Japan Society presents a night focused on Japanese literature with three special events. One ticket provides access to our entire evening of activities.

The night begins with Selected Shorts performed live at Japan Society. Selected Shorts is a weekly public radio show broadcast on over 150 stations to over 300,000 listeners. The series presents some of our greatest stage and screen actors reading some of today’s best literature, transporting us through the magic of fiction one short story at a time. At Japan Society, Selected Shorts will host a captivating evening of short stories by three contemporary Japanese writers.

Following Selected Shorts, we are honored to welcome author Keiichiro Hirano for a conversation about his career. Keiichiro Hirano is an acclaimed Japanese novelist who has written more than 15 novels since his debut work Eclipse, for which he won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize at the young age of only 23. His psychological fiction deals with universal themes such as self-love, relationships and acceptance, and spans from short stories and historical novels to essays, love stories and literary science fiction.

Hirano was appointed by Japan’s Ministry of Cultural Affairs as a Cultural Envoy to Paris, he’s traveled all over the world giving lectures and many of his books have been translated into English, German, French, Italian, Chinese, Korean and more. His recent awards include the Kobayashi Hideo Prize (2023), the Yomiuri Prize for Literature (2019) and the Watanabe Junichi Literary Prize (2017). He is presented together with Columbia University Press in celebration of the release of his debut novel, Eclipse, for the first time in America. His other books translated into English include A Man (2020) and At the End of the Matinee (2021).

The night will then conclude with a reception where you’re welcome to mix and mingle with fellow book lovers.