Yoshio delights in the everyday sounds of Tokyo, but when a musician tells him that her favorite sound is ma, the Japanese word for silence, Yoshio sets out to hear this sound for himself among the hustle and bustle of the city. Includes information on the Japanese concept of ma.

From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature and author of the Booker Prize–winning novel The Remains of the Day
 
In the face of the misery in his homeland, the artist Masuji Ono was unwilling to devote his art solely to the celebration of physical beauty. Instead, he put his work in the service of the imperialist movement that led Japan into World War II.
Now, as the mature Ono struggles through...

Acclaimed bestselling novelist Kunihiko Hidaka is found brutally murdered in his home on the night before he's planning to leave Japan and relocate to Vancouver. His body is found in his office, a locked room, within his locked house, by his wife and his best friend, both of whom have rock solid alibis. Or so it seems. At the crime scene, Police Detective Kyochiro Kaga recognizes Hidaka's best friend, Osamu Nonoguchi. Years ago when they were both...

A clever mathematics teacher orchestrates a cover-up after a confrontation between a violent man and his terror-stricken ex-wife results in the man's accidental death.

With Kafka on the Shore, Haruki Murakami gives us a novel every bit as ambitious and expansive as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which has been acclaimed both here and around the world for its uncommon ambition and achievement, and whose still-growing popularity suggests that it will be read and admired for decades to come. This magnificent new novel has a similarly extraordinary scope and the same capacity to amaze, entertain, and bewitch the reader....

Journalist Takashi Hayami meets Ai Katsuragi, a member of a religious organization, Tenmu Jinshinko, which meets secretly at the tomb of the Emperor Nintoku. The group adheres to the nomadic way of life of its ancestors, which lacked family registers and fixed abodes, and flouts civic duties such as paying taxes, serving in the armed forces and compulsory education. Even when the government tries to crack down on a segment of the populace, they continue...

"American twenty-something Max Travers is an English teacher in Japan. He has a beautiful girlfriend, a mysterious and powerful boss, and lives in a city teeming with rich culture and history. But Max wants out. He came to Japan to find a new calling, but finds that this new life isn't everything he hoped it would be. His manipulative boss, Yoko, is trying to swindle the unsuspecting parents of his students and is using his golden-boy American face...

Unable to find the perfect job that suits her needs, a young woman discovers an alternative to the daily grind that comes with a high price.