of second-hand books.

Twenty-five-year-old Takako has never liked reading, although the Morisaki bookshop has been in her family for three generations. It is the pride and joy of her uncle Satoru, who has devoted his life to the bookshop since his wife Momoko left him five years earlier.

When Takako’s boyfriend reveals he’s marrying someone else, she reluctantly accepts her eccentric uncle’s offer to live rent-free in the tiny room above the shop. Hoping to nurse her broken heart in peace, Takako is surprised to encounter new worlds within the stacks of books lining the Morisaki bookshop.

As summer fades to autumn, Satoru and Takako discover they have more in common than they first thought. The Morisaki bookshop has something to teach them both about life, love, and the healing power of books.

What You are Looking for is in the Library by Michiko Aoyama

What are you looking for?

This is the famous question routinely asked by Tokyo’s most enigmatic librarian, Sayuri Komachi. Like most librarians, Komachi has read every book lining her shelves—but she also has the unique ability to read the souls of her library guests. For anyone who walks through her door, Komachi can sense exactly what they’re looking for in life and provide just the book recommendation they never knew they needed to help them find it.

Each visitor comes to her library from a different juncture in their careers and dreams, from the restless sales attendant who feels stuck at her job to the struggling working mother who longs to be a magazine editor. The conversation that they have with Sayuri Komachi—and the surprise book she lends each of them—will have life-altering consequences.

With heartwarming charm and wisdom, What You Are Looking For Is in the Library is a paean to the magic of libraries, friendship and community, perfect for anyone who has ever found themselves at an impasse in their life and in need of a little inspiration.

Two interesting things I want to note about this book before moving on. Each of the characters who encounter the famous librarian see her in a different way, which speaks to their own unique personality and way of seeing things.

Secondly, and this may seem odd, but each time the characters interact with the librarian, the book mentions her neck cracking. To me this signaled that she was possibly a humanoid or something, but that never came to fruition. Maybe you can figure it out dear reader!

Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.

In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the café’s time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer’s, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.

But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the café, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . . .

Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s beautiful, moving story explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?

Lonely Castle in the Mirror by Mizuki Tsujimura

Seven students are avoiding going to school, hiding in their darkened bedrooms, unable to face their family and friends, until the moment they discover a portal into another world that offers temporary escape from their stressful lives. Passing through a glowing mirror, they gather in a magnificent castle which becomes their playground and refuge during school hours. The students are tasked with locating a key, hidden somewhere in the castle, that will allow whoever finds it to be granted one wish. At this moment, the castle will vanish, along with all memories they may have of their adventure. If they fail to leave the castle by 5 pm every afternoon, they will be eaten by the keeper of the castle, an easily provoked and shrill creature named the Wolf Queen.

Delving into their emotional lives with sympathy and a generous warmth, Lonely Castle in the Mirror shows the unexpected rewards of reaching out to others. Exploring vivid human stories with a twisty and puzzle-like plot, this heart-warming novel is full of joy and hope for anyone touched by sadness and vulnerability.

In my opinion, this book suffered the syndrome where only the last 1/4 is truly interesting and engaging. I had a string of books like that for a while, but hey, at least we were rewarded for slogging through the first two fourths of it, right? Even so, how all the character’s lives end up intersecting years later was fascinating and very satisfying to read.

Spring Garden by Tomoka Shibasaki

‘He’d come to realise that it was a mistake to grind up his father’s remains with such a thing. The mortar was lined with narrow grooves, a little too perfect for ashes to get stuck in.’

Divorced and cut off from his family, Taro lives alone in one of the few occupied apartments in his block, a block that is to be torn down as soon as the remaining tenants leave. Since the death of his father, Taro keeps to himself, but is soon drawn into an unusual relationship with the woman upstairs, Nishi, as she passes on the strange tale of the sky-blue house next door.

First discovered by Nishi in the little-known photo-book ‘Spring Garden’, the sky-blue house soon becomes a focus for both Nishi and Taro: of what is lost, of what has been destroyed, and of what hope may yet lie in the future for both of them, if only they can seize it.

Ms Ice Sandwich by Tomoka Shibasaki

Ms Ice Sandwich seems to lack social graces, but our young narrator is totally smitten with her. He is in awe of her aloofness, her skill at slipping sandwiches into bags, and, most electric of all, her ice-blue eyelids. Every day he is drawn to the supermarket just to watch her in action. But life has a way of interfering – there is his mother, forever distracted, who can tell the fortunes of women; his grandmother, silently dying, who listens to his heart; and his classmate, Tutti, no stranger to pain, who shares her private thrilling world with him.

Tender, warm, yet unsentimental, Ms Ice Sandwich is a story about new starts, parents who have departed, and the importance of saying goodbye.

Dear reader, I sincerely hope you enjoy reading all of the above short stories, as well as discover many more along the way! I will say Goodreads is a fantastic resource for finding similar books to the one you are already reading. Sometimes short and sweet is the way to go with books, is it not?