Aoko Matsuda

‘‘Let’s become monsters together,’ she said, looking straight into my eyes.’

Mitsuyo Kakuta

‘I was gazing into my empty bowl and realizing how little time it takes to eat when you’re not carrying on a conversation.’

Yoko Ogawa

Keiichiro Hirano

‘It was during this period that I got to know K, one of the local mailmen.’

Yuten Sawanishi

‘The vagina was the first part of her mother’s body that turned to sugar.’

Sayaka Murata

‘Frequency of sex since marriage: zero.’ Sayaka Murata on a sexless marriage and the ‘Clean Breeder’ technique for pleasureless reproduction.

Issue 127

Toshiki Okada

‘If I had known she were heading for Tokyo then, and if I had known she thought of Tokyo as a city of zombies, I would have wanted to know, of course, whether she saw me that way, too.’

Issue 127

David Mitchell

‘But what if he answers in Martian? I’ll die.’

Issue 127

Kyoko Nakajima

It was something Takashi remembered but Masaru had forgotten.

Tao Lin

‘On the F train to Manhattan I emailed a friend in the UK. I said I couldn’t write my essay about Japan.’

Issue 127

Hiroko Oyamada

‘The breeze smelled of many things: autumn and earth, the green of the countryside, face powder and old age.’

Issue 127

Andrés Felipe Solano

‘A perfect impostor.’

Issue 127

David Peace

‘At last, at last. His first steps, on Chinese soil.’

Issue 127

Yukiko Motoya

‘I once lived with a whole lot of dogs.’