3.5 stars rounded up.

A Hundred Years and a Day is a collection of 34 short stories written by Tomoka Shibasaki and translated by Polly Barton. It is being published on February 25, 2025.

This collection of loosely connected short stories is woven together with several common threads: nostalgia, a search for identity and community, and a slight speculative element. At a point in one of the stories, Japanese fiction is described as where "reality blends with the world of dreams" and this is an apt description of the collection as a whole.

There are several unusual elements present here too. Many of the short stories do not have a title but are instead numbered and start with a bolded description. As the title suggests, the stories jump around a lot in time, so it takes a while to determine where in time each story is situated. Many characters are also referred to by physical or other descriptions rather than names, so that took some time to get used to as well.

These stories will leave the reader with a lot to think about. Many questions are posed and few answers given, so I would recommend this collection to those who appreciate Japanese fiction and are okay with ambiguity, nostalgia and an undercurrent of anxiety.

Thank you to Stone Bridge Press via NetGalley for making this collection available for early review. All opinions are my own.

A Hundred Years and a Day by Tomoka Shibasaki is a cozy read. It’s a book of 34 short stories with no main theme among them. Each story has its own meaning and some of them, possibly due to translation, were harder to appreciate and harder to keep my interest than others. It’s of no fault of the translator, she did incredible. It’s just that sometimes things from one language don’t quite carry over to another and offer the same effect.

I appreciate the talents of Tomoka Shibasaki but I believe that a few things got “lost in translation” and that if the stories were read in the native language in which it was written then it would have been a more enjoyable book, in my opinion. The stories seem to just end…just like that. And for some of these that ended that way, I was left wanting more, I felt cheated.

This is a nice read overall and includes some relatable situations. It offers a quick fix if you want to get in a quick story.

I received a digital ARC in return for my honest review. Thank you NetGalley & Stone Bridge Press for offering the opportunity.

Whoa, groundbreaking is accurate. This is so unique, yet easy to read and follow. Sometimes when short story collections skew experimental, I find myself losing some enjoyment to the brainpower it takes to stick with it. That wasn't the case here.

When I saw Polly Barton was the translator though, I wasn't as surprised!

{Thank you bunches to Tomoka Shibasaki, Polly Barton, Stone Bridge Press, Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest review!}

a collection of 34 short stories that explore human connection in an ever-changing world??? count. me. in.
these stories feel both intimate and vast, capturing fleeting moments between people and the places they inhabit.

Shibasaki has a gift for making the ordinary feel profound. Whether it’s women temporarily sharing a house during wartime, a man hopping between rooftop apartments, or an old ramen shop standing resilient while everything around it disappears, her characters exist in a state of quiet flux. their lives intersect, separate, and leave behind traces of meaning that linger long after the last page. the writing is sharp and restrained, almost journalistic in its clarity, yet filled with subtle allegory. there's a sense of detachment, but not coldness—more like watching lives unfold through a hazy window. she doesn’t spell things out; instead, she trusts the reader to sit with the ambiguity. some stories hint at societal shifts, like war, urban redevelopment, or technological progress, but never in a heavy-handed way.

what stands out to me??? the atmosphere—melancholic yet strangely comforting. it captures the bittersweet nature of change, the way people and places evolve, disappear, or endure. these are stories that make you pause and reflect, not because they deliver grand resolutions, but because they don’t. if love quiet, thought-provoking fiction that lingers in the mind, this collection is a must-read. the author proves once again why she’s one of the most compelling voices in contemporary literature.

4.5 stars!

Good collection of short stories, most are mildly entertaining. The stories I particularly take a liking: 7, 8, 15, 17, 27, 28, and 29.
I think it's fascinating how we get these glimpses into one's life, someone before, and after them; how some things change and others stay the same no matter how much time has passed.
Here are brief descriptions of my favorites;
7. The character doesn't dwell too much, simply follows the flow of life.
8. Discuss economy plays an important part in our life.
‪“If you've got no money then you can't do anything, wherever you go. Wherever you go, it's the same.”
15. Relatable, how we just drift apart from some people without any fight.. the only reason being life happens.
‪“Sometimes they'd recall a particular movie that they've seen together in that cinema. At those times, they'd want to talk with someone about what they'd seen, but would have the feeling nobody would get what they were trying to say, apart from the person they'd been to the cinema with, so they didn't say anything.” ‬
17. How we see a piece of someone's life through stuff they once owned. Wondering what attracted them to this object we are currently drawn into as we stumble upon it in a secondhand store.
27. The realization that the very place we are standing on didn't always exist, and may be gone.
‪‪“Would even this small coastal country─where ever more high-rise buildings were being built, and where the sight of soil beneath one's foot had disappeared long ago─be returned do desert someday in the distant future?” ‬
28. Wintry vibes. I like this one most of all.
A boy having a conversation with his friend on their way home days before his disappearance, and this friend thought of something that seems foreboding.
‪“Looking at the fallen snow sparkling blue-white at their feet despite the darkness of the sky, from which fresh snow fell ceaselessly, the fourth-floor kid wondered if in fact those two words, scary and beautiful, meant the same thing.”
29. One of the characters saying ‪“I feel like a ghost is less scary than someone with bad intentions." in response to horror gossip, commenting how creepy old guys' obsession with Japanese young girls in school uniform.

A collection of short stories each depicting a slice of daily life in Japan. Each story follows a different set of character and were really short - shorter than your average short story.

I feel like Japanese short story collections typically follow some sort of theme and there’s a centralized setting each of the stories take place in (i.e. What You Are Looking For Is In The Library, Before The Coffee Gets Cold, etc) but this collection felt very random, even the chapter titles are random (My love for daikon was so great that when I found myself living in a part of the world where it wasn’t commonly grown, I decided to try growing it myself; I ended up serving daikon dishes to my neighbors, and even making up a kid’s story about daikon... this is a real chapter…chapter 6 to be exact).

I thought it was alright - a quick and easy read to get through and I enjoy reading about mundane, daily life stories. Some times I thought the writing was a bit dull though, but not sure if it’s the writing itself or the translation. Perhaps this book would also benefit from having a cat on the cover like all other Japanese translated books?? i don’t know!

The story I liked the most was: Standing outside a small house, three junior high students who were skipping school look toward the nearby train station; ten years later.

I received an arc of this book via NetGalley in exchange for a review!!!

34 short stories describing daily life of mostly Japanese protagonists, most (if not all) highlighting the theme of "life goes on", and the futility of struggling against it. None of the stories stand out as such, and nothing here is out of the ordinary, but, taken together, they convey a certain sense of "Japanese-ness" that is often elusive elsewhere. The pared down writing style helps with this a lot - most characters and places don't have names, and the time of writing is rarely made clear. The reader has to focus on the events in each story, and their deterministic conclusion.

I started reading the book dreading it, frankly, given the reviews online. However, as I went from story to story I couldn't help but be drawn by the atmospheric writing, and the world the author creates through it. In this world, while individual events can be sad, and specific situations bleak, the minute one steps back and looks at it all from afar, "life goes on". There is something optimistic, beautiful, and powerful in such a narrative - things go on, and, yes, life can be hard and confusing, but time erodes much of the sharpness of events, leaving just the perpetuity of being. The more the stories progress the more the meta narrative gains shape and becomes increasingly philosophically poignant.

I also absolutely loved the story titles - each representing its own microcosm, and, often, more powerful and to-the-point than the stories they precede.

The author, however, can come across as trying too hard to tell a broader story, and misses making the stories themselves be engaging. In other words - while I loved the broader context of the collection, most stories, in their own individual rights, failed to impress.

Highly recommended to short story lovers (even if it is just to see what one can make of a well planned collection), and lovers of Japanese literature and culture more broadly.

My thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with an early copy of this book in return for an honest review.

This book of short stories was an interesting read for me. I don’t love it, but I don’t hate it either. The stories don’t intertwine or correlate with one another, but I didn’t feel confused about what was going on or who was who. It was fun to read about life in Japan and I loved how each story had a recurring theme: life moves on. Nothing stays the same, nobody is the same person they were yesterday, and what we do now affects not only the trajectory of our life but of those who we will never meet yet we relate to in spirit and circumstance. I enjoyed it. I may be generous by giving this book four stars, but that’s fine with me. I believe it deserves it and I want to read more of Shibasaki’s work. ☺️

I received an arc from Stone Bridge Press via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All opinions and statements are my own.

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