Stay in the know
We’ll send you the latest insights and briefings tailored to your needs
Subscribe now
6 พ.ค. 2026
What Is Left For Us
Sophie Stern (alumna)
Meet Rebecca and Hannah: inseparable sisters, until a betrayal tears their relationship apart and spins their lives in different directions.
Rebecca thinks the past is behind her.
She has spent the last ten years working as a lawyer at an insurance firm in London, but she’s unfulfilled in her job, and her boyfriend, the one she didn’t even care about, has just dumped her. And then comes an email from Hannah, the sister she hasn’t spoken to in a decade.
On the surface, Hannah has it all.
A perfect house, a high-flying husband, an adorable daughter. But the facade is crumbling. Forced to reunite with Rebecca when they jointly inherit their grandmother’s clifftop house in Bondi, Hannah is reminded of the life she gave up all those years ago.
Over two weeks, everything the sisters think they know about each other changes forever.
With fierce and complicated family dynamics and a suspenseful edge, What Is Left For Us will have you switching and dividing allegiances until the last page.
About the author:
Alumna Sophie Stern is from Sydney, Australia, where she lives with her husband and son. She completed her studies in law and international studies at the University of New South Wales. Her short fiction has been published in magazines and literary zines including Yen Magazine and Ellipsis Zine, with her flash fiction shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and longlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award, and the manuscript of her first novel was shortlisted for the Penguin Literary Prize in 2024. She completed writing residencies with Varuna House in 2023 and 2024.
Before the coffee gets cold
Toshikazu Kawaguchi
What would you do if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time? Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s Before the Coffee Gets Cold, translated from Japanese, explores this age-old question...
In a cosy back alley in Tokyo, there is a cafe which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.
But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat. They cannot leave the cafe. And finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold...
About the author:
Toshikazu Kawaguchi was born in Osaka, Japan, in 1971. He formerly produced, directed and wrote for the theatrical group Sonic Snail. As a playwright, his works include COUPLE, Sunset Song and Family Time.
The novel Before the Coffee Gets Cold is adapted from a 1110 Productions play by Kawaguchi, which won the 10th Suginami Drama Festival grand prize. It was followed by Tales From the Cafe, Before Your Memory Fades, Before We Say Goodbye and Before We Forget Kindness.
Geoffrey Trousselot was born in Hobart, Australia, in 1969. He is the translator of the Before the Coffee Gets Cold series. Other translations include The I Wonder Bookstore by Shinsuke Yoshitake and Hiroshima: From the shadows of the grass by Toshinori Kanaya. He was a contributing translator to The 20th Century Art in Japan by the Tokyo Art Club.
Abroad in Japan
Chris Broad
When Englishman Chris Broad landed in a rural village in northern Japan he wondered if he'd made a huge mistake. With no knowledge of the language and zero teaching experience, was he about to be the most quickly fired English teacher in Japan's history?
Abroad in Japan charts a decade of living in a foreign land and the chaos and culture clash that came with it. Packed with hilarious and fascinating stories, this book seeks out to unravel one the world's most complex cultures.
About the author:
Chris Broad is a British filmmaker and founder of the Abroad in Japan Youtube channel, one of the largest foreign Youtube channels in Japan with over 2.5 million subscribers and 400 million views.
Over 10 years and 200 videos, Chris has visited all of Japan's 47 prefectures, focussing Abroad in Japan on travel, culture, food and covered contemporary issues through documentaries on the Fukushima nuclear disaster and the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami.
His experiences have made him a sought after voice on life inside Japan, featured on the BBC, Tedx, NHK and the Japan Times.
-cropped.jpg)
Four Seasons in Japan
Nick Bradley
Flo is sick of Tokyo.
Suffering from a crisis in confidence, she is stuck in a rut, her translation work has dried up and she's in a relationship that's run its course.
That's until she stumbles upon a mysterious book left by a fellow passenger on the Tokyo Subway.
From the very first page, Flo is transformed and immediately feels compelled to translate this forgotten novel, a decision which sets her on a path that will change her life.
As Flo follows the characters across a year in rural Japan, through the ups and downs of the pair's burgeoning relationship, she quickly realises that she needs to venture outside the pages of the book to track down its elusive author.
And, as the two protagonists reveal themselves to have more in common with her life than first meets the eye, the lines between text and translator converge, and it soon becomes clear that Flo’s journey is just beginning…
About the author:
Nick Bradley is the author of The Cat and the City (2020) and Four Seasons in Japan (2023). In 2024 he was chosen by The British Council and The National Centre for Writing as one of ten rising stars in UK writing. His work has so far been translated into twenty languages.
He lived in Japan for many years where he worked as a translator and currently teaches on the Creative Writing master's programme at the University of Cambridge.
The Book of Tokyo
by Banana Yoshimoto (Author), Hiromi Kawakami (Author), Hideo Furukawa (Author), Nao-Cola Yamazaki (Author), Kaori Ekuni (Author), Mitsuyo Kakuta (Author), Toshiyuki Horie (Author), Hitomi Kanehara (Author), Osamu Hashimoto (Author), Michael Emmerich (Editor)
A shape-shifter arrives at Tokyo harbour in human form, set to embark on an unstoppable rampage through the city’s train network… A young woman is accompanied home one night by a reclusive student, and finds herself lured into a flat full of eerie Egyptian artefacts… A man suspects his young wife’s obsession with picnicking every weekend in the city’s parks hides a darker motive… At first, Tokyo appears in these stories as it does to many outsiders: a city of bewildering scale, awe-inspiring modernity, peculiar rules, unknowable secrets and, to some extent, danger.
Characters observe their fellow citizens from afar, hesitant to stray from their daily routines to engage with them. But Tokyo being the city it is, random encounters inevitably take place – a naïve book collector, mistaken for a French speaker, is drawn into a world he never knew existed; a woman seeking psychiatric help finds herself in a taxi with an older man wanting to share his own peculiar revelations; a depressed divorcee accepts an unexpected lunch invitation to try Thai food for the very first time… The result in each story is a small but crucial change in perspective, a sampling of the unexpected yet simple pleasure of other people’s company. As one character puts it, ‘The world is full of delicious things, you know.’
About the authors:
Banana Yoshimoto wrote her first novel, 'Kitchen', while working as a waitress at a golf-course restaurant. It sold millions of copies worldwide and led to a phenomenon dubbed by Western journalists as 'Banana-mania'. Yoshimoto has gone on to be one of the biggest-selling and most distinguished writers in Japanese history, winning numerous awards for her work.
Nao-Cola Yamazaki has fast become one of Japan's most beloved writers. Her first book, 'Don't Laugh at Other People's Sex', won the Bungei Award, and was adapted into a major motion picture. Her books 'The Side Room of the Katsura Beauty Salon' (2008), 'Hand'[ (2009), and 'Niki's Abasement' (2011) were all nominated for the Akutagawa Award. Her work often describes the love and friendship of men and women in their twenties and thirties.
Osamu Hashimoto graduated from the University of Tokyo and worked as an illustrator before becoming a writer. He has published not only fiction but literary criticism and essays as well as modern Japanese translations of classics such as 'The Tale of Genji'. Hashimoto received the Kobayashi Hideo Prize in 2002 for 'Mishima Yukio to wa nanimono datta no ka' (Who Was Yukio Mishima?), a work of criticism. His first fiction prize came in 2005, when he won the Shibata Renzaburo Award for his short-story collection 'Cho no yukue' (Where Butterflies Go); in 2008 he was awarded the Mainichi Publishing Culture Award for his modern Japanese translation of 'The Tale of Heike'.
Wabi Sabi
Beth Kempton
A whole new way of looking at the world - and your life - inspired by centuries-old Japanese wisdom.
Wabi sabi ("wah-bi sah-bi") is a captivating concept from Japanese aesthetics, which helps us to see beauty in imperfection, appreciate simplicity and accept the transient nature of all things. With roots in zen and the way of tea, the timeless wisdom of wabi sabi is more relevant than ever for modern life, as we search for new ways to approach life's challenges and seek meaning beyond materialism.
Wabi sabi is a refreshing antidote to our fast-paced, consumption-driven world, which will encourage you to slow down, reconnect with nature, and be gentler on yourself. It will help you simplify everything, and concentrate on what really matters.
From honouring the rhythm of the seasons to creating a welcoming home, from reframing failure to ageing with grace, wabi sabi will teach you to find more joy and inspiration throughout your perfectly imperfect life.
About the author:
Beth Kempton is an award-winning entrepreneur and the bestselling author of Wabi Sabi: Japanese wisdom for a perfectly imperfect life, Calm Christmas and a Happy New Year, We Are in This Together and Freedom Seeker.
Beth has two degrees in Japanese and has spent many years living and working in Japan, which she considers her second home. She is also a qualified yoga teacher and a Reiki Master trained in the Japanese tradition in Tokyo. As Founder of Do What You Love, Beth has produced and taught online courses and workshops that have helped tens of thousands of people all over the world to discover their passion, explore their creativity and live a more inspired life. She describes herself as a wanderer, an adventurer and a seeker of beauty.
Super-Frong Saves Tokyo
Haruki Murakami
Katagiri found a giant frog waiting for him in his apartment. It was powerfully built, standing over six feet tall on its hind legs. A skinny little man no more than five foot three, Katagiri was overwhelmed by the frog's imposing bulk.
‘Call me “Frog,”’ said the frog in a clear, strong voice.
Fully illustrated and beautifully designed, this special edition of Murakami’s celebrated short story sees the bewildered Katagiri find meaning in his humdrum life through joining forces with Frog in an effort to save Tokyo from an existential threat.
About the author:
Haruki Murakami (Author)
In 1978, Haruki Murakami was twenty-nine and running a jazz bar in downtown Tokyo. One April day, the impulse to write a novel came to him suddenly while watching a baseball game. That first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, won a new writers' award and was published the following year. More followed, including A Wild Sheep Chase and Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, but it was Norwegian Wood, published in 1987, that turned Murakami from a writer into a phenomenon.
In works such as The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, 1Q84, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running and Men Without Women, Murakami's distinctive blend of the mysterious and the everyday, of melancholy and humour, continues to enchant readers, ensuring his place as one of the world's most acclaimed and well-loved writers.
Jay Rubin (Translator)
Jay Rubin is the author of Injurious to Public Morals: Writers and the Meiji State and Making Sense of Japanese, and he edited Modern Japanese Writers for the Scribner Writers Series. He has translated into English two novels by the Japanese writer Soseki Natsume, and also Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle and after the quake.
Key contacts
Kym Somers
Senior Alumni Executive, London
Olivia Troop
Alumni Executive, London
Insights
Legal Notice
The contents of this publication are for reference purposes only and may not be current as at the date of accessing this publication. They do not constitute legal advice and should not be relied upon as such. Specific legal advice about your specific circumstances should always be sought separately before taking any action based on this publication.
© Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer 2026