8 Japan-Inspired Fantasy Books by Non-Japanese writers who Mostly Get It Right

Guest Post by K. Bird Lincoln

Tell me the truth. When you think of “Japanese Fantasy” you either picture some very naughty websites or Anime/Manga like Totoro, Log Horizon or Deathnote.

I’m here to tell you that Japanese authors writing fantasy is much more than naughty lingerie and characters with big eyes. (Haruki Murakami, anyone? But that’s a different article.) This article is about Japan-related fantasy written by non-Japanese. I know, I know, that’s also an entirely different can of cultural-appropriation worms. (Check out author Jim Hines’ summary of some of the most interesting author opinions on diversity out there).

Trust me, though, while these books sometimes venture into slightly over-used tropes, they all offer something to fantasy lovers looking to get themselves out of the Pseudo-European Medieval quagmire as written by English-speaking authors.

Straight-up Adventure in alternate Shogun-era Japan with ninjas: Tales of the Otori Book One: Across the Nightingale Floor by Lian Hearn
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The youth Takeo has been brought up in a remote mountain village among the Hidden, a reclusive and spiritual people who have taught him only the ways of peace. But unbeknownst to him, his father was a celebrated assassin and a member of the Tribe, an ancient network of families with extraordinary, preternatural skills. When Takeo's village is pillaged, he is rescued and adopted by the mysterious Lord Otori Shigeru. Under the tutelage of Shigeru, he learns that he too possesses the skills of the Tribe. Armed with this knowledge, he embarks on a journey that will lead him across the famed nightingale floor—and to his own unimaginable destiny...

If you just want to plunge right into an alternate Japan loosely based on history and culture with a light romance and lots of skulking in shadows, check out this series. I read the whole series in hopes for deeper angst and kissy face between Takeo and Lady Kaede, but felt vaguely unsatisfied at the end.

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Urban Fantasy set in Tokyo alternating historical flashbacks: Fated Blades Book One: Daughter of the Sword by Steve Bein
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As the only female detective in Tokyo’s most elite police unit, Mariko Oshiro has to fight for every ounce of respect, especially her new boss. But when he gives her the least promising case possible—the attempted theft of an old samurai sword—it proves more dangerous than anyone on the force could have imagined.

What pushes this beyond your everyday kick-ass woman with a sword, is how Bein wove backstories of the swords through the main narrative. Switching between Mariko and various periods in Japanese history was very cool.

He got most of the historical and cultural details right as far as I can tell (I've lived in Japan more than 6 years and..ahem…studied Japanese history in college—Lo, these many years ago). Bein's descriptions sometimes have a cool twist: "Beyond the glass stretched the crazed labyrinth of Shinjuku, a werewolf in urban form, biding its time until nightfall to unleash its full madness." 

Romantic junkie that I am, I wanted more Mariko. More juicy relationship angst between Mariko and her mother, and possibly a hint of romance. But if you love Urban Fantasy and are burned out on werewolves and vampires—this one’s for you!

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Literary-esque Modern Magical Realism:  The Love We Share Without Knowing by Christopher Barzak
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In a train filled with quietly sleeping passengers, a young man’s life is forever altered when he is miraculously seen by a blind man. In a quiet town, an American teacher who has lost her Japanese lover to death begins to lose her own self. On a remote road amid fallow rice fields, four young friends carefully take their own lives—and in that moment they become almost as one. In a small village a disaffected American teenager stranded in a strange land discovers compassion after an encounter with an enigmatic red fox, and in Tokyo a girl named Love learns the deepest lessons about its true meaning from a coma patient lost in dreams of an affair gone wrong.

You should go read this even if you have absolutely NO interest in Japan. Why? Because Barzak’s writing superbly tugs at heart strings. While not straight-up Romance, the characters in these intertwined stories are all looking for love.

It's the intertwining story, centered in Ami, Japan, of a group of people and how love and death touches their lives.

But the reason I recommend this book is because there are very few Western authors who can write about Japan, and write Japanese characters in Japan, and get it mostly right. I think Christopher Barzak gets it mostly right. He captures the pressures of society so well that when characters commit suicide you understand why and his foreigners-in-Japan characters embody some of the reasons we run away from home.

And in the end, he teaches through all his characters that we can choose the masks that we wear to tell the world who we are, but in the end, they are only masks and are changeable.

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YA fantasy set in Modern Tokyo with : Paper Gods Book One: Ink by Amanda Sun
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On the heels of a family tragedy, the last thing Katie Greene wants to do is move halfway across the world. Stuck with her aunt in Shizuoka, Japan, Katie feels lost. Alone. She doesn’t know the language, she can barely hold a pair of chopsticks, and she can’t seem to get the hang of taking her shoes off whenever she enters a building.

Then there’s gorgeous but aloof Tomohiro, star of the school’s kendo team. How did he really get the scar on his arm? Katie isn’t prepared for the answer. But when she sees the things he draws start moving, there’s no denying the truth: Tomo has a connection to the ancient gods of Japan, and being near Katie is causing his abilities to spiral out of control. If the wrong people notice, they'll both be targets.

Ink is a terrific edition to the YA Paranormal genre. Readers of YA series by Becca Fitzpatrick or Lauren Kate with bad-boy hero fetishes will totally get into Tomohiro — he wields a mean Kendo sword, gets in fights with Yakuza, and yo-yos between needing people and cutting them down to size...not to mention his terrifying sketches...

From my perspective of having lived in Japan, Katie's experience with bento, conbini puddings, drunken flower-viewing parties, and scrubbing school toilets are spot-on depictions of Japanese life. The author's judicious sprinkling of real Japanese slang even got the thumbs up from my Tokyo-boy husband.  This one pushed all my romance junkie buttons in the right way, but is still safe for the older YA designation.

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Crazy alternate Shogun-era Japan with steampunk elements adventure: The Lotus War Book One: Stormdancer by Jay Kristoff 
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Yukiko is a child of the Fox clan, possessed of a talent that if discovered, would see her executed by the Lotus Guild. Accompanying her father on the Shogun's hunt, she finds herself stranded: a young woman alone in Shima's last wilderness, with only a furious, crippled thunder tiger for company. Even though she can hear his thoughts, even though she saved his life, all she knows for certain is he'd rather see her dead than help her. But together, the pair will form an indomitable friendship, and rise to challenge the might of an empire.

What we have here is a super-funky, crazy alternate Edo period Japan — if the Shogunate commanded a vast army of armored warriors and airships that ran on a fuel created from the seeds of a plant that poisoned the land.

And oh yes, if that alternate Japan also had real oni-demons and griffins.

While there is a bit of intrigue, this is a straight-forward, no surprise-you-can't-see-coming-a-mile-away, evil vs. good adventure with the Shogun starring as the half-crazed supervillain committing murder (of children!) and laying literal waste to his country.

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Historical Fantasy with Trickster Spirits!: There’s a lot out there. Especially if you like short stories. But here are three I particularly recommend.

Fudoki by Kij Johnson
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Set in the same universe as The Fox Woman, this time Kij Johnson takes on another animal totem and enters the world of the creature who comes to be known as Kagaya-hime, a sometime woman warrior, occasional philosopher, and reluctant confidante to noblemen. 

And who may or may not be the figment of the imagination of an aging empress who is embarking on the last journey of her life, setting aside the trappings of court life and reminiscing as she follows the paths that are leading her to the nunnery and death.

Kij Johnson is the bomb. Like Christopher Barzak, she totally gets how telling stories with Japanese-inspired myths is an opportunity to explore concepts of identity, self and love. You should read this, but only if you’re in a literary mood and don’t mind some plot-ambiguity, and hopefully are sitting in front of a roaring fire with a cup of green tea.

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Tiger Lily by K. Bird Lincoln
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Lily isn't supposed to hunt game in the Daimyo's woods. She's just the cook's daughter. It isn't her place to talk to nobility. And she definitely isn't supposed to sing the forbidden old, Jindo religion songs.

But Lily was born in the year of the Tiger, and can't ever be like other village girls. In the woods snaring rabbits one day, she finds instead the Daimyo's son, Ashikaga, wounded, in the gooseberry brush. When the Pretender Emperor's men arrive to kill Ashikaga, Lily, desperate, sings a forbidden Jindo song.

The song wakes a powerful spirit – as well as Ashikaga's interest. The prickly lord has hidden secrets of his own and a burning desire to prove himself to his father. He will stop at nothing to defeat his father's greatest enemy.

You know I had to mention Tiger Lily, right? Because I think I strike a balance between actual medieval Japan (circa the Ashiakga Shogunate period) and twisting history to suit my own needs. While there’s some romance—it’s definitely not a mainstream romance. There are gender surprises involved. Tina Connolly called it "A beautifully-written genderbending tale of rebellious girls, shifting disguises, and forbidden magic, set against the vivid backdrop of ancient Japan."

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Kitsune Tsuki by Laura VanArendonk Baugh
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How does one find a shapeshifter who may not even exist?

The onmyouji Tsurugu no Kiyomori, a practitioner of the mystic arts, has been engaged to protect the warlord's new bride from the fox spirit rumored to be near. Tsurugu and the shadow-warrior Shishio Hitoshi face an impossible challenge in teasing out a kitsune shapeshifter from the samurai and servants –- if such a creature is even present at all.

Confession: I haven’t read this yet. But I just went out and bought it so I definitely will read it soon. I came across Laura VanArendonk Baugh mentioned in a writer’s promo Facebook page and was like “oh, another Caucasian woman writing Japanese Historical Fantasy — must stalk!” I then quickly realized she’s another World Weaver Press author, having been published in Corvidae, Fae, and Scarecrow (yay editor Rhonda Parrish!).

I’ll tell you what. You go read her, too, and let me know what you think.

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K. Bird Lincoln is an ESL professional and writer living on the windswept Minnesota Prairie with family and a huge addiction to frou-frou coffee. Also dark chocolate-- without which, the world is a howling void. Originally from Cleveland, she has spent more years living on the edges of the Pacific Ocean than in the Midwest. Her speculative short stories are published in various online & paper publications such as Strange Horizons. Her first novel, Tiger Lily, a medieval Japanese fantasy, is available from Amazon. She also writes tasty speculative and YA fiction reviews under the name K. Bird at Goodreads.com.

Dream Eater by K. Bird Lincoln, a Japanese-influenced urban fantasy set in Portland, OR, will be released from World Weaver Press in April 2017.

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