Reading List
Rie Qudan
Japanese Novelist
Rie Qudan is a Japanese novelist, born in Saitama Prefecture in 1990. She worked as a laboratory assistant after university and won the Bungakukai Newcomer Award in 2021 for her debut novel. In 2024 she won the 170th Akutagawa Prize for Tokyo Sympathy Tower, a science fiction story about an architect who designs a prison tower and which contains themes concerning artificial intelligence. It appeared in English as Sympathy Tower Tokyo, translated by Jesse Kirkwood. She lives in Chiba Prefecture. Her picks here are five 20th-century Japanese works by Tanizaki, Dazai, Mishima, Abe and Murakami.
The Box Man
by Kobo Abe · 2001 · Fiction
“when I read it as a student, it brought me a strange sort of comfort.” — via Interview, September 2025
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
by Haruki Murakami · 2002 · Fiction
“It's a disquieting experience, like wandering through a forest with no end in sight, and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is the deepest and densest of all those forests.” — via Interview, September 2025
Seven Japanese Tales
by Junichiro Tanizaki · 1996 · Classics
“Among other tales of deviant love, this stands out for its particularly Japanese sensibility.” — via Interview, September 2025
No Longer Human
by Osamu Dazai · Classics
“I've chosen five novels here, but if I was only allowed to name one, it would be No Longer Human” — via Interview, September 2025
The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
by Yukio Mishima · 1994 · Classics
“It changed the course of my life when I read it at fourteen, and even now, all these years later, it still looms before me like the real Golden Pavilion, showing no signs of crumbling.” — via Interview, September 2025
