Fiction set in Japan?

[larabell]

Hi
I'm looking for suggestions of any good novels set in contemporary Japan. I know most of the popular Japanese authors, so I'm more interested in any western novel set there, for the western perspective. Any ideas? A good mystery/thriller would be nice, but anything really...
Thanks
Lara

[Clanad]

Look for author Dale Furutani whose Ken Tanaka series about a Japanese-American detective who solves crimes in Los Angeles and Tokyo. Especially his series called the Samurai Mystery Trilogy. They are fairly recent, probably 2000 or so... they are of the mystery genre, but well done...

[larabell]

Thanks. I'll check them out!

[sherlockian]

Amelie Nothomb's Fear and Trembling is a brilliant "novel" about a Westerner trying to work in an office in a Japanese corporation - with often hilarious but also terrifying consequences of misunderstandings and cultural differences - apparently the author's own experience presented as a novel.

Not set in contemporary times, but Alessandro Baricco's modern novella Silk tells of a French trader in the 19th Century who illegally exports silkworms from Japan and falls in love with the local war-lords concubine - beautifully written in sparse prose with wonderful rhythmic repetition of sentences, and interesting interpretation of a Westerner's attitude to the East.

[Frenchoid]

Sections of David Mitchell's excellent debut 'Ghostwritten' are set in modern-day Okinawa and Tokyo (although the book's other 7 segments take in other places and characters from around the globe - all ultimately linked).

Mitchell had lived in Japan for a time before writing this book.

More on the book here - http://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/1100/mitch ell/ - including an essay on 'Japan and my writing'

[File Cutter]

Mr Foreigner by Matthew Kneale - about westerners in Japan - unfortunately it's not very good though