The Japanese crime wave sweeping Britain

Thirty years ago, if you asked someone British to name their favorite Japanese author, most people would say Haruki Murakami. One of Japan’s best-known postwar novelists, he has been divisive at home but lauded around the world for works like Norwegian Wood (1987) and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1995), which blend history, nostalgia and magical realism. If you asked that same person for their second favorite Japanese author, you’d probably get Banana Yoshimoto or — just as likely — a blank stare. Today, however, nearly half of the UK’s top-40 translated fiction titles come from Japan. The most popular of them, Asako Yuzuki’s Butter, sold more copies in the UK — exceeding 400,000 — than it had done back home, where it was nevertheless still a success. Alongside the cozy and the comfortable