The Japanese Society UK runs an online book discussion event every other month. The participants discuss the contents of a previously read book. The discussion is in English. The books are written by Japanese authors, but the majority of the participants seems to read the books in English. To participate in the event, the society asks non-members for a donation.
I participated in one such event and found it very interesting. The society has published the 2026 events, and I am planning to participate in one or more of them. Here is a list of the books they have lined up, and the event dates:
I will be reading the book(s) in Japanese and I thought that maybe some of you might be interested in joining me so we can read together?
(The participation in the events is of course independent from the reading, and fully up to you.)
I did not know such a group exists! They have interesting and varied choices for the books.
I would like to join you in reading some of them. They all look tempting, but I voted for the ones with digital copies as that is the most convenient for me to get ahold of (and I have already read 消滅世界).
I probably won’t join, but I’m thankful you’ve mentioned this group! Maybe next year (or very optimistically in the latter half of this one) I’ll try and make joining a priority.
I’m in the camp of - this looks amazing but I need to plan it into a better time in my life and when I can read Japanese more confidently. I’ll be watching
maybe I’ll join spontaneously at some point, or failing that, actually plan it into my reading in the future
Same here!
Plus, the March book (春の城) is ~900 pages (apparently the author worked on it for 50 years!) which is fascinating in itself, but I don’t think I could finish the book in time anyways…
@shitsurei@mitrac Fitting them in is always the issue For me as well. But at least I found some nice spots for them in the 2026 bingo, so there’s that double motivation
I am thinking of starting ゼロの焦点 around mid-March, would that work for you @bungakushoujo?
I liked ゼロの焦点 – I think it’s one of the author’s better mysteries. Don’t be put off by the cover image, I suspect they put that in to try to attract the people who liked all the railway timetable stuff from 点と線
I’ve created an informal book club thread for our first book, ゼロの焦点:
I will probably start a tad earlier as I will be very busy around mid-March, but as I’m a slow reader anyway, that shouldn’t interfere with anybody’s plans.
In the September meetup, 消滅世界 | L32 will be discussed.
@読み蛙@domjcw you both said you might be interested in it. Does that mean you are also interested in reading it in a group, or just in the discussion?
I’m planning to start reading it in July (because I’ll be travelling in August and I don’t know how much I can manage to read then). If anybody would like to join me, let me know and I’ll set up a thread for it.
Oh, sad! It’s only 250 pages, and Murata is even easier to read than Ogawa, is my impression - so if you discover some free time, don’t hesitate
Yes, I found it very interesting, especially given the time it was written in, and also regarding many aspects of what people did and how they behaved back then (in Japan), and how they still do. Also the discussion was very nice and entertaining, with many interesting aspects brought up by the participants. I found it especially interesting to hear the Japanese participants, who also said things like “of course he/she did that” and “of course it was regarded like that”. Although I only participated twice in this meeting, I thoroughly enjoyed the discussions, and I am curious to see what will come up in the next discussions!
Ok, I read the kindle preview, and found it quite readable.
I could probably join for reading over the next couple of months, though I wouldn’t actually make it to the Japan Society meeting (I’ll be in Japan at the time, so it will be middle of the night).
There is a previous 15 week Wanikani schedule. How long were you planning to read it over?
Oh yes that’s a bit unfortunate, timing-wise. 3am is not really a nice time to have deep discussions…
Good question! 15 weeks would definitely be too long. I am going to Japan in 7 weeks, and I don’t know how much I can read there, so maybe from now until then?
The chapter breakdowns are a bit unfortunate, though; three chapters of roughly 50, 110 and 80 pages.
I mean, what we could do is double the speed of the WK book club; then we could also reuse the old threads, which might be interesting - we could read the old comments Or we could set up a new thread here and link to the old book club in the OP (and still read the comments). We could also start together at a slower pace if that suits you better, and at some point I would speed up to catch the book club, but we could still discuss after that point.
What do you think?
I think given the small number of us, we could potentially use the old Wanikani threads and just add to them. We can start with double speed, but it is possible I’ll not be able to keep up.
But as you say we can chat about it along the way or later.
The September reading event is almost there! It will take place on 2026-09-14T18:00:00Z. I am still missing the last 20 or so pages, but it sounds doable
Plus, I’m already thinking about the November event
It will take place on November 9th, with the book being 三度目の恋 | L37 . The abstract sounds very interesting, but I want to prepare for its 388 pages at level 37
@bungakushoujo@読み蛙 you said you are interested in reading it - is this still the case? Or maybe somebody else would like to join as well?
I think I will set up a thread for it later, so that we can exchange opinions on it - looking forward to hearing what you think!
)
hopefully it’s engaging
The others are all standard-sized books luckily 
