In the event you’ve visited a bookstore not too long ago, chances are high you’ll have seen shows full of therapeutic fiction titles comparable to Michiko Aoyama’s What You Are Trying For Is within the Library (2023, US) and Hwang Bo-reum’s Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop (2022, US). These are slim volumes with eye-catching covers that evoke the colorful symmetry of Chris Ware and Wes Anderson. These books typically entice with their understated magic realism, typically beguile with their tales of quitting the rat race to get pleasure from a standard pastime, and typically infuriate with their platitudinous “reside, chortle, love” responses to trauma and abuse.
No matter your tackle these books, it’s plain that 2024 was the yr that “therapeutic fiction” from Japan and South Korea was in all places in English-speaking international locations, and 2025 guarantees to proceed that development, with quite a few titles slated for launch this yr. Though it could look like a brand new development, the roots of therapeutic fiction attain again no less than 30 years to a collection of unsettling occasions in Japan. The style took off within the English-speaking world with the COVID-19 lockdowns, and it has been rising ever since, particularly amongst English audio system in search of an exoticized escape from an period of declining Anglo-American affect.
Iyashikei: Japanese Therapeutic Fiction
Japanese manga and anime storytellers created the iyashikei or “therapeutic sort” style within the Seventies when Japan was on the high of its sport, so to talk. It had one of many strongest economies on the planet, a celebrated schooling system that was supposed to arrange graduates for wonderful, high-quality jobs guaranteeing lifetime employment, and an electronics and car trade envied the world over. By 1989, the actual property in Tokyo alone was imagined to have been well worth the value of all the actual property in the USA mixed.
Banana Yoshimoto printed Kitchen in Japan within the late Nineteen Eighties; it was translated into English and printed in 1993. The novel acquired vital acclaim in each Japanese and English. The story facilities round a younger lady mourning the dying of her grandmother. Kitchen isn’t actually prototypical therapeutic fiction—Banana Yoshimoto’s work is extra literary than the standard therapeutic fiction novel—however it’s one thing like a progenitor of the style in prose kind.
The Japanese “bubble” burst by the tip of 1989. Actual property costs plummeted. Jobs disappeared. By the mid-Nineties, college students within the “Misplaced Technology” had been graduating into what got here to be often known as the “Employment Ice Age” with nearly no skilled prospects. Then, on 17 January 1995, the Nice Hanshin Earthquake killed greater than 5,000 folks in and across the metropolis of Kobe. A bit of greater than two months later, the brand new spiritual motion Aum Shinrikyo carried out a terrorist assault on the Tokyo Underground utilizing the chemical weapon sarin. The assault killed 14 folks and injured greater than 1,000 others.
The financial downturn, earthquake, and terrorist assaults mixed despatched many individuals in Japan right into a type of psychological spiral. Many Japanese works of literary fiction are responses to the Japan of the mid-’90s, from Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 (2011, US) and to Keiichiro Hirano’s not too long ago translated Akutagawa-winner Eclipse (2024, US). Different fictional responses included manga, anime, and lightweight fiction within the sekaikei style—fiction geared toward younger males that mixed apocalyptic storytelling and faculty romance.
One of many extra enduring legacies of this Japanese id disaster, nevertheless, is the fast progress of therapeutic fiction. Japan has by no means actually recovered its pre-1989 optimism, and therapeutic fiction has remained a preferred style for 3 many years.
Consultant therapeutic fiction titles embody The Miracles of the Namiya Basic Retailer by in style thriller author Keigo Higashino, which was printed in 2012 and translated into English in 2019. Within the novel, three wayward youths discover newfound hope after a mysterious letter is dropped by the deserted retailer’s mail slot.
Earlier than the Espresso Will get Chilly, by Toshikazu Kawaguchi, was printed in Japan in 2015 and in English in 2017. Patrons of a espresso store can time journey to the previous or the longer term, however just for the size of time it takes a cup of espresso to chill. Immediately, six books from the collection can be found in Japanese, whereas 5 have been translated into English.
Felines in Therapeutic Fiction
Cats have change into an iconic characteristic of Japanese therapeutic fiction in English. They’re so iconic that they usually characteristic on the covers of therapeutic fiction titles that don’t embody cats in any respect, together with Earlier than the Espresso Will get Chilly, Sanaka Hiiragi’s The Lantern of Misplaced Recollections (2024, US), and What You Are Trying For Is within the Library. The affiliation between cats and iyashikei wasn’t created by English-language publishers, and there are definitely Japanese books that exploit the affiliation by dropping cats into books which might be barely part of the story in any respect, comparable to Hiashi Kashiwai’s The Kamogawa Meals Detectives (2024, US).
There’s a lengthy historical past of cat fiction in Japan, stretching again no less than so far as the looks of a cat in Murisaki Shikibu’s Tenth-century traditional The Story of Genji, now extensively thought to be one of many best works of Japanese literature. Natsume Soseki, one of the well-known fashionable Japanese novelists, launched a cat who narrated his personal story within the in style serial novel, I Am a Cat. “Cat books” definitely are extensively learn in Japan, the place they overtook “canine books” in recognition within the early 2000s. Roughly 5,400 cat books had been printed in Japan between 2007 and 2017.
Nonetheless, the variety of cat books showing in English over the previous couple of years creates a deceptive image of the publishing scene in Japan, not solely within the therapeutic fiction style but additionally in fiction typically. They signify the next share of Japanese fiction in English than they do of Japanese fiction in Japan. It isn’t simply that these cat books seem in English; additionally it is how they’re marketed and the eagerness with which they’re consumed. Of 60 or so Japanese fiction translations into English final yr, solely eight featured cats within the plot; 10 featured cats on the duvet. But these books—together with The Kamogawa Meals Detectives and its sequel—had been among the many most generally learn and mentioned books in translation of the yr.
Korean Therapeutic Fiction
It might seem that Korean therapeutic fiction has loved nice success due to iyashikei in Japan. In any case, The Dallergut Dream Division Retailer by Lee Mi-Ye created a sensation when it was printed in Korean in 2020, lengthy after the post-1995 progress in the identical type of Japanese tales. The origins of Japanese and Korean therapeutic fiction are intertwined, however the current wave of Korean therapeutic fiction demonstrates its distinctive fusion with European and American cultures.
The German creator Hermann Hesse’s brief novel Demian (1919) isn’t one in all his better-known books, particularly within the English-speaking world. Nonetheless, it has loved a long-standing recognition in South Korea, the place it has discovered its means onto college literature syllabi. Though not a therapeutic novel, it has a formalized construction through which Demian meets a succession of individuals with whom he has lengthy conversations, and every influences his life in some profound means.
This narrative blueprint is now mirrored within the construction of the Korean therapeutic novel, which frequently flips it: a protagonist with magical powers or distinctive perception meets a collection of individuals and transforms their lives one after the other. The Okay-Pop star RM of BTS really helpful Demian to his followers, taking pictures it onto bestseller lists in Korea in 2016.
RM has additionally really helpful Into the Magic Store by James R. Doty (2016), a non-fiction e book with parts of prototypical therapeutic fiction. On this e book, Doty, an American neurosurgeon, imparts his prolonged mindfulness classes by tales of a stage magician’s store he visited as a baby. Doty’s magic store calls to thoughts the store-centered novels that seem so often amongst translated Korean therapeutic fiction, together with not solely The Dallergut Dream Division Retailer and Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop, but additionally Yun Jung-eun’s Marigold Thoughts Laundry (2024, US) and You Younger-gwang’s The Rainfall Market (2025, US).
Therapeutic Fiction’s Shared Feelings
The recognition of Japanese and Korean therapeutic fiction originates from totally different circumstances, however the novels usually share frequent themes and motifs. For instance, many therapeutic fiction novels from each international locations reveal the home viewers’s yearning for cozy or nostalgic settings. The Forties (Japan) and the Nineteen Fifties (Korea) noticed a colossal variety of buildings razed to the bottom throughout wartime. Buildings in each international locations don’t carry a lot worth themselves; the worth lies within the land they stand on. Significantly in cities, the locations the place younger folks’s dad and mom and grandparents grew up have usually lengthy been redeveloped. Youthful folks are inclined to reside alone in small, one-room residences, in order that they congregate in Starbucks and its many home rivals to socialize.
The uncanny sense of historical past—the brand new constructed on high of the outdated—within the main cities of each Japan and South Korea often seems in Japanese and South Korean books, each in literary fiction and in style fiction. So does the necessity for welcoming areas to collect.
Therapeutic fiction, specifically, units tales in quaint bookstores just like the Hynam-Dong Bookshop or the Morisaki Bookshop, as seen in Satoshi Yagisawa’s Days on the Morisaki Bookshop (2023, US), in addition to in cafes. These are locations with character and thriller, quite than glossy, crowded, and interchangeable city areas. In Japan, some therapeutic fiction titles set within the countryside characteristic younger characters returning to villages which were lengthy deserted by their friends, comparable to in Shion Miura’s The Straightforward Life in Kamusari (2009, US).
The character of Japanese and Korean publishing industries has seemingly formed their shared episodic constructions—the type of narrative construction shared by Hesse’s Demian and plenty of works of therapeutic fiction the place, say, every chapter focuses on a special character. In Japan, novels usually seem serially, with every installment printed over time in a preferred journal or newspaper. For instance, The Kamogawa Meals Detectives initially appeared in Japan as a collection of brief tales.
In Korea, writers use running a blog platforms comparable to Kakao Brunch to publish their work in installments. Writers like Hwang Bo-reum (Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop) use Kakao Brunch to collect an viewers of readers that they’ll then present to a extra conventional publishing home. Although the authors should be permitted, as soon as they’re permitted, they’ve some management over their content material and schedule.
The Therapeutic Fiction Style Can Be Deceptive
Japanese and Korean therapeutic fiction get pleasure from appreciable home recognition; nevertheless, it has now change into a global phenomenon, with a considerable English-language marketplace for these novels. Therapeutic fiction is now large enterprise. It may be cheering to see new authors utilizing new platforms to succeed in new audiences, however these books might supply a problematic escape. Within the fingers of some English-language publishers, for instance, the escape could also be tinged with an exoticism that conflates and represents the cultures of Japan and South Korea as indistinguishable websites of less complicated pleasures and homespun knowledge.
Each Japanese and Korean therapeutic fiction usually painting traumatized protagonists, maybe victims of familial abuse, of extramarital affairs, or on the point of suicide resulting from monetary strain or societal expectations. In some ways, these open shows of vulnerability function an important counterbalance to the glamorized pictures of Japan and Korea introduced in in style music and TV dramas. These narratives reveal the emotional penalties of a hyper-competitive and hierarchical society.
On the one hand, although, narratives can typically be an unreflective “trauma dump”. Maybe it’s helpful and even comforting for worldwide readers to see this trauma occurring in an exotic-seeming location quite than worryingly near residence.
Some works of therapeutic fiction from Japan evoke Japan’s well-known “ganbaru” perspective, both implicitly or explicitly. “Ganbaru” is a Japanese verb which means “to persevere” or “to hold on” or “to do one’s finest”. (It might be extra acquainted to English-language anime viewers within the crucial kind, “Ganbatte!”, which comes up usually when characters encourage each other.)
Whereas there are constructive issues to be stated for a can-do perspective, Japan’s “tradition of ganbaru” has come below rising hearth, particularly because the Triple Disasters of March 2011, when the folks of the devastated Tohoku area had been blithely inspired to persevere within the face of mass devastation. Some issues can’t be overcome by willpower alone, and there are circumstances too far exterior of an individual’s management to inform them to maintain shifting ahead.
Whereas an in any other case charming e book, Miru’s The Straightforward Life in Kamusari depicts a protagonist who’s pressured to take a troublesome forestry job after which actively prevented from quitting. His co-workers even steal his cellphone and chase him down on a bike when he makes an attempt to return to Tokyo!
Korean therapeutic fiction takes multiple strategy to therapeutic. Yeon Somin’s The Therapeutic Season of Pottery (2024, US), for instance, exhibits a burned-out TV producer slowly regaining confidence by a inventive pastime and a supportive community. Different Korean therapeutic novels can take a extra fantastical strategy.
A few of these extra magically-tinged therapeutic novels—notably Jung-eun’s’ The Marigold Thoughts Laundry and Younger-gwang’s The Rainfall Market current the therapeutic course of as magical, a washing away of dangerous reminiscences quite than confronting, reframing, and mastering one’s trauma. The foundation causes of such issues are not often explored, and social change is just not a part of the vocabulary of Korean therapeutic fiction. It will likely be fascinating to see if the notion of a magical washing away of issues retains its enchantment within the wake of the political upheaval surrounding President Yoon Suk-yeol’s current try to instigate martial regulation and the next political turmoil.
It’s, in fact, essential to notice that English language “cozy fiction” could be equally banal or blind to the problematic conditions through which characters discover themselves. Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library (2020), for instance, is a couple of library that permits readers to reside a life the place they didn’t make a specific mistake. “Possibly there was no good life for her, however someplace, absolutely, there was a life price residing,” the protagonist concludes after a number of iterations of mistake-free residing. Many readers have famous that the story implies the protagonist can deal with her melancholy with the ability of constructive pondering.
East Asia Therapeutic Fiction That Isn’t
For aficionados of translated fiction from East Asia, the therapeutic fiction development has been one thing of a blended blessing. On the one hand, it has most positively contributed to a growth in translated fiction, first from Japan after which from Korea. In 2021, simply over 20 translated fiction titles from Japan debuted in English; in 2024, the quantity elevated to almost 60. Whereas a few of these titles are thought of therapeutic fiction, the elevated curiosity on this style has been a part of a broader development in Japanese fiction.
The Akutagawa Prize is one in all Japan’s high literary accolades. The yr 2021 noticed the interpretation of two new Akutagawa Prize winners, and 2024 noticed the interpretation of 4 new Akutagawa Prize winners: Qudan Rie for Tokyo Sympathy Tower, Matsunaga Okay. Sanzō for Professional Route Mountain Climbing, and Asahina Aki for The Forty-Ninth Day of the Salamander, in addition to reprints of three further works.
However, therapeutic fiction has set sure expectations amongst English-language readers, particularly those that haven’t explored Japanese or Korean fiction past the style’s boundaries. It isn’t unusual to learn critiques that describe the “light cuteness” of Japanese fiction or how Korean writers can create “an elusive technicolor dream”. Readers come to imagine that the attributes of therapeutic fiction are the attributes of all Japanese and Korean fiction. It takes a while and studying breadth to understand that Japanese and Korean literature—like all literatures—are wealthy and various.
When publishers start to make nationality or geography right into a style, e.g., “East Asian consolation fiction”, they conflate Japanese and Korean fiction solely, as if variations between these international locations’ cultures don’t exist. For international locations with a relationship as fraught as that between Japan and Korea, the strain over variations is particularly problematic. There might also be a level of exploitation by English-language publishers making an attempt to capitalize on a development they’ve helped create, whereas ignoring or even perhaps being unaware of the circumstances that led to this style’s emergence in Japan and South Korea within the first place.
Now, publishers appear to bundle books by authors who aren’t Japanese or Korean to look as a part of the “East Asian therapeutic fiction growth”. They appear to be encouraging readers to miss points just like the tradition through which a e book was written altogether. Certainly, encountering one other tradition is among the best pleasures of studying fiction in translation.
Notably, nearly the entire titles that high Goodreads’ listing of “Therapeutic Fiction Books” are both translated from Japanese or Korean, or designed to look as if they’re translated from both Japanese or Korean. For instance, English creator Nick Bradley’s 4 Seasons in Japan (2023) is just not solely set in Japan, however the cowl additionally evokes the Japanese flag and contains each cherry blossoms and the requisite cat. Matt Haig’s The Midnight Library, the comfortable sci-fi novel A Psalm for the Wild-Constructed (2021) by American Becky Chambers, and French creator Stéphane Garnier’s non-fiction e book The right way to Assume Like a Cat (2017) are the one exceptions to this deception.
When You’re in Want of Actual Therapeutic (Fiction)
Whether or not you like them, hate them, or wish to be taught extra, we go away you with a listing of the numerous works of therapeutic fiction from Japan and South Korea to look out for in 2025:
From Japanese:
- Greatest Needs from the Full Moon Espresso Store by Mai Mochizuki is a follow-up on The Full Moon Espresso Store, a couple of mysterious espresso store whose patrons are solely invited after they present kindness to a specific cat. The story revolves round Satomi, her sister-in-law, and her intern, all of whom battle to come back to phrases with their previous and current struggles, whereas concurrently looking for contentment of their lives. It will likely be printed in October.
- The Blanket Cats by Kiyoshi Shigematsu debuted within the UK final yr and got here out in North America in February. This story facilities on seven cats obtainable for short-term adoption. Every cat comes with a particular blanket, and whereas their magic to assist people is just not outlined, it’s assured.
- The Cat Who Saved the Library by Sosuke Natsukawa is a follow-up to The Cat Who Saved Books. It facilities round 13-year-old Nanami and her discovery that her favourite books are disappearing from the general public library. She finds help in probably the most unlikely of characters: a speaking tabby cat named Tiger. The Cat Who Saved the Library comes out this spring.
- The Comfort Retailer by the Sea by Sonoko Machida was launched within the UK earlier this yr and shall be published in North America in July. It takes place in a Kyushu comfort retailer referred to as Tenderness. The shop dishes out recommendation to workers and prospects, providing distinctive recipes for a satisfying life.
- The Curious Kitten on the Chibineko Kitchen by Yuta Takahashi is already out within the UK as The Chibineko Kitchen. (“Chibineko” is Japanese for “small cat”.) The North America version got here out in February. The story facilities on Kotoko, a younger lady who discovers a restaurant in a seaside city close to Tokyo that serves meals in remembrance of a departed liked one, promising a reunion with them.
- The Calico Cat on the Chibineko Kitchen by Yuta Takahashi is a follow-up to The Curious Kitten on the Chibineko Kitchen. It revolves round Nagi Hayakawa and her dilemma: ought to she marry her chronically ailing boyfriend, or spare him additional heartbreak? Her mom died years in the past, and he or she has nobody to show to for recommendation till she visits the Chibineko Kitchen. The novel comes out this summer time.
- The Therapeutic Hippo of Hinode Park by Michiko Aoyama includes a hippo trip at an amusement park that gives therapeutic from wounds and illnesses. It comes out later this yr.
- The right way to Maintain Somebody in Your Coronary heart by Mizuki Tsujimura is the companion to Misplaced Souls Meet Beneath a Full Moon. Within the story, Ayumi struggles to steadiness his potential to attach the grief-stricken with the useless, all whereas making an attempt to navigate his personal life within the residing world. Solely the UK launch has been introduced to this point; it’s deliberate for the summer time.
- Misplaced Souls Meet Beneath a Full Moon by Mizuki Tsujimura is a companion to The right way to Maintain Somebody in Your Coronary heart. On this story, Ayumi reunites folks with the afterworld below a full moon. It debuts within the UK this spring and in North America this fall.
- The Passengers on the Hankyu Line by Hiro Arikawa is about 5 characters who trip the Hankyu commuter practice and encounter emotional dilemmas that shall be resolved six months later. The novel comes out this summer time.
From Korean:
- The Therapeutic Season of Pottery by Yeon Somin is a couple of burnt-out workplace employee who quits her job and finds pleasure in a brand new pastime. This e book got here out in North America final fall and within the UK on the finish of January.
- The Rainfall Market by You Yeong-Gwang facilities round an deserted home exterior Rainbow City. If folks mail letters to the home describing their issues, they’re eligible to obtain a ticket to the Rainfall Market and the possibility to show their lives round. The novel debuted within the UK final fall and in North America this February.
- The Second Probability Comfort Retailer by Kim Ho-Yeon tells the story of a retired trainer who owns a comfort retailer and takes in a homeless man, thereby reworking the neighborhood. The novel comes out this summer time.
- The Wizard’s Bakery by Gu Byeong-Mo is a magical coming-of-age story about charmed sweets that include a promise of escaping one’s issues. Anticipated in North America and the UK this summer time.
- Yeonnam-Dong’s Smiley Laundromat by Kim Jiyun includes a pocket book at a comfy laundromat. When patrons pen their issues within the pocket book, they obtain options from different patrons who additionally learn the pocket book. This e book got here out within the UK final fall and in North America in January.
