The new book of short stories you need now.

Our scope for discovering new books may be wider than ever thanks to the internet, but language barriers still keep a lot of great writers from ever reaching people who would love to read their books.

The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories, a new anthology of works from an extensive variety of Japanese authors, celebrates the Japanese short story from its origins in the 19th century to works popular in Japan today, and features five stories that have been translated into English for the first time. With an introduction by Mr Haruki Murakami, the book contains fiction by well-known Japanese authors such as Messrs Yukio Mishima and Jun’ichirō Tanizaki, but also features a number of writers relatively unknown in the West, including a few currently making waves on Japan’s literary scene. Touching on a variety of subjects, from Japanese and Western cultural relations (and differences) to natural disasters such as the 2011 Tōhoku tsunami, the book is a brilliant gateway for discovering Japanese authors that don’t get much airtime in the English-language press. Here are five of them.

For a gateway into contemporary Japanese literature, look to Ms Yoshimoto, who is one of Japan’s foremost female authors. Most famous for Kitchen, her 1988 novel telling the tale of a transgender mother, Ms Yoshimoto’s progressive subject matter and contemplative prose has propelled her to international fame. Her short story “Bee Honey” is translated into English for the first time in the anthology, and touches again on the unconditional duty of the mother figure. Ms Yoshimoto, whose real first name is Mahoko, chose her pen name in college, naming herself after the “androgynous and cute” banana flower.

A core figure in Japan’s current literary scene, Ms Kawakami’s writing shows a prosaic sensitivity marked by her background in poetry. Citing her literary influences as Ms Lydia Davis and Mr James Joyce, Ms Kawakami’s short story in the anthology is “Dreams of Love, Etc.”, an insight into everyday life in Japan and the post-earthquake malaise the protagonist feels. Born a decade later than the aforementioned Ms Yoshimoto, Ms Kawakami is a thoroughly of-the-moment Japanese author who is pushing the envelope in her native country.

Mr Genji is not the most current Japanese author (he was most popular in Japan’s “economic miracle” period of the 1950s and 1960s), and passed away in 1985, but there’s a humorous, nostalgic quality to his writing that has aged well. Dealing with Japan’s 20th century heyday, when the white-collar office worker trope (known as the “salaryman”) was at the forefront of society, his work elicits empathy for the employees that gave their all to a company but received little back.

One of the most contemporary authors included in the anthology, Mr Sato is an early millennial from Hokkaido. Influenced by Messrs Kenji Nakagami and JD Salinger, Mr Sato’s work could be described as evoking the uncomfortable mundanity of dystopia, and his short story that closes the anthology features a new mother suffering postnatal depression in the radioactive aftermath of an earthquake; a disturbing tale ensues.

Born in 1986 and the youngest author in the anthology, Mr Sawanishi’s fiction has appeared in literary magazines such as Granta. Dealing with the shocking and the surreal, his story “Filling Up with Sugar” tells the story of a woman caring for her mother, who is afflicted with the fictitious disease “systemic saccharification syndrome” (in other words, slowly turning to sugar). Weird and unsettling? Naturally. But if you want to see the future of Japanese fiction, Mr Sawanishi is a must-read.