Tokyo Ueno Station

Kazu is dead. Born in Fukushima in 1933, the same year as the Emperor, his life is tied by a series of coincidences to the Imperial family and has been shaped at every turn by modern Japanese history. But his life story is also marked by bad luck, and now, in death, he is unable to rest easily, haunting the park near Ueno Station. It is here that Kazu's life in Tokyo began and ended, having arrived there to work a labourer in the run up to the 1964 Tokyo Olympics before ending his days living in the vast homeless 'villages' in the park, traumatised by the destruction of the 2011 tsunami and enraged by the announcement of the 2020 Olympics. As a work of post-tsunami literature and a protest against the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, this novel is of utmost importance, a powerful rebuke to the Imperial system and a sensitive depiction of the lives of Japan's most vulnerable people.

Winner of TA First Translation Prize 2019 Short-listed for National Book Award 2020

An elliptical examination of the divisions between rich and poor in contemporary Japan The Guardian

A Japanese author of Korean descent, Yu Miri is the winner of Japan's most prestigious literary prize, the Akutagawa, and several of her novels have been bestsellers. Writing openly about the discrimination received by her ethnic Korean community has also meant criticism and even death threats from ultra-conservative Japanese. After the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, she relocated to Fukushima where she currently hosts a radio show interviewing survivors. Born in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in Kentucky, Morgan Giles is a literary translator based in Tokyo. She graduated from Indiana University with a BA in Japanese Language and Linguistics in 2009 before moving to London. Her translation of the Naocola Yamazaki short story "Dad I Love You" appeared in The Book of Tokyo (Comma Press).

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