Hi! You’re interested in Japan. You want to read quality stuff in English by people who know what they’re talking about. Good news: you’re in the right place! Let’s get straight into the list of Substack’s Top 32 Writers on Japan in 2024:
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Japanese Culture | Pop Culture | Photography | Economics & Politics | Food
JAPANESE CULTURE
1. Bill Alder of Fiction by Bill Alder
An American writer in Japan who drops a brilliant new short story every single week. We’re sure he goes through creative agony like the rest of us, but he writes as if he’s flicking them off in his sleep.
However, we have a sneaky feeling that his second Substack — Stray Cats of Japan — will be as The Simpsons is to The Tracey Ullman Show and eventually become his most transcendent work of creation.
Fiction by Bill Alder: 100% free; optional paid tier for the same content
What to read: Sakura Petals
Stray Cats of Japan: Mostly free; some paid content
What to read: Cemetery Cats
2. Robert Whiting of Robert Whiting's Japan
Whiting penned the classic books You Gotta Have Wa (1989) and Tokyo Underworld (2000), and was writing about Japan when hardly anyone was — which meant one slip of the pen, one duff assumption had the potential to alter forever the image of Japan in the minds of English-speaking readers. Whiting didn’t make any duff assumptions.
He also writes fascinatingly about baseball, which is a monumental achievement for what is as boring a sport as God has yet allowed.
Recently suffering from ill health, you may want to spare a good thought for him today.
Mostly paid; some free content
What to read: Having a stroke and not knowing it
3. Hiroko Yoda of Japanese Happiness
Tokyo based translator and author who specializes in re-contextualizing Japanese culture in a fun and engaging way for English readers — and what that means is in-depth posts full of knowledge you didn’t realize you needed, like how the date that cherry blossoms will emerge can be reliably predicted with one simple rule.
100% free; optional paid tier for the same content
What to read: The 600 Degree Rule
4. Kate Elwood of Cultural Conundrums
Continuation of Elwood’s monthly column for one of Japan’s biggest daily newspapers, exploring research on cultural differences that is backed by actual hard data (rather than the typical soup of anecdotes, vague feelings, or stubbornly-held resentments).
Guaranteed to make you more intelligent with every article you read.
100% free
What to read: "That's too bad"?! The challenges of culturally appropriate condolences
5. Kana Chan of Tending Gardens
Canadian-born Kana writes about life in Kamikatsu, Japan’s first zero waste village. Read while sitting down; that dizzying feeling you experience is your everyday resentments melting away — Tending Gardens should be a mandatory prescription for high blood pressure and/or dopamine addiction.
100% free
What to read: Homesteading and farming school
6. Mark Kennedy of Real Gaijin
Mark spent nearly three decades navigating Tokyo’s corporate world then ditched the suit and tie and moved to the heart of Japan's countryside on the island of Kyushu.
Whenever you sit down to do a piece on Japan and you’ve worked yourself up to the heights of imaginative dudgeon, you realize Mark’s already written it first, and — well, ego demands we don’t say it’s better than we could do — but it’s always very very good.
100% free — we think. Looks like Mark’s branching out into video content with some type of subscriber wall
What to read: Even in Japan, the customer is not always right
7. Leon of Hidden Japan
Leon splits his time between a small Japanese city and a big Australian one, and consistently returns with a bulging net when fishing for big game, whether it’s the cultural significance of tatami mats and futons, pachinko vs pinball, the futurism of the shinkansen…or the real cultural white whale: how KFC so infiltrated the Japanese psyche that reservations are needed to eat there on Christmas Day.
100% free
What to read: The Chicken at War?
8. Tim Bunting - Kiwi Yamabushi of Mountains of Wisdom
Tim Bunting is a yamabushi, a practitioner of Shugendō (a Japanese mountain asceticism derived from the hilliest parts of Buddhism and Shintoism). He writes in-depth articles on traditional Japanese culture and spirituality from a corner of Yamagata Prefecture which is experiencing profound population loss. We realize that might make his stuff seem like a downer, but it’s actually fascinating and fun to read!
100% free
What to read: Living in a Dying Japanese City
9. Gianni Simone of Tokyo Calling
“Culture, travel, walking, urban exploration, and the joys of slow life,” is how Gianni describes his Substack, but don’t believe that for a second. He’s the author of Otaku Japan and Tokyo Geek’s Guide and his best content intersects that genre with naughtiness that wouldn’t be out of place on a blog he collaborates with, Tokyo Kinky.
100% free; optional paid tier for the same content
What to read: The Curse of Japan's Best Mother Awards
10. Sam Holden of Dispatches from Post-growth Japan
Sam lives in Tokyo, where he writes about post-growth society, geography, cities, and culture, but more importantly gets out there and actually renovates vacant buildings, plus co-founded an organization to help preserve sentos, the traditional neighborhood bathhouses that are vanishing at a disheartening pace.
100% free
What to read: The common space and history hidden in Tokyo’s bathhouses
11. Shawn B. Swinger of Ninja Nomad
Shawn B. Swinger (what a name!) seems to be neither ninja nor nomad: he’s a perceptive writer on culture plus author of an on-going folk horror novel about nightmarish Japanese goings-on which we could tell you about if we had enough kidney to read it without weeping uncontrollably. Also seems like a very helpful guy, so God knows what hidden psychic depths he’s dredging this stuff up from. If you’re like us, you might want to stick to his non-fiction — it’s great!
Mostly free; some paid content
What to read: My Nightmare Airbnb Stay in Osaka
12. Jack Krown of Frog's Glen
Frog’s Glen is the name of a house Jack and his partner recently built in a seaside farming valley outside Tokyo. He writes about life in this remote place, as well as the traditions, beliefs, and personalities of the people he meets — but trust us, his real treasures are when he voyages back in time a few decades and waxes nostalgic on a Japan long gone by. (Kudos also for having the balls to give his Substack a not-obviously-referencing-Japan title too).
100% free; optional support pledge
What to read: Rub-a-Dub-Dub With the Neighbors
13. Julian Smith of Walking Across Japan
Julian walks across Japan, writes about it, plus takes brilliant photos. Read him.
100% free
What to read: Fading Orange
14. Burcu Basar of Letters From Japan
Travel news, stories and photography from Japan and beyond, on a monthly cadence. Avid hiker, great photographer, doing those profound trips to obscure Japanese islands we all should be dropping everything to pursue — if you’re reading this with any abundance of time and/or money, follow in her footsteps immediately.
100% free
What to read: Walking Goto Islands: Day 1
15. Tales Gubes of A gay fox in Japan 🏳️🌈🦊
Tales is a Brazilian polyamorous gay man who mainly writes in Portuguese but is more and more active these days on his English Substack, writing captivatingly about what gay life in Japan looks like from the perspective of a foreigner. Plus his URL (gayjapan.substack.com) is an absolute beauty.
Mostly paid; some free content
What to read: Being nude in public: some reflections on an onsen
16. Made in DNA of Samuraipunk
Samuraipunk states the following right up front: “For entertainment purposes only” and “Nothing high-brow”, so you know off-rip it’s not going to be another po-faced intellectual Substack.
Basically, it’s weird scifi/mecha/cyberpunk/fiction/horror/interviews. Genre-atomizing creative shit, in other words. As of 2024, Mr. or Ms. DNA seems to be working mainly on a TRPG. We have no idea what a TRPG is, but it sounds like fun!
100% free
What to read: The Hellflesh Heist
Half-Time Break: Who Compiled This List Anyway?
I’m Daniel Eve of The Kyote — an informative, funny and free explainer of the week in Japan.
Fair warning: The Kyote been accused of being entirely too hilarious (see also: perceptive, erudite, etc., etc.)
What to read: The Kyote #7: Yukko Syndrome
POP CULTURE
17. caity summer of plastic fantasma
“Translating Japanese pop culture and myself” — mainly covering Japanese music and popular culture of the 2000s.
The tattoo needle of writing on Japan: gets under the skin and leaves a scar.
100% free
What to read: A Girl With Her Writing Machine
18. Patrick St. Michel of Make Believe Melodies
19. Ryo Miyauchi of This Side of Japan
We’ve grouped these two writers on Japanese music together because they’re performing criticism as it should be, i.e. a distinct and fully deserving branch of literature, unlike what passes for most criticism these days, which is damaged marginals furiously berating people 500 times more talented than they will ever be.
If you follow these two, congratulations, you know J-Pop!
Make Believe Melodies: Mostly free; some paid content
What to read: Make Believe Mailer #106: Japanese Disc Guide Special
This Side of Japan: 100% free
What to read: This Side of Japan's Top 100 Songs of 2023
20. Matt Alt of Matt Alt's True Invention
Dispatches from the front lines of Japan’s pop culture by the author of “Pure Invention: How Japan Made the Modern World”. Basically has the real dope on every wild Japanese pop culture artifact you ever saw online, or your annoying friend keeps bugging you about.
Mostly free; some paid content
What to read: Barbie: An American Icon Made in Japan
PHOTOGRAPHY
21. SHIMIZU Akira of Japan Ordinary
Shimizu has an eye, as opposed to the rest of us who are merely pointing our cameras. His photos of the INTERESTING NORMAL of everyday Japan are, without fail, tinged with the transcendent.
100% free; optional paid plan for same content
What to read: #252
22. Kjeld Duits of Old Photos of Japan
Not content with contributing to the culture by collecting and sharing wonderful historical photographs that would otherwise be lost forever, Kjeld Duits accompanies them with insanely detailed write ups filling in the gaps of Japanese history.
100% free, but don’t even think about ripping off his photos!
What to read: Crossing Japan's Raging Rivers
ECONOMICS & POLITICS
23. Richard Katz of Japan Economy Watch
Richard Katz is a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Council for Ethics In International Affairs and a Special Correspondent for Weekly Toyo Keizai — in other words a Big Brain who knows what he’s talking about.
Richard just relentlessly serves up the true skinny on Japan’s economy and economic policy — which (as of 2024) is necessarily tending towards “don’t panic” territory.
100% free
What to read: Korea Has Surpassed Japan in Per Capita GDP
24. Tobias Harris of Observing Japan
Tobias is a writer and analyst of Japanese politics who is the founder of Japan Foresight LLC, a political risk advisory firm providing timely and forward-looking analysis of Japan’s politics and economic policymaking.
That’s a mouthful. Simply: if you want to understand Japanese politics, read Tobias.
Mostly free; some paid content
What to read: Shinzō and Me
25. Altay Capital - Mostly Value Investing
Brilliant long time value investor sitting in Europe with a 1.5% yen carry trade which he uses to buy up smaller cap value net-nets in Japan, resulting in impressively consistent yield. If that sounds like gibberish to you, we wrote that sentence and we’re still not entirely sure what we mean.
Altay Capital is not affiliated with any fund and his Substack is definitely not financial advice (wink).
100% free
What to read: The Cheap Japanese Basket: Year-End Portfolio Review and Reasons Why I Remain Bullish
26. Rei Saito of KonichiValue
Rei has a zeal for value investing, plus public transit. From Tokyo, he uncovers stock market treasures and explores the city's transit marvels — so if you like money and/or trains, get subscribed pronto.
Mostly paid; some free content
What to read: If I Was CEO of Japan Railways
27. Richardson Handjaja of Animenomics
The anime industry is approaching ¥3 trillion (US$21.5 billion) in worldwide revenue and Animenomics is the best source in English to get reports on the business side of the whole thing.
100% free
What to read: Writers are in high demand as manga grows
FOOD
28. The Conbiniboys
Mike and Matt share the latest and greatest products from Japan's amazing convenience stores, the place where Japanese people spend more time than anywhere else except work and home. And trains. You know what we mean.
While the rest of us are asleep, these guys are out on manoeuvres at their local Lawson, 7-11, Family Mart or Daily Yamazaki to actually try the likes of the Mayonnaise Ice Cream Bar so we don’t have to. Salute!
100% free
What to read: The Top 5 Conbini Mashups
29. The Ramen Bowl
All things ramen and Japanese-inspired cuisine from a massive foodie. Monthly posts with stories, recipes, and culinary experiments with pictures that will make you leap spontaneously at your screen like a starved jungle cat.
100% free
What to read: Easy Jiro-Style Ramen For Beginners
ONE-OFF PIECES
We’ve restricted this list to writers mainly producing ongoing work on Japan, but there are many other talented people doing brilliant one-off or limited pieces. Here’s three to begin with:
1. Johnna Slaby - Where identity begins and ends
Johnna Slaby was born in Japan, grew up in Japan and is Japanese. She just doesn’t look it — so if you thought you had to wrestle with identity issues, imagine if ~100% of the people you met laughed in your face and said “no, but where are you really from?”
Well, obviously, you make that doubleness — the feeling that society is a walled city you live in exile from — into your superpower, and you become a wanderer, and you make art to build yourself a ladder to climb the city’s walls and peek in occasionally at the rest of humanity. It helps if you have talent too. Johnna does. Go read.
2. Robert Walrod - After Godzilla
Part 1 of Robert’s brilliantly researched Pokémon in Context, 1965-1989, a history of one of the most successful and influential video games of all time.
Gotta read all the installments!
3. Leanne Ogasawara - Shogun and the Translation of God
Leanne Ogasawara lived in Japan and worked as a translator for twenty years; now she’s also casting her eyes over other cultural vistas, and her pieces are always worth engaging with.
Disagree With Our Choices? Someone to Add?
Tell us at the Substack Notes thread here.
If you don’t want to use the Substack platform, just drop us an email at the.kyote.newsletter@gmail.com :)