Jayne Joso’s new book is a collection of stories and short fiction set in Japan. Each is centred on a particular character – a sinister museum curator, a son caring for his dementia-struck father, a widow in the far north reflecting on her provincial life, a bookseller – and tells a compelling story about them. Together these short narratives become a mosaic of a life in contemporary Japan, its people, its society, its thinking, its character. With the focus of the world on the Tokyo Olympics, Japan Stories provides a window into a country of which we know less than we think.