Fans of the 2006 animated film “Paprika” who begin to wade into the re-issue of Yasutaka Tsutsui’s novel -- which has assumed nearly as many forms since 1993 as its shape-shifting titular heroine -- will quickly find themselves in the Uncanny Valley. Any novel translated into (British) English from Japanese will present special challenges to American readers, and Paprika starts off at a dead run through character introductions and complex scientific ideas, many of which were skimmed over or completely omitted in the movie.

However, perseverance will be rewarded. As the tangled plot strings begin to quiver and pull taut, the book itself begins to feel like a living dream for the reader, swollen with emotional urgency and quotidian fears about life, death, and consciousness. The novel imagines an all-too-near future, in which psychotherapists are routinely able to view and even participate in the dreams of their patients thanks to a new device. When an exponentially more powerful prototype is invented that also organically bonds with its human host, the beautiful Dr. Atsuko Chiba struggles to contain the discovery and prevent it from being abused. Naturally, it falls into the wrong hands almost instantly, becoming a deadly weapon in an already tense game of corporate chess. Along the way Dr. Chiba is both helped and hindered by her past as Paprika, a girlish alter-ego especially designed to provide discreet mental healthcare to Japan’s wealthiest and most prominent figures.

One shock for lovers of the film is that the novel’s timeline begins way earlier. The movie’s story picks up when the DC-Mini devices have already been stolen, and plays out as a detective story to find out who’s to blame, whereas the novel makes almost no attempt to conceal the culprits’ identities, instead offering the reader a voyeuristic inner-space view all characters, both good and evil, as their dreamworlds begin to collide and overlap. When vestiges of those dreams begin to manifest in the “real” world, all these personal and political schemes risk overwhelming the reality of the entire planet.

If you demand an American comparison, Tsutsui’s mastery of plausible pop-scientific rhetoric and his ability to raise the stakes chapter after chapter are reminiscent of Michael Crichton’s glory days, but it’s all achieved with an easy eroticism and gleefully perverse sense of humor that few sci-fi writers (Crichton especially included) would ever dare attempt. Anyhow, the book’s allure is as inseparable from its inherent Japanese-ness, in the same way that the charms of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series seem so reliant upon the author’s identity as a Brit.

Upon finishing the novel, one has to marvel at the “Paprika” film for having achieved the seemingly impossible, pulling an endearing and (mostly) coherent ninety-minute film out of this potent brew of ideas. And yet, afterward you will never be able to rewatch it quite the same way. What once seemed rich and thoughtful will now inevitably seem superficial and hasty -- just as notes jotted down from a dream never manage to capture the power and immediacy you felt while asleep. It’s valuable to have the record, but it never replaces the experience. Fortunately the new edition of Paprika ensures that Tsutsui’s dream will continue to be widely and vividly available for the foreseeable future.

The first chapter of David Kirk's novel Child of Vengeance opens with a boy. He is a feudal lord; he is nine years old; and now he kneels before the enemy confused. With his army defeated, he must commit seppuku -- a suicide ritual that requires the samurai to disembowel himself with a sword. But as he says, "I don't know how … I was never allowed to see. I wanted to, but Father said I was too young." It seems unbelievable to our modern sensibilities: too young to see, but old enough to do. But this is seventeenth-century Japan, a place where honor counts for everything and brutality is never ending.

Child of Vengeance tells the story of Bennosuke -- son of a premier warrior and a murdered mother; raised by two uncles (one samurai, one monk); destined to become a samurai. After eight years away his father returns home, trains Bennosuke (now thirteen) to be a great samurai, and sends him to serve in an army. What happens next starts a cycle of revenge that leaves his father dead without honor and forever defines Bennosuke, as he struggles to find out who he is and who he will become: the samurai, who continues the cycle to revenge the past; or the monk, who breaks the cycle to live in the present.

Perhaps needless to say, Child of Vengeance isn't for the faint of heart. The first chapter's seppuku is only a sample of the gore you'll find here. In fact, Kirk pulls no punches when describing the mutilation of human bodies -- decapitated heads, lopped-off limbs, spilled-out guts, it's all there -- but he does so artistically, with fresh (albeit ruthless) images and scenes, describing each sword duel or war battle with a camera-like clarity; more importantly, the gore is not repulsively gratuitous so much as regretfully appropriate. (Think of "Saving Private Ryan" without the D-Day scene.) To eliminate the gore would mean to compromise its emotional honesty and historical integrity.

I went into this book knowing little about seventeenth-century Japan. In truth, my knowledge of Japanese history, in general, was limited to school (whenever we covered WWII) and late-night documentary watching. So, I was worried. After all, it's rare when a historical novel rises to the levels of a great novel or a great history; unfortunately, when combined, one genre tends to drag down the other. But Kirk shows an exceptional ability to weave information and plot together -- always using one to propel the other, always keeping hold of the reader and the story. This fine balance, and Kirk's commitment to it, gives order and perspective to such a distant and barbarous time and, ultimately, that's the true feat of Child of Vengeance.

In his novel, The Thief, which won Japan's prestigious Kenzaburō Ōe Prize in 2010, Fuminori Nakamura submerges us into the Tokyo underworld of burglary, prostitution, and murder, and tells of a pickpocket in too deep and struggling to resurface.

Nishimura is a first-rate pickpocket. Within the first chapter, he steals two wallets and finds a third in his pocket, the latter of which he's stolen unwittingly; and like any pickpocket with a conscience, he takes only the money and throws the wallets (complete with credit cards and ID) in a mailbox, so the post office can return them to his victims. But it isn't only about money; it's also about the thrill and technique. For Nishimura, pickpocketing is an art form; as if admitted into a secret fraternity, we're fed morsels of pickpocket strategy -- from how many fingers to use to what clothes and shoes to wear -- and recited pickpocket dictums -- like "When humans' nerves detect big and small stimuli at the same time, they ignore the smaller one" -- until pickpocketing, as an activity, seems less of a crime and more of a martial art, and Nishimura its Bruce Lee.

But Nishimura is dragged out of his element when Ishikawa (his mentor, partner, and best friend) somehow talks him into a bad job. The two of them, along with Tachibana (a mutual acquaintance), meet with Kizaki, a bigwig who "talks a lot, laughs a lot" and is rumored to "sometimes … kill people," and are forced to assist in a burglary. All they have to do is subdue an old man's mistress, and Kizaki's regulars will handle the rest -- i.e. subdue the old man and rob his safe. No one will be killed, Kizaki assures them. But as the crime/thriller genre usually has it, such assurances are hollow, and even when all seems to go right, something goes wrong, and Nishimura is forced to leave Tokyo. Still, it's only when he returns to Tokyo and must take another job that Nishimura finds himself in even deeper waters … perhaps too deep to escape.

Nakamura's style and artistic sensibility carry weight here, too. Between his prose -- laconic, crisp, poetic -- and his attention for detail, each scene radiates with an anxiety, a hyperawareness that might drag down a lesser book, but that instead amplifies The Thief and mimics Nishimura's ever-moving mind, eyes, and hands. His writing forces us to inspect every nuance of every person, action, and thing; and, like all great thrillers, ultimately has us live out -- rather than merely read and imagine -- the tension on each page.

Statistically, it’s unlikely that most of the world’s population will encounter firsthand a true natural disaster. Of course, likelihood is dependent on proximity to areas geographically prone to a disaster, but for the most part, when one occurs, we will witness it from afar. In Elmer Luke and David Karashima’s collection March Was Made of Yarn: Reflections on the Japanese Earthquake, Tsunami, and Nuclear Meltdown, readers are led by the hand to the scene of a disaster unlike any other, where earth’s mighty hand meets one of mankind’s most mammoth achievements.

It has now been more than a year since the catastrophic earthquake hit the northeast coast of Japan, setting off a chain reaction including a fifty-foot tsunami and major breakdown in five nearby nuclear plants. Those of us stateside watched and read the news – horror-stricken and sympathetic – but still relatively removed. As with anything that happens half a world away, we can only sympathize so much; it’s rare that any among us can truly empathize with what a nation is experiencing during a time of true crisis.

In this collection of both fiction and nonfiction, twenty-two writers interpret their own thoughts, experiences, fears, and hopes surrounding the events and present their interpretations through their writing, where the line between fact and fiction sometimes blurs. The writing is – across the board – beautiful, and there exists within much of it a certain serenity and clarity one might not expect to pour forth from an examination of such a horrid situation.

Though every story in the collection shines in its own special way, it was Hiromi Kawakami’s “God Bless You, 2011” that stood out to this reader. The author revisits a short story she wrote in 1993, revising it to reflect the impact of the events of March 2011. In between the new telling of “God Bless You” and the old, Hiromi pauses for the story of the god of uranium, taking a moment to reflect on what happens when humans “break the laws of nature and turn gods into minions.” The story is one of a bear, a new neighbor, and a walk. The before-and-after treatment of the story results in a piece both heartbreaking and brilliant.

When a disaster such as the 2011 Japanese earthquake occurs, those geographically removed from the incident certainly don’t wish to be nearer. What we -- as collective humanity -- do wish, however, is to find the ability to be more sympathetic, compassionate, and understanding to those affected. The collection March Was Made of Yarn will certainly help us along in that endeavor, providing us with unique, bold, and personal perceptions of those events.

Seventy years after Pearl Harbor, most of the heroic and tragic stories of World War II have begun to dissipate into the faded past of a Ken Burns documentary. And this is just wrong on so many levels. But Laura Hillenbrand, author of the beloved Seabiscuit, has returned with Unbroken, an amazing true story about an authentic American hero, that is by turns tragic, inspiring, thoughtful, and informative.

Long before John McCain's travails in the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" prison camp, Louie Zamperini went from being a runner in the 1936 Olympics to Japanese POW camp inmate to, ultimately, rebuilding a life at home. Today, we understand that people who undergo trauma can suffer for years after the events that harmed them. But Zamperini, who spent a month and a half (!) in the shark-infested waters of the Pacific before he was captured and delivered to a brutal prisoner camp, came from a different generation.

Hillenbrand tells Zamperini's story with humor and grace, as improbable as that may sound. She is a born storyteller, and she makes him human; we come to see him as the funny, sharp prankster that he was. She is unflinching in her descriptions of the truly desperate conditions of his imprisonment, but only to show us what influenced the person he became. Zamperini, who is still alive at ninety-three, went on to be a leader in civilian life and a model for reconciliation. In the course of telling his story, Hillenbrand has created a true modern classic about the nature of perseverance and humanity, in the category of works such as Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. Unbroken is a book about history and war, of course, but -- like all great writing -- it transcends mere categories and shows us who we are.

Here is a gripping story with a timeless message. You may find that it gives you renewed appreciation for the sacrifices of our veterans, and of all veterans. You may appreciate the understanding we glean of what it means to be a hero after the confetti has been swept up and the paraders have gone home. No matter what, though, you will be awed by Hillenbrand's ability to tell a story with clarity, purpose, and love.

The American dream has always meant different things to different people, but one tends to imagine it suffused with golden light, honest families working hard to better their lives, sacrificing for love and freedom. However, history tragically reminds us that often these tender dreams are carelessly destroyed. In her National Book Award-nominated novel, The Buddha in the Attic, Julie Otsuka’s spare, poetic prose captures the corruption of the American dream through a captivating tale of a group of Japanese women who come to the U.S., having been promised a brighter future, only to be shattered by betrayal.

We are taken back nearly a century, tracing a time period from 1919 to the Japanese internment in World War II. This is a story without specifics – it's the saga of many optimistic women who come to the United States as mail-order brides. Also known as “picture brides,” their marriages to men they had never met were arranged with no consideration of the heart, only hollowly matched through photographs. They are city girls, country girls, educated girls, innocent children, old maids, younger sisters too plain to become geishas. They come to the States to meet husbands who are allegedly bankers, lawyers, business owners ... but who in reality are farmhands and day laborers. These are women learning to survive in a foreign land. Otsuka chronicles their disappointment: the backbreaking labor; longing for family left behind; tainted experiences of new motherhood to children who will ultimately reject their heritage and history; and finally to the insufferable arrival of war and its crushing emotional aftershocks.

In some ways, The Buddha in the Attic is a prequel to Otsuka’s earlier novel, When the Emperor Was Divine, which has become a classroom favorite in high schools lately -- and it's not hard to see why. Her debut book tells the story of a family of Japanese-Americans who are evacuated to internment camps in World War II. These characters -- a mother, son, daughter, and absent husband who was taken to an enemy combatant camp -- are relatively anonymous, archetypal. The experiences they face are characteristic of those endured during one of the greatest civil rights atrocities in American history, and the absence of character names makes these stories feel universal and profound in their ordinariness.

What truly sets The Buddha in the Attic apart is the very language with which it is written. Otsuka conveys the heart-wrenching experiences of these women with blistering beauty. Her ability to form poignant sentences with relatively simple vocabulary is striking; her words define, challenge, and educate, while moving the spirit. Be prepared to read this in one spellbinding sitting.

This post originally ran on Liz & Gianna’s Adventures in Bookland.

When he left his Missouri home for Japan at age nineteen, Jake Adelstein had no way of knowing that he would eventually cross paths with one of that nation’s most powerful crime figures. Adelstein came to Japan hoping to reinvent himself. He succeeded, but nearly at the cost of his life. In Tokyo Vice, Adelstein invites readers in to join him for this thrilling ride.

After studying Japanese literature at Sophia University, Adelstein passed the entrance exam for employment at Yomiuri Shimbum, one of the country’s five national newspapers, becoming the first American citizen to work as a Japanese language reporter at a Japanese newspaper. He began work as a police reporter in 1993, moving on to the organized crime beat by the end of the year.

Adelstein became immersed in Japan’s underworld, a dangerous place inhabited by the yakuza -- the Japanese mafia -- and their underlings: hired killers, thugs, and corrupt officials. Digging deeply into the criminal culture like no Westerner had ever done before, Adelstein covered horrific murders and tracked cases of human trafficking. As a star reporter, Adelstein’s work attracted plenty of attention, but none more so than from the Yakuza themselves.

Living on the edge of danger was something that came with the territory, but when Adelstein uncovered the biggest scoop of his career -- evidence of a sweetheart deal between the FBI and powerful yakuza leader Tadamaso Goto -- he had to flee for his life. What happened from there would make his career, but at what cost to his family and future?

Tokyo Vice is a sensational work of crime reportage, a work of nonfiction that rivals the best hardboiled crime novel, and a glimpse into Japan’s shadow side that few Americans will ever have.