Read wholesome Japanese novels

A few months ago, Rachel Coldicutt posted on Bluesky about switching reading genres:

In February this year, I decided to stop doomscrolling the news and start reading romance novels instead.

I recognise the sentiment, but haven’t yet discovered romance authors whose books I want to read. However, I’ve read a handful of translations of short contemporary Japanese novels, during the last few years. Some of them fill the same the same need.

Three genres

Excluding the Japanese novels I’ve read that feature murder, and other unpleasantness, seems to leave three genres:

1. bookshops
2. libraries
3. cats.

These elements feature in wholesome uplifting stories about characters whose timely entry into one of these genres gave them just what they needed.

Two bookshops & a library

The Bookshop Woman features a woman who starts off working in a bookshop, and becomes someone who recommends books to strangers. Her encounters with unusual people gradually give way to her own story arc. And despite some romance, the men she meets make less of an impression than the act of recommending books for them to read.

Days at the Morisaki Bookshop starts with more tension, when a young woman who doesn’t read at all finds herself not just living in a bookshop, but living in Tokyo’s Jimbōchō Book Town. Working in the bookshos, she inevitably discovers many books and several friends (and also a little romance), while she rebuilds her life but, despite the cover art, no cat.

What you are looking for is in the library features five short stories, each with a different protagonist, which have a small public library in common. In each story, the neuro-spicy librarian’s book recommendations include an unexpected title that enables the protagonist to take a step forward with their life.

Three cats

The Guest Cat features a cat who adopts two humans – a couple just living their lives – and moves in with them. Even more than in the other books, not much actually happens at first: the story’s wholesomeness seems to have less need for a plot. But then life happens, and somehow having the cat around seems to have made a difference.

The Travelling Cat Chronicles has many similarities to The Guest Cat, but in a road-trip setting. This book’s cat takes on the role of gentle narrator; far more wholesome and philosophical, I suspect, than real-world cats’ inner lives. In any case, as the plot unfolds, the story becomes more about humanity than cats. And if you read it, expect tears.

We’ll Prescribe You a Cat doesn’t really belong on this list: it sits in an unread-books pile, and I haven’t read it yet. However, the premise of a series of characters, and a clinic that prescribes cats to treat human emotional pain, sounds like it fits a pattern. I don’t know if the clinic has a bookshop or library, though.

Doom free entertainment

The common thread through these novels avoids not only evil and crime, but also civilisation-level doom. Instead, ordinary human lives play out in a society that provides a neutral backdrop, rather than dramatic plot devices. And sometimes, they even include a little romance.