Akutagawa Prize

Akutagawa 2026 (first half) · Candidate

アンチ・グッドモーニング

Anchi guddomōningu

AITitle translated by AI:“Anti Good Morning”

Emi Yagi · 38 when first published

Novel · 179 pages · Satire, Speculative

AIAI-generated summary:Hounded by work notifications until she has lost herself, a woman can suddenly no longer sleep, and her quest for rest, against an employer that imposes well-being, a husband who preaches a mindful life and a suspect online coach, takes her into a strange world.

Akutagawa 2026 (first half) · Candidate

丹心

Magokoro

AITitle translated by AI:“Sincerity”

Ren Nishina · 32 when first published

Novel · 181 pages · Satire

AIAI-generated summary:To fulfil his master's dream of designing a museum, Ren, an architect's assistant, works to clear residents from a derelict, unfinished tower block in China so it can become a gallery, as the ambitions of a tycoon's daughter and of the flat owners collide.

Akutagawa 2026 (first half) · Candidate

悪い血

Warui chi

AITitle translated by AI:“Bad Blood”

Suzumi Suzuki · 43 when first published

Novel · 127 pages

AIAI-generated summary:A woman who has always lived as she pleased receives sudden news about her body, and as she walks to the clinic in jewelled sandals to reclaim a blood sample, her past wrongs come back to her one by one.

Akutagawa 2026 (first half) · Candidate

ソリティアおじさんがいた頃

Soritia ojisan ga ita koro

AITitle translated by AI:“Back When Solitaire Man Was Around”

Yu Murashi · 47 when first published

Novel · 133 pages

AIAI-generated summary:One winter morning, a woman who works for a miso maker in Kyoto hears that Mr Kuronoda, the colleague she secretly called 'Solitaire Man', has died in a fire, and after attending his wake she makes a decision about a drifting relationship and a job going nowhere.

Akutagawa 2025 (first half) · Candidate

トラジェクトリー

Torajekutorī

AITitle translated by AI:“Trajectory”

Gregory Khezrnejat · 41 when first published

Novella · 172 pages · Migration

AIAI-generated summary:Brandon, an American teaching English in Japan, uses transcripts from the first moon landing in lessons with his older pupil Kawamura, and a curious bond forms between a man who fled America and one who once dreamed of it.

Akutagawa 2025 (first half) · Candidate

鳥の夢の場合

Tori no yume no baai

AITitle translated by AI:“In the Case of a Bird's Dream”

Junya Komada · 30 when first published

Novel · 148 pages · Speculative

AIAI-generated summary:In a share house where Hatsuse lives with Hasumi and a Java sparrow, Hasumi asks, lightly, to be killed because he has already died, and Hatsuse, pressing an ear to his chest, finds that his heart really has stopped.

Akutagawa 2025 (first half) · Candidate

踊れ、愛より痛いほうへ

Odore, ai yori itai hō e

AITitle translated by AI:“Dance Toward What Hurts More Than Love”

Kujira Sakisaka · 31 when first published

Novel · 129 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Anno, who 'cracks' whenever things don't make sense to her, distrusts love.

Akutagawa 2025 (first half) · Candidate

たえまない光の足し算

Taemanai hikari no tashizan

AITitle translated by AI:“The Endless Addition of Light”

Noreko Hibino · 22 when first published

Novel · 158 pages · Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:Under a park clock tower nicknamed 'the monster', three young people with no home to go back to meet: Sono, who took a beauty-clinic advert as a sign and now eats flowers, Hug, who embraces strangers to belong to everyone, and Hiromegu, a novice pick-up artist.

Akutagawa 2025 (second half) · Candidate

貝殻航路

Kaigara kōro

AITitle translated by AI:“The Shell Island Route”

Hiroki Kuzu · 38 when first published

Novella · 114 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:Raised by a fisherman father within sight of the Russian-held islands, a woman has married a musician with Ainu roots and moved to Kushiro; when he leaves home without a word, she remembers Kaigara Island, which she once saw with her father.

Akutagawa 2025 (second half) · Candidate

へび

Hebi

AITitle translated by AI:“Snake”

Kaoru Sakasaki · 41 when first published

Novel

Akutagawa 2025 (second half) · Candidate

BOXBOXBOXBOX

Wan Sakamoto · 26 when first published

Novella · 110 pages · Satire

AIAI-generated summary:An sorts parcels on a conveyor belt at a delivery depot among faceless workers, and after he glimpses what is inside one box, boxes start to vanish one after another.

Akutagawa 2024 (first half) · Candidate

海岸通り

Kaigan dōri

AITitle translated by AI:“Seaside Road”

Kaoru Sakasaki · 40 when first published

Novella · 124 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Kuzumi, an agency cleaner at Kirara-en, a care home by the sea, gets to know Maria, a co-worker from Uganda, a workshy ex-colleague, and Mrs Sato, a resident who sits daily beside a dummy stop waiting for a bus that never arrives.

Akutagawa 2024 (first half) · Candidate

いなくなくならなくならないで

Inaku naku naranaku naranaide

AITitle translated by AI:“Don't Not Not Go Away”

Kujira Sakisaka · 30 when first published

Novel · 161 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Tokiko is overjoyed when her best friend Asahi, whom she believed dead, phones her out of the blue after four years, but when Asahi, who says she has no address, comes to stay, she gradually settles into the house for good.

Akutagawa 2024 (first half) · Candidate

転の声

Ten no koe

AITitle translated by AI:“The Resold Voice”

Sekaikan Ozaki · 40 when first published

Novel · 162 pages · Satire

AIAI-generated summary:Ute Inai, frontman of the band GiCCHO, has finally appeared on live television when his voice begins to fail, and worrying how to keep the band in demand, he is tempted by a charismatic ticket tout called Esseken to 'resell' himself.

Akutagawa 2024 (second half) · Candidate

字滑り

Ji suberi

AITitle translated by AI:“Slipping Characters”

Yuki Nagae

Novel

Akutagawa 2024 (second half) · Candidate

ダンス

Dansu

AITitle translated by AI:“Dance”

Yuko Takenaka · 42 when first published

Novella · 120 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Irritated at having to cover for three colleagues in her section who keep calling in sick, a young woman learns from one of them, the older Ms Shimomura, about the love triangle among the three, and is dragged along in Shimomura's wake.

Akutagawa 2024 (second half) · Candidate

二十四五

Nijūshigo

AITitle translated by AI:“Twenty-Four or Five”

Yusuke Norishiro · 38 when first published

Novel · 109 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:Two years after moving out, a young novelist in her mid-twenties travels to Sendai for her brother's wedding, retracing signs of an aunt lost five years ago whose love for her still catches her off guard.

Akutagawa 2023 (first half) · Candidate

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Ameko Kodama · 30 when first published

Novel · 161 pages · Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:Yukina, who was a child gravure idol, now loses herself in fan fiction based on a boys' manga, reading it with the space for the heroine's name left blank, while others call her past part of society's dark side.

Akutagawa 2023 (first half) · Candidate

我が手の太陽

Waga te no taiyō

AITitle translated by AI:“The Sun in My Hands”

Kaho Ishida · 32 when first published

Novel · 140 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Ito, a welder respected by everyone on the construction sites for his mastery of the fire that melts steel, suddenly falls into a slump, and as his skill and pride drain away he cannot win them back through practice.

Akutagawa 2023 (first half) · Candidate

エレクトリック

Erekutorikku

AITitle translated by AI:“Electric”

Masaya Chiba · 45 when first published

Novel · 164 pages · Coming of age, Family

AIAI-generated summary:In Utsunomiya in 1995, Tatsuya, a teenager who dreams of Tokyo, gets online early on at the urging of his father, an adman who builds amplifiers in his home studio, and timidly reaches out to the gay community he finds there.

Akutagawa 2023 (first half) · Candidate

それは誠

Sore wa makoto

AITitle translated by AI:“That's Sincere”

Yusuke Norishiro · 37 when first published

Novel · 177 pages · Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:On a school trip to Tokyo, seventeen-year-old Makoto Sada spends the free day with the odd seven-person group he has been assigned to, secretly hoping to visit the uncle he loved and was separated from, in a small adventure kept from the teachers.

Akutagawa 2023 (second half) · Candidate

猿の戴冠式

Saru no taikanshiki

AITitle translated by AI:“The Ape's Coronation”

Chito Kosagawa · 33 when first published

Novel · 140 pages · Speculative

AIAI-generated summary:Shifumi, shut away at home since an incident, spots her 'big sister' on a television screen and goes to the zoo, where she meets Shineno, a bonobo once trained in language, and finds their souls falling into step.

Akutagawa 2023 (second half) · Candidate

迷彩色の男

Meisaishoku no otoko

AITitle translated by AI:“The Man in Camouflage”

Jose Ando · 29 when first published

Novel · 163 pages · Crime

AIAI-generated summary:The narrator met Ibuki in a blue-lit underground 'fight club' in Tokyo; when Ibuki is found beaten and covered in blood, the narrator tracks the 'man in camouflage' who appears to be behind the attack, through pleasure, fear, discrimination and violence.

Akutagawa 2023 (second half) · Candidate

Blue

Megumi Kawano · 32 when first published

Novel · 139 pages · Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:Masago, a trans girl who played the Little Mermaid in her high-school drama club's adaptation, freed for once from the 'male' she was assigned, has since given up trying to live as a girl, and when the old cast wants to restage the play years later, she refuses the lead.

Akutagawa 2023 (second half) · Candidate

アイスネルワイゼン

Aisuneruwaizen

Mina Miki · 32 when first published

Novel · 215 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Kotone Taguchi, a thirty-two-year-old piano teacher whose work and relationship have both been going badly, gets back in touch with an old friend, and their reunion sends things somewhere she never expected.

Akutagawa 2022 (first half) · Candidate

N/A

Akira Toshimori · 28 when first published

Novella · 114 pages · Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:Madoka, a high-school girl dating Umi for a few months and keeping her weight under forty kilos, chafes at well-meant clichés while she looks for someone truly irreplaceable.

Akutagawa 2022 (first half) · Candidate

家庭用安心坑夫

Kateiyō anshin kōfu

AITitle translated by AI:“A Reassuring Miner for the Home”

Chito Kosagawa · 32 when first published

Novel · 125 pages · Speculative, Family

AIAI-generated summary:Konami, a housewife uneasy in her calm marriage, finds a sticker from her childhood home on a pillar in Nihonbashi Mitsukoshi, and soon Tsutomu, a miner mannequin at an old mine theme park her mother always told her was her father, starts appearing all around her in Tokyo.

Akutagawa 2022 (first half) · Candidate

あくてえ

Akutē

AITitle translated by AI:“Cursing”

Hiroka Yamashita · 28 when first published

Novel · 174 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:Yume, nineteen and determined to write, lives with her mother and a spiteful grandmother of ninety, venting every frustration in curses.

Akutagawa 2022 (first half) · Candidate

Gifted

ギフテッド · Gifuteddo

Suzumi Suzuki · 39 when first published

Novella · 120 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:A bar hostess living in a block on the fringe of a red-light district nurses her gravely ill mother, a single parent and failed poet, and in the shadow of death keeps thinking of a friend who recently killed herself.

Akutagawa 2022 (second half) · Candidate

開墾地

Kaikonchi

AITitle translated by AI:“Cleared Land”

Gregory Khezrnejat · 38 when first published

Novella · 90 pages · Family, Migration

AIAI-generated summary:Back from studying in Japan, Russell returns to South Carolina, to a yard choked with kudzu, sticky Southern heat and mournful music, and reflects on the life of his father, who emigrated there from Iran.

Akutagawa 2022 (second half) · Candidate

Jackson Alone

ジャクソンひとり · Jakuson hitori

Jose Ando · 28 when first published

Novel · 160 pages · Crime

AIAI-generated summary:Jackson, a mixed-race Black Japanese man employed as a physio at a sportswear company's gym, is assumed by everyone to be the naked man in a porn clip linked from a QR code on his T-shirt, and in looking into it he meets three others who each claim the clip shows them.

Akutagawa 2022 (second half) · Candidate

グレイスレス

Gureisuresu

Suzumi Suzuki · 39 when first published

Novella · 122 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:Mizuki does make-up for actresses in adult films, and goes home to her grandmother in an ornate Western-style house in the woods, crossing daily between two worlds that could not be further apart.

Akutagawa 2021 (first half) · Candidate

水たまりで息をする

Mizutamari de iki o suru

AITitle translated by AI:“Breathing in a Puddle”

Junko Takase · 33 when first published

Novel · 136 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:Itsumi notices her husband no longer bathes, complaining that tap water smells foul and irritates his skin; soon he steps out to stand in the rain, and when his odour becomes office gossip he resigns and they relocate to the town she grew up in, where he washes in the river every day.

Akutagawa 2021 (first half) · Candidate

オーバーヒート

Ōbā hīto

AITitle translated by AI:“Overheat”

Masaya Chiba · 43 when first published

Novel · 185 pages · Love, Autofiction

AIAI-generated summary:A philosopher who has swapped Tokyo for Osaka and lectures in Kyoto drifts between language and men's bodies, missing his younger boyfriend and keeping company with his favourite bar, his tropical fish, his tweets and memories of a lost family home.

Akutagawa 2021 (first half) · Candidate

氷柱の声

Tsurara no koe

AITitle translated by AI:“Voices of Icicles”

Rein Kudo · 27 when first published

Novel · 119 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Ichika was a second-year art-club student in Morioka when the 2011 earthquake struck, living in a stricken prefecture without counting herself a victim, and over the following ten years she and others slowly find words for what they went through.

Akutagawa 2021 (second half) · Candidate

オン・ザ・プラネット

On za puranetto

AITitle translated by AI:“On the Planet”

Daiki Shimaguchi · 23 when first published

Novel · 174 pages · Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:Four young people share a car from Yokohama to the dunes of Tottori to make a film, and as they talk about their pasts on the way they start to wonder about memory, and whether the world has ended.

Akutagawa 2021 (second half) · Candidate

我が友、スミス

Waga tomo, Sumisu

AITitle translated by AI:“My Friend, Smith”

Kaho Ishida · 30 when first published

Novel · 139 pages · Satire

AIAI-generated summary:U-no, an office worker who lifts weights wanting to 'become a different creature', is urged by O-shima at her gym to enter a bodybuilding contest, and finds that to place she must train not only muscle but 'femininity' too, while colleagues and her mother misread her efforts.

Akutagawa 2021 (second half) · Candidate

Schoolgirl

Schoolgirl

Rie Qudan · 31 when first published

Novella · 212 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:A mother whose fourteen-year-old daughter, an eager social-issues YouTuber, pities her as 'a poor woman whose mind has been invaded by novels' is baffled when the girl's latest video turns out to be about Osamu Dazai's story 'Schoolgirl'.

Akutagawa 2021 (second half) · Candidate

皆のあらばしり

Mina no arabashiri

AITitle translated by AI:“Everyone's First Pressing”

Yusuke Norishiro · 35 when first published

Novel · 133 pages · Historical, Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:A schoolboy from the history club encounters a shady middle-aged stranger at the site of Minagawa Castle, who grabs a list of books held by an old local household and singles out a title by Ozu Hisatari found in no other record, and the two investigate whether it is a lost book or a fake.

Akutagawa 2020 (first half) · Candidate

アウア・エイジ

Aua eiji

Manabu Okamoto · 48 when first published

Novel · 140 pages

Akutagawa 2020 (first half) · Candidate

アキちゃん

Aki-chan

Mina Miki · 29 when first published

Novella · 215 pages

Akutagawa 2020 (first half) · Candidate

赤い砂を蹴る

Akai suna o keru

AITitle translated by AI:“Kicking the Red Sand”

Nen Ishihara · 48 when first published

Novel · 158 pages · Family, Migration

AIAI-generated summary:After her mother Kyoko, a painter, dies, Chinatsu goes to Brazil in the company of Meiko, an old friend of Kyoko's who has just been widowed by her alcoholic husband.

Akutagawa 2020 (second half) · Candidate

小隊

Shōtai

AITitle translated by AI:“Platoon”

Bunji Sunakawa · 30 when first published

Novel · 157 pages · War, Speculative

AIAI-generated summary:When Russian forces land in Hokkaido and Japan faces its first ground war since 1945, Second Lieutenant Adachi of the Self-Defence Forces leads his platoon to meet them, through days of residents refusing to leave and intelligence that never comes, until the fighting begins.

Akutagawa 2020 (second half) · Candidate

コンジュジ

Konjuji

Mitsuko Kizaki · 30 when first published

Novel · 163 pages · Coming of age, Family

AIAI-generated summary:Serena, eleven, left by her mother and molested by her father, falls in love before dawn on 2 September 1993 with Rian, a legendary dead rock star she glimpses on TV, and retreats into imagined scenes with him whenever the pain becomes unbearable.

Akutagawa 2020 (second half) · Candidate

母影

Omokage

AITitle translated by AI:“Mother's Shadow”

Sekaikan Ozaki · 36 when first published

Novella · 124 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:Friendless at primary school, a girl lies low in the massage parlour where her mother is employed, watching through a curtain as her mother 'repairs the broken parts' of clients and seems to hurt more each day.

Akutagawa 2020 (second half) · Candidate

Traveling Practice

旅する練習 · Tabisuru renshū

Yusuke Norishiro · 34 when first published

Novel · 184 pages · Coming of age, Nature

AIAI-generated summary:With her spring plans wiped out by the 2020 pandemic, a soccer-mad girl about to start secondary school walks with her novelist uncle beside the Tone River toward the Kashima Antlers' stadium, she kicking a ball, he writing.

Akutagawa 2019 (first half) · Candidate

カム・ギャザー・ラウンド・ピープル

Kamu gyazā raundo pīpuru

AITitle translated by AI:“Come Gather Round People”

Haneko Takayama · 44 when first published

Novella · 108 pages

AIAI-generated summary:A woman recalls her grandmother's lovely back, a stranger who licked her stomach as she walked back from school and Nishida, a tedious friend from her teens; years later someone she meets during a downpour shows her footage of Nishida, wearing a dress, heading a protest march.

Akutagawa 2019 (first half) · Candidate

五つ数えれば三日月が

Itsutsu kazoereba mikazuki ga

AITitle translated by AI:“Count to Five and a Crescent Moon”

Li Kotomi · 30 when first published

Novella · 134 pages · Love, Migration

AIAI-generated summary:In the final summer of the Heisei era, a Taiwanese woman working in Japan sees her friend Mio again in Tokyo after five years apart; Mio married a Taiwanese man and moved to Taiwan, and the narrator has feelings she has never voiced.

Akutagawa 2019 (first half) · Candidate

ラッコの家

Rakko no ie

AITitle translated by AI:“The Sea Otter House”

Makoto Furukawa · 31 when first published

Novella · 217 pages

AIAI-generated summary:An old woman whose sight is failing, and whose dreams and waking life constantly run together, laughs off the fears her own imagination once gave her.

Akutagawa 2019 (first half) · Candidate

百の夜は跳ねて

Hyaku no yoru wa hanete

AITitle translated by AI:“A Hundred Nights Leap”

Noritoshi Furuichi · 34 when first published

Novel · 185 pages

AIAI-generated summary:A young man who cleans the windows of skyscrapers, listening to a voice in his head that says inequality runs sideways too, not just up and down, one day meets the eyes of an old woman behind the glass.

Akutagawa 2019 (second half) · Candidate

デッドライン

Deddorain

AITitle translated by AI:“Deadline”

Masaya Chiba · 41 when first published

Novel · 161 pages · Coming of age, Autofiction

AIAI-generated summary:In spring 2001 a gay student starts graduate work in contemporary French philosophy in Tokyo, and while he helps a friend make a film, drives through the night with his best friend and has chance encounters with men, his deadline for a thesis on Deleuze creeps closer.

Akutagawa 2019 (second half) · Candidate

音に聞く

Oto ni kiku

AITitle translated by AI:“Heard in Sound”

Nagara Takao · 27 when first published

Novel · 141 pages

AIAI-generated summary:In Vienna, a gifted teenage composer and her elder sister, who has left her native tongue behind, wrestle with words and sound.

Akutagawa 2019 (second half) · Candidate

幼な子の聖戦

Osanago no seisen

AITitle translated by AI:“A Small Child's Holy War”

Yusuke Kimura · 49 when first published

Novel · 219 pages · Politics

AIAI-generated summary:Disillusioned with Tokyo and with a new religion he almost believed in, Shiro returns to his home village and becomes a councillor, but blackmailed by a prefectural assemblyman he is forced to sabotage the mayoral campaign of his reformist childhood friend Jingo.

Akutagawa 2019 (second half) · Candidate

最高の任務

Saikō no ninmu

AITitle translated by AI:“The Finest Mission”

Yusuke Norishiro · 33 when first published

Novel · 183 pages · Family, Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:About to graduate, a young woman rereads the childhood diary she kept in a notebook from her late aunt, and remembers her.

Akutagawa 2018 (first half) · Candidate

風下の朱

Kazashimo no aka

AITitle translated by AI:“Vermilion Downwind”

Natsuki Koyata · 37 when first published

Novella · 191 pages

AIAI-generated summary:A group of women join Yukimi in founding a baseball team meant to keep their souls healthy, and wrestle with the gap between ideals and reality.

Akutagawa 2018 (first half) · Candidate

しき

Shiki

AITitle translated by AI:“Seasons”

Ryohei Machiya · 35 when first published

Novel · 172 pages · Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:Hoshizaki, a high-school boy with no talents and no rebellious phase, learns a dance from a YouTube clip in a park after dark with his friend Kusano, while another friend, Tsukumo, who lives by the river, tells him he is about to be a father.

Akutagawa 2018 (first half) · Candidate

もう「はい」としか言えない

Mō 'hai' to shika ienai

AITitle translated by AI:“All I Can Say Now Is Yes”

Suzuki Matsuo · 56 when first published

Novel · 204 pages · Satire

AIAI-generated summary:Caught after a two-year affair and bound by his wife's terms of surrender, the playwright Goro Kaiba, who hates flying and fears foreigners, jumps at a dubious French prize that pays for a week in Paris, a trip that turns into a nightmare.

Akutagawa 2018 (first half) · Candidate

美しい顔

Utsukushii kao

AITitle translated by AI:“A Beautiful Face”

Yuko Hojo · 33 when first published

Novel · 152 pages

AIAI-generated summary:After a catastrophe of unheard-of scale, Sanae, a schoolgirl staying in a shelter with her little brother, is oddly elated by the swarm of reporters, though a place she must eventually go back to is waiting.

Akutagawa 2018 (second half) · Candidate

戦場のレビヤタン

Senjō no Rebiyatan

AITitle translated by AI:“Leviathan on the Battlefield”

Bunji Sunakawa · 28 when first published

Novella · 161 pages · War

AIAI-generated summary:K, a Japanese who has signed on as an armed guard protecting a British oil plant in Iraq, rides north from Kirkuk toward Erbil and keeps asking himself why he came, what war is, what makes it and who the enemy really is.

Akutagawa 2018 (second half) · Candidate

居た場所

Ita basho

AITitle translated by AI:“The Place Where We Were”

Haneko Takayama · 43 when first published

Novella · 163 pages · Love, Migration

AIAI-generated summary:A man and his wife Xiaocui, who first came to Japan as a trainee, set off together, map in hand, for a seaside town that the map does not show.

Akutagawa 2018 (second half) · Candidate

平成くん、さようなら

Heisei-kun, sayōnara

AITitle translated by AI:“Goodbye, Heisei-kun”

Noritoshi Furuichi · 33 when first published

Novel · 187 pages · Satire, Love

AIAI-generated summary:In a Japan where assisted death is legal, Heisei-kun, a cool, rational young man hailed in the press as the embodiment of the Heisei era and averse to physical intimacy, announces to his girlfriend Ai his wish to die when the era closes.

Akutagawa 2018 (second half) · Candidate

ジャップ・ン・ロール・ヒーロー

Jappu n rōru hīrō

AITitle translated by AI:“Jap'n'Roll Hero”

Rui Kounoike · 31 when first published

Novel · 152 pages · Satire

AIAI-generated summary:A Keio student who can barely play claims to know Dantula Deo, an '80s band that made it abroad then vanished; when his guitarist friend posts 'recreated' songs online and lands a record deal, their game with a made-up band is drawn into a historic information war.

Akutagawa 2017 (first half) · Candidate

四時過ぎの船

Yojisugi no fune

AITitle translated by AI:“The Boat After Four”

Makoto Furukawa · 29 when first published

Novel · 120 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:Living away from his island with a brother who cannot see, an unsettled Minoru recalls his grandmother's words.

Akutagawa 2017 (first half) · Candidate

星の子

Hoshi no ko

AITitle translated by AI:“Child of the Stars”

Natsuko Imamura · 37 when first published

Novel · 220 pages · Family, Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:Chihiro, a ninth-grader, was frail from birth, and her parents' frantic efforts to make her well led them into a dubious religion whose beliefs have slowly warped their household.

Akutagawa 2017 (first half) · Candidate

真ん中の子どもたち

Mannaka no kodomotachi

AITitle translated by AI:“Children in the Middle”

Wen Yuju · 37 when first published

Novel · 163 pages · Coming of age, Migration

AIAI-generated summary:Kotoko, nineteen, the Japan-raised daughter of a Taiwanese mother, studies Mandarin in Shanghai and befriends two classmates who also straddle Japan, Taiwan and China, while 'standard' Chinese makes her feel anything but standard.

Akutagawa 2017 (second half) · Candidate

雪子さんの足音

Yukiko-san no ashioto

AITitle translated by AI:“Yukiko's Footsteps”

Kumi Kimura · 41 when first published

Novel · 123 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Kaoru, visiting Tokyo for work, sees a newspaper item reporting that Yukiko, the landlady of the Koenji boarding house where he lived in his student years, died by herself in the summer heat, and as he walks back there after two decades, those years return.

Akutagawa 2017 (second half) · Candidate

愛が挟み撃ち

Ai ga hasamiuchi

AITitle translated by AI:“Love in a Pincer”

Shiro Maeda · 40 when first published

Novel · 187 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:Married six years, Kyoko, thirty-six, and Shunsuke, nearly forty, cannot have a child, and Shunsuke, who doubts that love exists but cannot let go of the idea of Kyoko becoming a mother, proposes a startling solution involving a second man.

Akutagawa 2017 (second half) · Candidate

ディレイ・エフェクト

Direi efekuto

AITitle translated by AI:“Delay Effect”

Yusuke Miyauchi · 38 when first published

Novella · 178 pages · Speculative, War

AIAI-generated summary:In a chaotic Tokyo of 2020, the wartime past has begun to overlap the present: the narrator's great-grandfather sits at a translucent low table inside his living room, and the air raid of 10 March 1945, in which his great-grandmother will burn to death, is drawing closer.

Akutagawa 2016 (first half) · Candidate

The Color of the Sky Is the Shape of the Heart

ジニのパズル · Jini no pazuru

Chesil · 31 when first published

Novel · 158 pages · Coming of age, Migration, Politics

AIAI-generated summary:Facing expulsion from her Oregon high school, Jini, born in Japan to a Korean family, tells Stephanie, whom she meets through her homestay, about Tokyo five years before, when she enrolled at a pro-North Korean school without speaking Korean.

Akutagawa 2016 (first half) · Candidate

短冊流し

Tanzaku nagashi

AITitle translated by AI:“Floating Wishes Downstream”

Hiroki Takahashi · 37 when first published

Novella · 139 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:A father can do nothing but keep watch as his young daughter lies close to death.

Akutagawa 2016 (first half) · Candidate

Beautiful Distance

美しい距離 · Utsukushii kyori

Nao-Cola Yamazaki · 38 when first published

Novel · 144 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:When his wife, owner of a sandwich café and only in her early forties, learns she has incurable cancer, her husband, an employee of an insurer, spends every spare hour at her bedside, hoping she can finish her life on her own terms rather than the doctors'.

Akutagawa 2016 (first half) · Candidate

あひる

Ahiru

AITitle translated by AI:“The Duck”

Natsuko Imamura · 36 when first published

Novella · 140 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:After her family adopts a duck, local children start calling round after school, but when it gets sick and goes to the animal hospital they vanish, and the duck that comes home a fortnight later is noticeably smaller.

Akutagawa 2016 (second half) · Candidate

キャピタル

Kyapitaru

AITitle translated by AI:“Capital”

Hideyuki Kato · 33 when first published

Novel · 181 pages

AIAI-generated summary:On a year's leave earned through seven years of work, a man meets a woman who uses a wheelchair in Bangkok during a cold spell.

Akutagawa 2016 (second half) · Candidate

縫わんばならん

Nuwanba naran

AITitle translated by AI:“It Has to Be Sewn”

Makoto Furukawa · 28 when first published

Novel · 138 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:Talking together, members of one fishing family from a small island off Nagasaki piece their scattered memories into the story of four generations.

Akutagawa 2016 (second half) · Candidate

ビニール傘

Binīru gasa

AITitle translated by AI:“Plastic Umbrella”

Masahiko Kishi · 49 when first published

Novella · 124 pages

AIAI-generated summary:In a corner of Osaka, a poor young man and a poor young woman get by, lonely and uncertain of tomorrow.

Akutagawa 2016 (second half) · Candidate

カブールの園

Kābūru no sono

AITitle translated by AI:“The Garden of Kabul”

Yusuke Miyauchi · 37 when first published

Novella · 206 pages · Migration, Family

AIAI-generated summary:Rei, a Japanese American in her late thirties who co-founded a tech company and still carries the wounds of childhood bullying and a hard relationship with her mother, is sent on leave and finds herself driving to Manzanar, the camp in which her grandparents were held.

Akutagawa 2015 (first half) · Candidate

朝顔の日

Asagao no hi

AITitle translated by AI:“Morning Glory Day”

Hiroki Takahashi · 36 when first published

Novel · 123 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:Rinta keeps visiting Saki, the wife he has known since childhood, while she convalesces from tuberculosis; as she weakens the couple are told not to speak at all, so that her throat can heal, and one day he glimpses in her eyes something no living person should hold.

Akutagawa 2015 (first half) · Candidate

MとΣ

Emu to shiguma

AITitle translated by AI:“M and Sigma”

Kunpu Uchimura

Novel · 196 pages

Akutagawa 2015 (first half) · Candidate

夏の裁断

Natsu no saidan

AITitle translated by AI:“Summer Shredding”

Rio Shimamoto · 32 when first published

Novel · 125 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Novelist Chihiro, who carries a sexual wound from her past, is tormented by Shibata, a devilish editor, until she stabs his hand with a fork at a party; to recover she goes to her late grandfather's old house in Kamakura and begins cutting up his books to scan them.

Akutagawa 2015 (first half) · Candidate

ジミ・ヘンドリクス・エクスペリエンス

Jimi Hendorikusu ekusuperiensu

AITitle translated by AI:“The Jimi Hendrix Experience”

Yusho Takiguchi · 33 when first published

Novella · 119 pages · Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:A teenage romance, a scooter journey across Tohoku and the sound of Hendrix: one man's recollections of the decade from autumn 2001 to spring 2011 change shape with every retelling, as his nineteen-year-old self and the man he became briefly meet.

Akutagawa 2015 (second half) · Candidate

シェア

Shea

Hideyuki Kato · 32 when first published

Novella · 181 pages

Akutagawa 2015 (second half) · Candidate

家へ

Ie e

AITitle translated by AI:“Homeward”

Sen Ishida · 47 when first published

Novel · 197 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:Shin, studying sculpture as a graduate student in Tokyo, was raised on the Niigata coast by his mother and the man she lives with unmarried, whom he calls Grandpa, while keeping close ties with his real father on an island, until the arrangement begins to trouble him.

Akutagawa 2015 (second half) · Candidate

異郷の友人

Ikyō no yūjin

AITitle translated by AI:“A Friend in a Foreign Land”

Takahiro Ueda · 36 when first published

Novel · 156 pages · Speculative

AIAI-generated summary:A cult on Awaji Island, where Japan's creator gods first made the land, wins converts after foretelling the Kobe earthquake, and a band of brilliant hackers from the US west coast arrives to see its leader, observed by an all-seeing narrator.

Akutagawa 2015 (second half) · Candidate

ホモサピエンスの瞬間

Homo sapiensu no shunkan

AITitle translated by AI:“The Homo Sapiens Moment”

Taro Matsunami · 33 when first published

Novella · 124 pages · War

AIAI-generated summary:An acupuncturist who gives weekly massage sessions at a care home works on the badly knotted neck of an old resident, and as the stiffness loosens, memories of the Sino-Japanese War surface.

Akutagawa 2014 (first half) · Candidate

どろにやいと

Doro ni yaito

AITitle translated by AI:“Moxa on Mud”

Akito Inui · 43 when first published

Novella · 148 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Inheriting his late father's trade as a pedlar of a cure-all moxa, a man follows the old customer list to a remote hamlet on the Japan Sea coast, misses the last bus out and must spend the night in a place that may not let him go.

Akutagawa 2014 (first half) · Candidate

マダム・キュリーと朝食を

Madamu Kyurī to chōshoku o

AITitle translated by AI:“Breakfast with Madame Curie”

Erika Kobayashi · 36 when first published

Novel · 181 pages · Speculative, Historical

AIAI-generated summary:A stray cat that has wandered to a city in the east perceives radiation as light, and Hina, a girl whose birth coincided with the 2011 disaster, comes from women who hear it as sound; together they roam across time and place through the story of energy, from Marie Curie to Edison.

Akutagawa 2014 (first half) · Candidate

メタモルフォシス

Metamorufoshisu

AITitle translated by AI:“Metamorphosis”

Keisuke Hada · 29 when first published

Novella · 202 pages

AIAI-generated summary:A highly paid broker who spends his days pushing investments on old people kneels each night before a dominatrix at an S&M club, and keeps craving harsher play in search of a world visible only to someone who has surrendered completely.

Akutagawa 2014 (first half) · Candidate

吾輩ハ猫ニナル

Wagahai wa neko ni naru

AITitle translated by AI:“I Am Becoming a Cat”

Yuta Yokoyama · 33 when first published

Novella · 135 pages · Satire, Migration

AIAI-generated summary:Kakeru, the son of a Japanese and a Chinese parent, lazes away his days far from his family in Shanghai, until a visa renewal sends him to Japan, where he winds up in Akihabara, the mecca of otaku culture.

Akutagawa 2014 (second half) · Candidate

ヌエのいた家

Nue no ita ie

AITitle translated by AI:“The House Where the Nue Lived”

Atsushi Koyano · 52 when first published

Novel · 124 pages · Autofiction, Family

AIAI-generated summary:A man looks back with loathing on his father, an ex-artisan with a screw loose, as the old man dies a wretched death, and tracing where his hatred began, he also finds things to love in him.

Akutagawa 2014 (second half) · Candidate

Finger Bone

指の骨 · Yubi no hone

Hiroki Takahashi · 35 when first published

Novel · 123 pages · War, Historical

AIAI-generated summary:Injured fighting in the South Pacific, a young soldier ends up in a temporary field hospital on an embattled island, where he barters with islanders for food and is given the finger bone of a friend killed by disease as a keepsake.

Akutagawa 2014 (second half) · Candidate

影媛

Kagehime

Nagara Takao · 22 when first published

Novel · 122 pages · Historical, Love

AIAI-generated summary:Kagehime, a Mononobe priestess who takes the form of a kingfisher to listen for the gods in the forest, falls for Shibi, a man of the rival Heguri clan, though the crown prince has already sought her hand, in a tale drawn from the Nihon Shoki.

Akutagawa 2014 (second half) · Candidate

惑星

Wakusei

AITitle translated by AI:“Planet”

Takahiro Ueda · 35 when first published

Novel · 229 pages

Akutagawa 2013 (first half) · Candidate

すっぽん心中

Suppon shinjū

AITitle translated by AI:“Snapping Turtle Suicide Pact”

Akito Inui · 42 when first published

Novella · 123 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Tano, who has always let things slide rather than change anything, and Momo, cheerfully unfazed though she keeps getting hurt, meet by Shinobazu Pond and set out together from Ueno toward Lake Kasumigaura.

Akutagawa 2013 (first half) · Candidate

すなまわり

Sunamawari

AITitle translated by AI:“Ringside Sand”

Kenkichi Tsurukawa · 32 when first published

Novella · 125 pages · Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:A boy who clips every sumo article down to the gossip and skips homework for the broadcasts accepts that he will never be big enough to wrestle and becomes a gyoji, a ring referee, in a sumo stable, living a youth of sand and sweat.

Akutagawa 2013 (first half) · Candidate

想像ラジオ

Sōzō rajio

AITitle translated by AI:“Imagination Radio”

Seiko Ito · 52 when first published

Novel · 193 pages · Speculative

AIAI-generated summary:At 2:46 in the morning, perched in a cedar above a small coastal town, DJ Arc begins a radio show broadcast on the waves of imagination, which only the listener's mind can pick up, in a story set after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

Akutagawa 2013 (first half) · Candidate

砂漠ダンス

Sabaku dansu

AITitle translated by AI:“Desert Dance”

Sumito Yamashita · 47 when first published

Novella · 127 pages

AIAI-generated summary:After seeing a desert on television, a man from the snowy north flies to an old American casino town, rents a car and drives into the desert, where he meets himself as a child, his dead parents and the woman from his local bar he never dared invite along.

Akutagawa 2013 (second half) · Candidate

Farewell, My Orange

さようなら、オレンジ · Sayōnara, orenji

Kei Iwaki · 42 when first published

Novel · 135 pages · Migration

AIAI-generated summary:In a small Australian country town, Salima, an African refugee abandoned by her husband, raises two sons while working in a meat-processing plant and starts learning English at a vocational school, where she meets a Japanese woman she calls 'Hedgehog'.

Akutagawa 2013 (second half) · Candidate

鼻に挟み撃ち

Hana ni hasamiuchi

AITitle translated by AI:“A Pincer Attack on the Nose”

Seiko Ito · 52 when first published

Novella · 168 pages · Politics

AIAI-generated summary:At the foot of Hijiri Bridge in Ochanomizu, a strange man in a mask makes a passionate speech about Gogol's 'The Nose' and Meisei Goto's novel 'Pincer Attack', and as the passers-by, all masked too, listen, reality begins to warp.

Akutagawa 2013 (second half) · Candidate

コルバトントリ

Korubatontori

Sumito Yamashita · 47 when first published

Novella · 107 pages

AIAI-generated summary:With his father in hospital and his mother killed by a car, a boy lives with his aunt, scarred long ago by oil his mother threw from a window, and on a visit to his father he meets delinquents, a fawn-like girl, a keeper of the moon and his parents as children.

Akutagawa 2013 (second half) · Candidate

LIFE

Taro Matsunami · 31 when first published

Novel · 258 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:Yutaka Nekoki, thirty-one, a layabout who in his head reigns over a kingdom of endless idleness, must face real life when his partner Takarada tells him she is pregnant, and after the birth their child turns out to have a congenital disability.

Akutagawa 2012 (first half) · Candidate

ひっ

Hi'

Akito Inui · 41 when first published

Novel · 125 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:The narrator's uncle Hissan, once a yakuza apprentice, a fugitive in the Philippines, a club waiter and a hit songwriter, now lives as a recluse on a peninsula; drifting through life himself, the narrator wanders India and Nepal and comes home no wiser.

Akutagawa 2012 (first half) · Candidate

短篇五芒星

Tanpen gobōsei

AITitle translated by AI:“A Pentagram of Stories”

Otaro Maijo · 39 when first published

Short stories · 187 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Five stories, among them one about a man of twenty-seven who suddenly becomes obsessed with miscarriage and rages at how often babies die for no reason.

Akutagawa 2012 (first half) · Candidate

ギッちょん

Gitchon

Sumito Yamashita · 46 when first published

Novella · 230 pages

AIAI-generated summary:A man who has become homeless in his forties sees his childhood friend Gitchon and his lonely father pass before his eyes, in a life told out of order from boisterous boyhood to old age.

Akutagawa 2012 (first half) · Candidate

河童日誌

Kappa nisshi

AITitle translated by AI:“Kappa Diary”

Yoshinori Suzuki · 38 when first published

Novella

Akutagawa 2012 (second half) · Candidate

Lion Cross Point

獅子渡り鼻 · Shishiwataribana

Masatsugu Ono · 42 when first published

Novel · 128 pages · Coming of age, Family

AIAI-generated summary:Ten-year-old Takeru, abandoned with his brother, who cannot speak or move, in a cramped city flat when their mother vanishes, is taken to the coastal backwater she always hated, where its landscape, its grown-ups and its spirits slowly mend him.

Akutagawa 2012 (second half) · Candidate

関東平野

Kantō heiya

AITitle translated by AI:“The Kanto Plain”

Michio Kitano · 28 when first published

Novella

Akutagawa 2012 (second half) · Candidate

肉骨茶

Nikukotsucha

AITitle translated by AI:“Bak Kut Teh”

Nagara Takao · 20 when first published

Novella · 123 pages · Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:Akaiko, a painfully thin schoolgirl, gives her mother the slip while travelling in Southeast Asia and hides at her friend Zooey's holiday home, to escape food that she feels piling up inside her as fat.

Akutagawa 2012 (second half) · Candidate

美味しいシャワーヘッド

Oishii shawāheddo

AITitle translated by AI:“The Delicious Showerhead”

Otaro Maijo · 39 when first published

Novella · 445 pages

Akutagawa 2011 (first half) · Candidate

ぴんぞろ

Pinzoro

AITitle translated by AI:“Snake Eyes”

Akito Inui · 40 when first published

Novella · 146 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Caught up in a crooked dice game at the Tori-no-ichi fair in Asakusa, a scriptwriter drifts, as if steered by the dice, to a run-down hot-spring town, where he ends up as the warm-up act at a seedy strip theatre and lives with an old shamisen player and her granddaughter.

Akutagawa 2011 (first half) · Candidate

ニキの屈辱

Niki no kutsujoku

AITitle translated by AI:“Niki's Humiliation”

Nao-Cola Yamazaki · 33 when first published

Novel · 155 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:A young man becomes the assistant of Niki, a celebrated photographer a year younger than him, and is ordered about at work and in private by the haughty woman he finds himself falling for.

Akutagawa 2011 (first half) · Candidate

甘露

Kanro

AITitle translated by AI:“Nectar”

Ryo Mizuhara · 22 when first published

Novella

Akutagawa 2011 (first half) · Candidate

あめりかむら

Amerikamura

Sen Ishida · 43 when first published

Novella · 170 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Travelling to Osaka to escape her fear that her illness will return, Michiko suddenly feels her body fail, and finds herself thinking of a young man she had always disliked, a friend bent on an elite business career.

Akutagawa 2011 (first half) · Candidate

これはペンです

Kore wa pen desu

AITitle translated by AI:“This Is a Pen”

Toh EnJoe · 39 when first published

Novella · 173 pages · Speculative, Family

AIAI-generated summary:A university student keeps receiving strange letters from her uncle, who seems to have made a fortune from a program that writes text by itself, and his messages arrive not only by hand but as engraved magnets, typeballs and DNA sequences.

Akutagawa 2011 (first half) · Candidate

ぬるい毒

Nurui doku

AITitle translated by AI:“Lukewarm Poison”

Yukiko Motoya · 32 when first published

Novel · 133 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:One night a stranger who claims to be an old classmate phones a nineteen-year-old woman; she knows at once he is a heartless liar, yet his lies enthral her and begin a five-year private war between them.

Akutagawa 2011 (second half) · Candidate

七月のばか

Shichigatsu no baka

AITitle translated by AI:“The July Fool”

Maya Yoshii · 33 when first published

Novel

Akutagawa 2011 (second half) · Candidate

まちなか

Machinaka

AITitle translated by AI:“In Town”

Naoki Hirokoji · 39 when first published

Novella

Akutagawa 2011 (second half) · Candidate

きなりの雲

Kinari no kumo

AITitle translated by AI:“Unbleached Clouds”

Sen Ishida · 43 when first published

Novel · 210 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:Having lost a love that mattered to her and with it the will to live, Samiko slowly finds her way back, starting with an avocado stone sprouting in water and through the residents of her old apartment block and the women at her knitting class.

Akutagawa 2010 (first half) · Candidate

その暁のぬるさ

Sono akatsuki no nurusa

AITitle translated by AI:“The Lukewarmness of That Dawn”

Maki Kashimada · 34 when first published

Novella · 146 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:Keeping secret the loss of 'that man', a nursery-school teacher relives the lovely memories of their affair while she goes out drinking with co-workers and joins their bragging and chatter about romance.

Akutagawa 2010 (first half) · Candidate

うちに帰ろう

Uchi ni kaerō

AITitle translated by AI:“Let's Go Home”

Naoki Hirokoji · 38 when first published

Novella · 158 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:A man who keeps house while his wife goes out to work handles childcare, cooking and the mothers at the park, until one day a woman he has befriended there nearly drags him into a double suicide.

Akutagawa 2010 (first half) · Candidate

拍動

Hakudō

AITitle translated by AI:“Heartbeat”

Shirin Nezammafi · 31 when first published

Novella

Akutagawa 2010 (first half) · Candidate

ハルツームにわたしはいない

Harutūmu ni watashi wa inai

AITitle translated by AI:“I Am Not in Khartoum”

Tomoka Shibasaki · 37 when first published

Novella · 222 pages

Akutagawa 2010 (first half) · Candidate

自由高さH

Jiyū takasa H

AITitle translated by AI:“Free Height H”

Yosan Hotakawa · 35 when first published

Novella · 110 pages

AIAI-generated summary:In an abandoned spring factory in eastern Tokyo, a man sands timber and brushes it with persimmon tannin, while the old landlord, whose family firm prospered on stubbornness, and other visitors drift in and out, their lives slowly linking through the building.

Akutagawa 2010 (second half) · Candidate

母子寮前

Boshiryō mae

AITitle translated by AI:“In Front of the Mother-and-Child Home”

Atsushi Koyano · 48 when first published

Novel · 166 pages · Autofiction, Family

AIAI-generated summary:After one phone call brings news of his beloved mother's lung cancer, a man spends her last year moving her between hospitals, fighting with doctors and family, and locked in a ferocious struggle with the father he calls 'the Nue'.

Akutagawa 2010 (second half) · Candidate

第三紀層の魚

Daisankisō no sakana

AITitle translated by AI:“Fish of the Tertiary Strata”

Shinya Tanaka · 38 when first published

Novella · 140 pages

Akutagawa 2010 (second half) · Candidate

あぶらびれ

Aburabire

AITitle translated by AI:“Adipose Fin”

Yosan Hotakawa · 35 when first published

Novel

Akutagawa 2009 (first half) · Candidate

まずいスープ

Mazui sūpu

AITitle translated by AI:“Bad Soup”

Akito Inui · 38 when first published

Novella · 191 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:Father walks out saying he is off to the sauna and never returns, leaving a foul soup made from fish he bought at Ameyoko; Mother takes to the bottle and the narrator's family teeters toward collapse, in a plight that keeps tipping into comedy.

Akutagawa 2009 (first half) · Candidate

いけにえ

Ikenie

AITitle translated by AI:“The Sacrifice”

Kaori Fujino · 29 when first published

Novella · 186 pages

Akutagawa 2009 (first half) · Candidate

白い紙

Shiroi kami

AITitle translated by AI:“White Paper”

Shirin Nezammafi · 30 when first published

Novella · 150 pages · Love, War

AIAI-generated summary:Two teenagers at school in a small Iranian town fall into a tentative first love while the war with Iraq goes on.

Akutagawa 2009 (first half) · Candidate

よもぎ学園高等学校蹴球部

Yomogi gakuen kōtō gakkō shūkyūbu

AITitle translated by AI:“Yomogi Academy High School Football Club”

Taro Matsunami · 27 when first published

Novella · 209 pages · Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:At a private school that accepts teenagers who had stopped attending class, the woman coaching the hopeless football team is determined that her players win just one match, convinced it will give them strength for the rest of their lives.

Akutagawa 2009 (first half) · Candidate

あの子の考えることは変

Ano ko no kangaeru koto wa hen

AITitle translated by AI:“That Girl Has Strange Ideas”

Yukiko Motoya · 30 when first published

Novel · 139 pages · Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:A twenty-three-year-old part-timer whose whole identity rests on her G-cup breasts shares a flat with a twenty-three-year-old virgin convinced she smells, who obsesses over dioxins from the waste plant, and together the two misfits get through their lonely days.

Akutagawa 2009 (second half) · Candidate

ボーダー&レス

Bōdā & resu

Izumi Fujishiro · 27 when first published

Novel · 156 pages · Migration

AIAI-generated summary:A young man in his first year at a company befriends Song-u, a Zainichi Korean colleague with an unusual charm, and learns that an invisible divide runs even between the two of them.

Akutagawa 2009 (second half) · Candidate

ミート・ザ・ビート

Mīto za bīto

Keisuke Hada · 24 when first published

Novel · 156 pages · Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:In a provincial city an hour from Tokyo, a nineteen-year-old student preparing for university exams while working shifts is handed a used Honda Beat by a friend, and the little car reshapes his days, down to an uneasy relationship with a call girl.

Akutagawa 2009 (second half) · Candidate

犬はいつも足元にいて

Inu wa itsumo ashimoto ni ite

AITitle translated by AI:“The Dog Is Always at My Feet”

Omori Brothers

Novel · 146 pages · Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:Pestered by a clingy classmate named Sada, a middle-school boy sometimes takes the big black dog his divorced father left behind to a secret spot deep in the bushes, where a reeking, unidentifiable piece of 'meat' lies buried.

Akutagawa 2009 (second half) · Candidate

ビッチマグネット

Bitchi magunetto

Otaro Maijo · 36 when first published

Novel · 206 pages · Family, Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:Kaori and her younger brother Tomonori share everything; their father has walked out to live with his lover Hana, their mother is sinking, and then Tomonori's girlfriend Akari Miwa arrives to rock their fragile balance.

Akutagawa 2009 (second half) · Candidate

老人賭博

Rōjin tobaku

AITitle translated by AI:“Old Man Gambling”

Suzuki Matsuo · 47 when first published

Novel · 204 pages · Satire

AIAI-generated summary:Kenzo Kaneko, a masseur whose only comfort is comedy films, becomes the disciple of a director and joins a shoot in a shuttered shopping arcade in Kitakyushu, where the bored crew start betting on how often their seventy-eight-year-old lead will fluff his lines.

Akutagawa 2008 (first half) · Candidate

走ル

Hashiru

AITitle translated by AI:“Run”

Keisuke Hada · 23 when first published

Novel · 156 pages · Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:A second-year high-school student rides an old green Bianchi from the shed to school, then skips class and keeps pedalling north on Route 4, through Fukushima, Yamagata, Akita and Aomori, texting lies to everyone at home.

Akutagawa 2008 (first half) · Candidate

眼と太陽

Me to taiyō

AITitle translated by AI:“Eyes and Sun”

Kenichiro Isozaki · 43 when first published

Novella · 118 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:A man remembers the days he spent with Tori, a woman whose large eyes pierce him.

Akutagawa 2008 (first half) · Candidate

婚礼、葬礼、その他

Konrei, sōrei, sonota

AITitle translated by AI:“Weddings, Funerals, and So On”

Kikuko Tsumura · 30 when first published

Novella · 148 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Office worker Yoshino, who is forever being roped into other people's events, is halfway through a college friend's wedding, after-party duties and all, when she is summoned to her boss's father's wake, still hungry.

Akutagawa 2008 (first half) · Candidate

月食の日

Gesshoku no hi

AITitle translated by AI:“The Day of the Lunar Eclipse”

Kumi Kimura · 32 when first published

Novella · 159 pages

AIAI-generated summary:The people around a young man who is completely blind, among them a friend whose relationship with him is delicate, are portrayed through rapidly shifting points of view.

Akutagawa 2008 (first half) · Candidate

マイクロバス

Maikuro basu

AITitle translated by AI:“Microbus”

Masatsugu Ono · 38 when first published

Novel · 220 pages

AIAI-generated summary:A mute youth drives a bus round and round a jagged stretch of coast, as though sewing the world shut, in a tale of a place and the memories of those who live there.

Akutagawa 2008 (first half) · Candidate

ctの深い川の町

ct no fukai kawa no machi

AITitle translated by AI:“The Town of ct's Deep River”

Yoshihisa Okazaki · 40 when first published

Novella · 109 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Sick of everything, a man of forty retreats to the drab suburb where he grew up and where no one expects him, and takes a job driving slowly for a firm called Noble Transport in a mock-aristocratic uniform.

Akutagawa 2008 (second half) · Candidate

不正な処理

Fusei na shori

AITitle translated by AI:“Illegal Operation”

Kiyotaka Yoshihara · 38 when first published

Novella · 122 pages · Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:Makoto, a lonely boy raised by his mother on a housing estate and absorbed in his computer, meets Kuga at the estate's lookout, and in high school the two set out to build a computer game together.

Akutagawa 2008 (second half) · Candidate

女の庭

Onna no niwa

AITitle translated by AI:“The Women's Garden”

Maki Kashimada · 32 when first published

Novella · 154 pages

AIAI-generated summary:A childless housewife sits in on her neighbours' gossip though she never fits in, until something quietly miraculous happens.

Akutagawa 2008 (second half) · Candidate

手

Te

AITitle translated by AI:“Hands”

Nao-Cola Yamazaki · 30 when first published

Novella · 159 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:A twenty-five-year-old woman who compiles TV listings and runs a blog collecting photos of older men's faces and fingers drifts between a colleague she sleeps with but does not date and a boss thirty years her senior she dates but does not sleep with.

Akutagawa 2008 (second half) · Candidate

神様のいない日本シリーズ

Kamisama no inai Nihon shirīzu

AITitle translated by AI:“A Japan Series Without God”

Shinya Tanaka · 36 when first published

Novel · 157 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:In 1986, a boy whose father vanished after trouble over baseball gambling gets a postcard from him telling him to play baseball, and is torn between that wish and his mother's hatred of the game while he rehearses a play with a classmate he idolises.

Akutagawa 2008 (second half) · Candidate

潰玉

Kaigyoku

AITitle translated by AI:“Crushed Balls”

Wataru Sumitani · 36 when first published

Novella · 158 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Aoki, a law-firm clerk, is stopped in a station underpass by two girls dressed as schoolgirls, hauled into a car park, held down and kicked between the legs, and soon he is following them in search of more.

Akutagawa 2007 (first half) · Candidate

わたくし率 イン 歯ー、または世界

Watakushiritsu in hā, mata wa sekai

AITitle translated by AI:“My Ego Ratio in Teeth, or the World”

Mieko Kawakami · 31 when first published

Novella · 133 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Convinced that people think not with their brains but with their teeth, specifically her own exceptionally healthy molars, a young woman becomes a dental assistant, thinks of her boyfriend Aoki and writes a diary to her unborn child.

Akutagawa 2007 (first half) · Candidate

グレート生活アドベンチャー

Gurēto seikatsu adobenchā

AITitle translated by AI:“Great Life Adventure”

Shiro Maeda · 30 when first published

Novella · 157 pages

AIAI-generated summary:A jobless thirty-year-old who has moved in with Kanako, a supermarket cashier on the edge of Tokyo, spends his days levelling up in a video game and wondering whether he should really go on and defeat the Demon King.

Akutagawa 2007 (first half) · Candidate

オブ・ザ・ベースボール

Obu za bēsubōru

Toh EnJoe · 35 when first published

Novella · 153 pages · Speculative

AIAI-generated summary:Fowles is a dull little town where, about once a year, a person drops out of the heavens; a drifter who washes up there joins its rescue squad, issued with baseball uniforms and bats.

Akutagawa 2007 (first half) · Candidate

主題歌

Shudaika

AITitle translated by AI:“Theme Song”

Tomoka Shibasaki · 34 when first published

Novella · 189 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Mika, who loves to talk about pretty girls with her colleagues and lingers over a gravure magazine's guide to sexy actresses, thinks about where her art-school friends' lives are heading and hosts a café for women only in her home.

Akutagawa 2007 (first half) · Candidate

アウラ アウラ

Aura aura

Yukiko Matsui · 40 when first published

Novella

Akutagawa 2007 (second half) · Candidate

小銭をかぞえる

Kozeni o kazoeru

AITitle translated by AI:“Counting Small Change”

Kenta Nishimura · 40 when first published

Novella · 177 pages · Autofiction, Love

AIAI-generated summary:A man who has never had luck with women at last finds one who loves him back, but his rages and his fists put their life together under strain, and their quarrels over money turn into a tragicomedy.

Akutagawa 2007 (second half) · Candidate

カソウスキの行方

Kasōsuki no yukue

AITitle translated by AI:“Where Pretend Love Leads”

Kikuko Tsumura · 29 when first published

Novella · 145 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:Exiled to a suburban warehouse because of a colleague's affair, Irie, twenty-eight and unattached, tries to make her dreary days bearable by supposing she has fallen for Morikawa, a single man she works with.

Akutagawa 2007 (second half) · Candidate

カツラ美容室別室

Katsura biyōshitsu besshitsu

AITitle translated by AI:“Katsura Beauty Salon Annexe”

Nao-Cola Yamazaki · 29 when first published

Novel · 153 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:At a hair salon run by Kozo Katsura, a manager who wears a wig, Junnosuke and Eri meet and become friends, in a feeling much like the start of love that may be something else, among the salon's other regulars.

Akutagawa 2007 (second half) · Candidate

切れた鎖

Kireta kusari

AITitle translated by AI:“The Broken Chain”

Shinya Tanaka · 35 when first published

Novella · 146 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:In a town facing the straits, Umeyo, last daughter of the old Sakurai family that once turned the fishing village into a concrete city, lives with her divorced daughter and granddaughter, nursing a hatred for the Korean church built beside their decaying house.

Akutagawa 2007 (second half) · Candidate

空で歌う

Sora de utau

AITitle translated by AI:“Singing in the Sky”

Tomoyuki Nakayama · 32 when first published

Novella · 202 pages

AIAI-generated summary:A married man secretly takes a trip with his brother's girlfriend, adrift in a solitude of his own.

Akutagawa 2007 (second half) · Candidate

ワンちゃん

Wanchan

Yang Yi · 43 when first published

Novella · 146 pages · Migration

AIAI-generated summary:Fed up with her womanising first husband, Wang Aiqin, a tireless Chinese woman known as Wan-chan, marries into a family in rural Shikoku through an arranged match, looks after her mother-in-law and runs matchmaking tours to China for local bachelors.

Akutagawa 2006 (first half) · Candidate

ナンバーワン・コンストラクション

Nanbāwan konsutorakushon

Maki Kashimada · 30 when first published

Novel · 157 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:A young professor of architectural history, the would-be novelist who becomes his disciple, the girl the professor loves without hope and her beautiful fiancé, who rules her cruelly, talk of eternity, love and art among a modern city's celebrated buildings.

Akutagawa 2006 (first half) · Candidate

点滅......

Tenmetsu

AITitle translated by AI:“Blinking”

Masaya Nakahara · 36 when first published

Novella · 243 pages · Speculative

AIAI-generated summary:A silver box whose three coloured lights flicker can now carry any story in its patterns, so the narrator sets out to tell a happy tale with it.

Akutagawa 2006 (first half) · Candidate

大きな熊が来る前に、おやすみ。

Ōkina kuma ga kuru mae ni, oyasumi

AITitle translated by AI:“Goodnight, Before the Big Bear Comes”

Rio Shimamoto · 23 when first published

Novella · 201 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:Almost half a year after moving in with Teppei, a young woman feels not so much happy as uneasy, as though she has pushed off in a vessel that could overturn, until a petty argument brings out his violence.

Akutagawa 2006 (first half) · Candidate

Love at Least

生きてるだけで、愛。 · Ikiteru dake de, ai

Yukiko Motoya · 27 when first published

Novella · 112 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:Yasuko, twenty-five, sleeps too much and swings between highs and lows; three years into sharing Tsunaki's flat, she is confronted by his ex, who wants her gone and keeps telling her to become independent.

Akutagawa 2006 (second half) · Candidate

家族の肖像

Kazoku no shōzō

AITitle translated by AI:“Family Portrait”

Mitsuharu Sagawa · 41 when first published

Novella

Akutagawa 2006 (second half) · Candidate

図書準備室

Tosho junbishitsu

AITitle translated by AI:“The Library Storeroom”

Shinya Tanaka · 34 when first published

Novella · 184 pages

AIAI-generated summary:A man past thirty who has never held a job drinks on his mother's money; asked at his grandfather's memorial why he won't work, he answers at length, by way of a wartime crime an old schoolteacher once admitted to him.

Akutagawa 2006 (second half) · Candidate

その街の今は

Sono machi no ima wa

AITitle translated by AI:“That Town, Now”

Tomoka Shibasaki · 33 when first published

Novel · 141 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:Uta, twenty-eight, lost her office job when the company went under and now works in a café; after a disastrous group date she runs into Ryotaro, a younger man, and the two start meeting to pore over old photographs of Osaka.

Akutagawa 2006 (second half) · Candidate

植物診断室

Shokubutsu shindanshitsu

AITitle translated by AI:“The Plant Diagnosis Room”

Tomoyuki Hoshino · 41 when first published

Novella · 125 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:Hiroki, a solitary bachelor who lives for his walks and attends sessions of a healing practice known as 'plant diagnosis', is asked by a divorced mother to be in her child's life as a grown-up male friend, in no role the family system names.

Akutagawa 2005 (first half) · Candidate

さよならアメリカ

Sayonara Amerika

AITitle translated by AI:“Goodbye, America”

Naoya Higuchi · 24 when first published

Novel

Akutagawa 2005 (first half) · Candidate

この人と結婚するかも

Kono hito to kekkon suru kamo

AITitle translated by AI:“I Might Marry This One”

Taiko Nakajima · 36 when first published

Novella · 168 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:Whenever a man catches her eye, a single woman is certain she may marry him, and she is always mistaken; she swears off her hunches, only to find herself drawn at once to Ken from her English class.

Akutagawa 2005 (first half) · Candidate

無花果カレーライス

Ichijiku karēraisu

AITitle translated by AI:“Fig Curry Rice”

Takami Ito · 34 when first published

Novella · 186 pages

Akutagawa 2005 (first half) · Candidate

小鳥の母

Kotori no haha

AITitle translated by AI:“The Little Bird's Mother”

Tomohiko Kusumi · 33 when first published

Novella

Akutagawa 2005 (first half) · Candidate

マルコの夢

Maruko no yume

AITitle translated by AI:“Marco's Dream”

Yuki Kurita · 33 when first published

Novel · 132 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Kazuma, a jobless graduate, joins his sister in Paris, is put in charge of mushrooms at a celebrated restaurant with three stars, and is sent back to Japan to buy marco, a rare native fungus used in its signature dish.

Akutagawa 2005 (first half) · Candidate

恋蜘蛛

Koigumo

AITitle translated by AI:“Love Spider”

Yukiko Matsui · 38 when first published

Novella · 169 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:Chieko, who sews at a factory that makes mascot costumes, falls for 'Machine-Gun Koji', a young embroidery virtuoso, and throws herself into a love in which she means to snare him and gets snared herself.

Akutagawa 2005 (second half) · Candidate

vanity

Hiroko Shimizu · 37 when first published

Novel · 142 pages

AIAI-generated summary:After a fire takes her flat, a young office worker lodges with her boyfriend's mother in a Kobe mansion, and the two women wage a refined, ruthless war.

Akutagawa 2005 (second half) · Candidate

どうで死ぬ身の一踊り

Dōde shinu mi no hitoodori

AITitle translated by AI:“One Dance for a Body Bound to Die”

Kenta Nishimura · 38 when first published

Novel · 211 pages · Autofiction

AIAI-generated summary:Calling himself the posthumous disciple of Seizo Fujisawa, a destitute Taisho-era writer who died in misery, a man tends his grave and stakes everything on publishing his collected works, while beating his live-in girlfriend.

Akutagawa 2005 (second half) · Candidate

銀色の翼

Gin'iro no tsubasa

AITitle translated by AI:“Silver Wings”

Mitsuharu Sagawa · 40 when first published

Novel · 211 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:Felled by a tumour in his brain while studying at Kyoto University, a young man fights his way back to normal life through crushing headaches, weds a nurse from a headache sufferers' circle, and gropes toward love with a spouse who keeps her past hidden.

Akutagawa 2005 (second half) · Candidate

クワイエットルームにようこそ

Kuwaietto rūmu ni yōkoso

AITitle translated by AI:“Welcome to the Quiet Room”

Suzuki Matsuo · 43 when first published

Novel · 138 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Asuka, a freelance journalist of twenty-eight, comes to in a strange white room, the closed women's ward of a mental hospital, after swallowing too many sleeping pills.

Akutagawa 2005 (second half) · Candidate

ボギー、愛しているか

Bogī, aishite iru ka

AITitle translated by AI:“Bogie, Do You Love Me?”

Takami Ito · 34 when first published

Novella · 189 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Using cash an old friend left behind at his death, a man goes travelling to purchase grief.

Akutagawa 2004 (first half) · Candidate

勤労感謝の日

Kinrō kansha no hi

AITitle translated by AI:“Labour Thanksgiving Day”

Akiko Itoyama · 38 when first published

Novella · 108 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Kyoko, jobless, single and in her mid-thirties, lives with her mother; out of duty she agrees to a marriage meeting arranged by Mr Hasegawa, the man who once saved her life, and the suitor proves unbearable.

Akutagawa 2004 (first half) · Candidate

弔いのあと

Tomurai no ato

AITitle translated by AI:“After the Funeral”

Mitsuharu Sagawa · 39 when first published

Novella · 230 pages

Akutagawa 2004 (first half) · Candidate

好き好き大好き超愛してる。

Suki suki daisuki chō aishiteru

AITitle translated by AI:“Love You, Love You, Love You So Much”

Otaro Maijo · 31 when first published

Novel · 274 pages · Love, Speculative

AIAI-generated summary:A novelist writes about his love for Kakio, his girlfriend who has died, in sections that alternate with unrelated, science-fiction love stories, in a novel about love and about writing fiction.

Akutagawa 2004 (first half) · Candidate

オテル・モル

Oteru moru

Yuki Kurita · 32 when first published

Novel · 180 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:Kiri goes to work at the reception of an underground hotel for members that sells its guests perfect sleep and good dreams, while at home she lives with her twin sister's little girl and the girl's father, a man Kiri once loved.

Akutagawa 2004 (first half) · Candidate

日曜農園

Nichiyō nōen

AITitle translated by AI:“Sunday Farm”

Yukiko Matsui · 37 when first published

Novella · 123 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:When her father vanishes, leaving behind only a vegetable plot and a website, Moe goes to stand in his garden to search for him.

Akutagawa 2004 (second half) · Candidate

野ブタ。をプロデュース

Nobuta o purodyūsu

AITitle translated by AI:“Producing Nobuta”

Gen Shiraiwa · 21 when first published

Novel · 186 pages · Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:Shuji Kiritani, the effortlessly popular boy of his class who privately treats life as a game, takes on Nobuta, a bullied new transfer student, as his project and sets out to turn him into a star.

Akutagawa 2004 (second half) · Candidate

メロウ1983

Merō 1983

Kenji Taguchi · 43 when first published

Novel

Akutagawa 2004 (second half) · Candidate

不在の姉

Fuzai no ane

AITitle translated by AI:“The Absent Sister”

Kyoichi Imura · 37 when first published

Novella

Akutagawa 2004 (second half) · Candidate

Don't Laugh at Other People's Sex Lives

人のセックスを笑うな · Hito no sekkusu o warau na

Nao-Cola Yamazaki · 26 when first published

Novella · 80 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:A nineteen-year-old art-school student is drawn into an affair with Yuri, his thirty-nine-year-old teacher, driven by a tenderness he cannot quite call love.

Akutagawa 2004 (second half) · Candidate

漢方小説

Kanpō shōsetsu

AITitle translated by AI:“A Herbal Medicine Story”

Taiko Nakajima · 35 when first published

Novel · 138 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Minori, a thirty-one-year-old single screenwriter, is gripped by an unexplained trembling on the day she hears her ex-boyfriend is getting married, and when hospitals find nothing wrong she ends up at a clinic of traditional Chinese medicine.

Akutagawa 2004 (second half) · Candidate

目をとじるまでの短かい間

Me o tojiru made no mijikai aida

AITitle translated by AI:“The Short While Before I Close My Eyes”

Tatsuaki Ishiguro · 43 when first published

Novella · 305 pages

Akutagawa 2003 (first half) · Candidate

イッツ・オンリー・トーク

Ittsu onrī tōku

Akiko Itoyama · 37 when first published

Novella · 181 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Dumped on the morning of her move, a woman settles in Kamata, Tokyo, where her suicidal cousin moves in and her companions include a depressed yakuza, a groper she met online and an old classmate standing for election.

Akutagawa 2003 (first half) · Candidate

遮光

Shakō

AITitle translated by AI:“Shutting Out the Light”

Fuminori Nakamura · 26 when first published

Novel · 157 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:A young man conceals from everyone that his girlfriend Miki was killed in an accident, goes on describing how happy she is, and keeps by him a strange jar sealed in black plastic.

Akutagawa 2003 (first half) · Candidate

夏休み

Natsuyasumi

AITitle translated by AI:“Summer Vacation”

Ko Nakamura · 34 when first published

Novel · 203 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:When his friend Yoshida runs away from home for a few days, two married couples face a crisis, and guided by letters and telegrams from their wives, the narrator and Yoshida set out together on a strange summer journey.

Akutagawa 2003 (first half) · Candidate

お縫い子テルミー

Onuiko Terumī

AITitle translated by AI:“Terumi the Seamstress”

Yuki Kurita · 31 when first published

Novella · 179 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:Terumi quit her home island at fifteen for Tokyo's Kabukicho and now makes her living as a roving seamstress, moving into clients' homes to sew their clothes, when she falls for Shinai, a singer who performs in women's dress.

Akutagawa 2003 (second half) · Candidate

海の仙人

Umi no sennin

AITitle translated by AI:“The Hermit of the Sea”

Akiko Itoyama · 37 when first published

Novel · 154 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:After a lottery win, Kono quits his job and lives quietly by the blue sea at Tsuruga, until a useless god calling himself Fantasy turns up and asks to lodge with him.

Akutagawa 2003 (second half) · Candidate

ぐるぐるまわるすべり台

Guruguru mawaru suberidai

AITitle translated by AI:“The Spiral Slide”

Ko Nakamura · 34 when first published

Novella · 185 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Having dropped out of university, a young man who teaches at a cram school advertises for band members under the name of one of his pupils, and in Nakahama, the would-be singer, he recognises a double of himself.

Akutagawa 2003 (second half) · Candidate

生まれる森

Umareru mori

AITitle translated by AI:“The Forest Being Born”

Rio Shimamoto · 20 when first published

Novel · 165 pages · Love, Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:Badly hurt by a love affair, a young woman borrows a university friend's flat for the summer holidays, and a reunion with her high-school friend Kiku-chan, and with Kiku's father and brothers, slowly begins to heal her.

Akutagawa 2002 (first half) · Candidate

西日の町

Nishibi no machi

AITitle translated by AI:“Town of the Setting Sun”

Kazumi Yumoto · 43 when first published

Novella · 133 pages · Family, Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:In a Kitakyushu town in the mid-1960s, ten-year-old Kazushi and his young mother are joined by Tekojii, his grandfather, a man who has lived without rules and who now crouches silently in a corner of their room, full of secrets.

Akutagawa 2002 (first half) · Candidate

縮んだ愛

Chijinda ai

AITitle translated by AI:“Shrunken Love”

Mitsuharu Sagawa · 37 when first published

Novel · 180 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Okada, long-serving teacher of a special-needs class, is pursued by Makino, an ex-pupil of the school who once hit an autistic boy Okada taught, and finds himself sharing drinks with him every week.

Akutagawa 2002 (first half) · Candidate

イカロスの森

Ikarosu no mori

AITitle translated by AI:“The Forest of Icarus”

So Kurokawa · 41 when first published

Novel · 189 pages

AIAI-generated summary:A man looks back on a journey of his teens and on the people he briefly met and lost in a remote town of northern Sakhalin, a place of harsh nature where memory seems to have been left behind.

Akutagawa 2002 (first half) · Candidate

砂の惑星

Suna no wakusei

AITitle translated by AI:“Planet of Sand”

Tomoyuki Hoshino · 37 when first published

Novella · 228 pages

Akutagawa 2002 (first half) · Candidate

彼女のピクニック宣言

Kanojo no pikunikku sengen

AITitle translated by AI:“Her Picnic Declaration”

Yuri Norizuki · 39 when first published

Novella · 211 pages

Akutagawa 2002 (second half) · Candidate

The Gun

銃 · Jū

Fuminori Nakamura · 25 when first published

Novel · 198 pages · Crime

AIAI-generated summary:On a rain-soaked riverbank, university student Nishikawa comes upon a dead man with a pistol lying beside him, and as he grows fascinated by the gun's beauty he becomes convinced that he will one day fire it.

Akutagawa 2002 (second half) · Candidate

水死人の帰還

Suishinin no kikan

AITitle translated by AI:“The Return of the Drowned”

Masatsugu Ono · 32 when first published

Novel · 285 pages

Akutagawa 2002 (second half) · Candidate

リトル・バイ・リトル

Ritoru bai ritoru

Rio Shimamoto · 19 when first published

Novel · 155 pages · Family, Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:Out of high school and working part-time, Fumi lives quietly with two others, her mother and a much younger sister by another father, in a household where a tangled family history now and then casts a shadow.

Akutagawa 2002 (second half) · Candidate

イエロー

Ierō

Yukiko Matsui · 35 when first published

Novella · 166 pages

AIAI-generated summary:Yukie sells cosmetics at a counter in a station mall, where a run of strange customers come to see her.

Akutagawa 2002 (second half) · Candidate

鏡の森

Kagami no mori

AITitle translated by AI:“The Forest of Mirrors”

Yurie Wada · 44 when first published

Novella · 246 pages

Akutagawa 2001 (first half) · Candidate

処方箋

Shohōsen

AITitle translated by AI:“Prescription”

Hiroko Shimizu · 33 when first published

Novel · 130 pages

Akutagawa 2001 (first half) · Candidate

Nipponia Nippon

ニッポニアニッポン · Nipponia nippon

Kazushige Abe · 33 when first published

Novel · 160 pages

AIAI-generated summary:A seventeen-year-old shut-in, who feels a kinship with the endangered crested ibis because its character appears in his surname, arms himself with the internet and leaves his room with a plan of revolt centred on the bird.

Akutagawa 2001 (first half) · Candidate

ジャムの空壜

Jamu no akibin

AITitle translated by AI:“The Empty Jam Jar”

Mitsuharu Sagawa · 36 when first published

Novel · 158 pages

Akutagawa 2001 (first half) · Candidate

サイドカーに犬

Saidokā ni inu

AITitle translated by AI:“A Dog in the Sidecar”

Yu Nagashima · 29 when first published

Novella · 160 pages · Family, Coming of age

AIAI-generated summary:After her mother walks out, ten-year-old Kaoru suddenly finds Yoko, her father's bold and stylish girlfriend, moving into the house, and the two of them build a quiet, unexpected friendship.

Akutagawa 2001 (first half) · Candidate

光への供物

Hikari e no kumotsu

AITitle translated by AI:“An Offering to the Light”

Yurie Wada · 43 when first published

Novella · 246 pages

Akutagawa 2001 (second half) · Candidate

グラウンド

Guraundo

Hiroki Suzuki

Novel

Akutagawa 2001 (second half) · Candidate

ゆううつな苺

Yūutsu na ichigo

AITitle translated by AI:“Melancholy Strawberry”

Tamaki Daido · 35 when first published

Novella · 190 pages

Akutagawa 2001 (second half) · Candidate

真夜中の方へ

Mayonaka no hō e

AITitle translated by AI:“Toward Midnight”

Tatsuaki Ishiguro · 40 when first published

Novella

Akutagawa 2001 (second half) · Candidate

南へ下る道

Minami e kudaru michi

AITitle translated by AI:“The Road Down South”

Yoshihisa Okazaki · 33 when first published

Novel · 245 pages

Akutagawa 2001 (second half) · Candidate

六フィート下から

Roku fīto shita kara

AITitle translated by AI:“From Six Feet Under”

Yuri Norizuki · 38 when first published

Novella · 211 pages

Akutagawa 2000 (first half) · Candidate

裸

Hadaka

AITitle translated by AI:“Naked”

Tamaki Daido · 34 when first published

Novella · 190 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:A nineteen-year-old works as a hostess in a Hakata bar alongside her gaunt cousin and her aunt, the woman who took her father from her mother, in a family of three generations of women propping one another up by the Naka River.

Akutagawa 2000 (first half) · Candidate

マルコ・ポーロと私

Maruko Pōro to watakushi

AITitle translated by AI:“Marco Polo and I”

Tomohiko Kusumi · 28 when first published

Novel · 174 pages · Historical

AIAI-generated summary:In a Genoa prison in 1298, a cellmate records Marco Polo's tales of the East, which slowly turn into a different story under his pen.

Akutagawa 2000 (first half) · Candidate

猫の喪中

Neko no mochū

AITitle translated by AI:“Mourning the Cat”

Yojiro Sato · 51 when first published

Novella · 194 pages

AIAI-generated summary:A man buries the cat he kept for fifteen years with full honours, though he never adored it, and is left facing his own age and an indifferent world.

Akutagawa 2000 (first half) · Candidate

楽天屋

Rakuten'ya

AITitle translated by AI:“The Optimist”

Yoshihisa Okazaki · 32 when first published

Novel · 265 pages

AIAI-generated summary:A man past thirty who has never cut the cord drifts through life without working, wandering in the company of the unpredictable women he takes up with and longing to be anywhere but here.

Akutagawa 2000 (second half) · Candidate

熱帯魚

Nettaigyo

AITitle translated by AI:“Tropical Fish”

Shuichi Yoshida · 32 when first published

Novel · 221 pages · Love

AIAI-generated summary:Daisuke, a carpenter, moves in with a beautiful single mother and hopes to marry her, but his withdrawn stepbrother, who spends his days watching tropical fish, joins the household, and a gap starts to open between the couple.

Akutagawa 2000 (second half) · Candidate

もどろき

Modoroki

So Kurokawa · 39 when first published

Novel · 160 pages · Family

AIAI-generated summary:Years after his father's suicide outside the family rice shop in Kyoto, a man follows the memories of three generations, his grandfather's, his father's and his own, around a shrine called Modoroki near the Shiga border.

Akutagawa 2000 (second half) · Candidate

水の舳先

Mizu no hesaki

AITitle translated by AI:“The Prow of the Water”

Sokyu Genyu · 44 when first published

Novel · 144 pages

AIAI-generated summary:At a hot-spring retreat where the gravely ill gather for its healing spring, a Zen monk teaches calligraphy and counsels the guests, among them a cheerful but lonely Christian woman with terminal cancer.

Akutagawa 2000 (second half) · Candidate

スッポン

Suppon

AITitle translated by AI:“Snapping Turtle”

Tamaki Daido · 34 when first published

Novella · 190 pages