Top 8 Best Japanese Romance Novels

'5 Centimeters per Second' tells the beautiful yet inevitably painful first love story of Toono Takaki and Shinohara Akari. They - with the innocence of schoolchildren, fell in love from elementary school years, from the first time their eyes met. That affection grew day by day, it was not loud, ostentatious but carried the purity of children, it was gentle and strange.

Many years passed, it seemed that that love would be the most beautiful, it was thought that everything would be eternal but the truth often comes unexpectedly and more harshly than what the insiders had drawn. Time stole the souls of two people, the geographical distance made them say goodbye before they had to turn to the 'love crossroads'.

Life hurriedly, urgently also urged them to chase after, when each person decided to fill the void in their tiny heart, find for themselves a new happiness, it was also the time they truly could let go of the past and consider it a beautiful memory tucked away in the depths of their heart. They quietly passed each other on a spring day when the cherry blossoms covered the road, the moment the train passed by, two people, two extreme worlds, perhaps they would never meet again in the future, 'but that alone was enough to create a miracle'...

Buy link: shopee.vn/Sách-5-centimet-trên-giây-i.374899645.13622751425?

Beauty and the beast, princess and frog... Continuing the legacy of numerous famous love stories with the human-animal connection, Ame and Yuki - The Wolf Children, also begins with beautiful emotions and defying the norm between flower (Hana) and wolf, to create snow (Yuki) and rain (Ame). However, this tale, if it were a fairy tale, only encompasses one half, while the other half delves into bitter reality. Not long after, the wolf, exhausted from providing for the family, perished under the bridge, its thin ribcage exposed under the indifferent gaze of society.

Hana then single-handedly raises two unusual hybrid children with daunting issues. For example, when they get sick, should they be taken to a veterinarian or a pediatrician? Should they be raised like wolves or like humans? Struggling to conceal the true identity of her children, as well as giving them the opportunity to find their own path, Hana ultimately embraces them into a mountain home, living on the border between society and nature.

Ame and Yuki - The Wolf Children, is a reflection on the difficulties of parenthood throughout the process of giving birth and nurturing until wiping tears understandingly as they watch them choose their own path in life. Therefore, it is also a hymn full of humanistic values ​​about the dedication and love of parents.

Buy link: shopee.vn/Sách-Ame-Yuki-Những-Đứa-Con-Của-Sói-(Boxset-Manga-3-Tập)-i.374899645.13146843252?

Set in the 1960s, Norwegian Wood is a melancholic melody intertwining various emotions about love, friendship, and the arduous journey to maturity amidst the decay of society at that time.

The narrative follows the memories of the protagonist, Watanabe Toru, from his days as a student carrying the pain of losing his best friend and experiencing numerous romantic relationships, including two girls with contrasting personalities, lingering like deep scars in his heart. Memories, akin to a melancholic ballad, thought to have been covered in dust of time, suddenly rush back on a rainy day in October, blending into the old Norwegian Wood song.

Norwegian Wood is a romantic ode to youth. Simple like the four seasons, like truth, like life, death. It is not just a love story, but also a book that reflects the author's emotions - through the main character Toru, about a Japan in the years after the war, when life began to renew. It's the disappointment in a society turned upside down, where the good traditions have been invaded by colonial culture. It's the loss of faith in the future, when the noble philosophical ideals have turned into laughable lies. It's the loss of a generation, when money can't satisfy human desires, especially those of the young. They can't find their place in that luxurious world.

“For every 7 Japanese, 1 reads Norwegian Wood.” Read Norwegian Wood to reminisce about the fierce yet loss-filled youth, fully recreated in Murakami's epic.

Buy link: shopee.vn/Sách-Norwegian-Wood-Nhã-Nam-HCM-i.404602141.4987291881?

I Want to Eat Your Pancreas is narrated from the perspective of an unnamed protagonist. One day, he finds a diary in the hospital. This diary belongs to his classmate, Sakura Yamauchi, and through it, he learns that she is in the final stages of pancreatic disease and only has a few months left to live. Sakura has told him that he is the only person outside her family who knows this truth. He promised to keep Sakura's secret.

“I don't know about my tomorrow - a person who still has time, but I have thought about her tomorrow - a person who doesn't have much time left, already predetermined.”

Buy link: shopee.vn/Sách-I-Want-to-Eat-Your-Pancreas-(Nhã-Nam-HCM)-i.404602141.13523497938?

What happens when your beloved returns from the afterlife to fulfill the promise “I Will Come with the Rain”? What miracles can a rainstorm bring? It restores Takkun's lost love, the wife he sacrificed his youth to pursue and cherish. It brings Yuji the motherly love he has always longed for. It pieces together a family unwilling to let go of each other.

If a mother returns from the Archive Planet, what then? Yuji gets to hear his mother's whispers again, hold her hand, and embrace her every morning. The sensitive child, deprived of his mother's care for over a year! A child, a tiny joy, simply being closer to his mother a bit more. That's all. The house is filled with love once again. A woman's touch makes Takkun and Yuji's lives better, their emotional wounds slowly fade.

Even though they know “Every reunion must eventually lead to parting ways,” the day the first warm sunlight gently touches Yuji's yellow raincoat, Mio has to return, but this farewell opens up a warm, bright, and blissful future for Takkun and his 6-year-old son because they know, they are ready. “Who says only sunlight brings happiness, perhaps they have never danced in the rain”. This book will be a sweet choice for those who believe in love and the magic it brings.

Buy link: shopee.vn/Book-I-Will-Come-with-the-Rain-(Nhã-Nam)-i.404602141.9338800211?

If I Meet Her revolves around Toyama Satoshi, owner of a small aquarium shop after graduating from university. His quiet life goes on until the day famous model Morikawa Suzune unexpectedly applies for a job at the store and also for the position of the shop owner's girlfriend.

At the same time, a newly met girlfriend through a matchmaking program begs him to recount the story of his friendship with two 'eccentric' children, a boy and a girl, during their childhood years. Throughout the story, the past and the present alternate, intertwining, and twisting, making the peaceful days of the young man filled with various emotions.

Another melancholic love story from author Takuji reminds us that no memory within us is forgotten. It always remains there, buried beneath the chaos and worries, waiting for an ordinary day when memories rise strongest, occupying every corner of the soul. Like the way Satoshi meets Karin at the aquarium shop he owns, evoking in him the image of three children who spent the best years of their lives together, and the innocent first love that never turned into words. All those memories haunt him until adulthood.
“Sadness is also a gift, if sadness is unnecessary, then why do humans need emotions, right?”

Buy link: shopee.vn/Book-If-I-Meet-Her-Let-Me-Say-Hello-(TB-2022)-(Nhã-Nam-HCM)-i.404602141.19837187367?

I Still Hear Your Whisper might not be Ichikawa Takuji's best book, but it's his first novel when he started participating in the literary world. It lays the groundwork for Takuji's success, always incorporating mysterious and surreal elements to create poignant and breathtaking love stories.

I Still Hear Your Whisper revolves around the relationship between Satoru Inoue and Yuko Igarashi. Two gloomy individuals, full of negative thoughts about life. They meet by chance, like the unexpected coincidence of fate. They are each other's first love. First love is said to be beautiful only when it remains unfinished.

The love between Satoru Inoue and Yuko Igarashi is no different. They love each other, but in the end, they still choose liberation for each other. The reality is that not all lovers can hold hands and walk the same path because, even if they are soulmates, mutual understanding does not necessarily lead them to walk hand in hand to the end.

Buy link: tiki.vn/toi-van-nghe-tieng-em-tham-goi-p194959722.html?

Socrates In Love tells the story of innocent, pure, vibrant, and yet deeply poignant high school love. It is gentle, devoid of the surges of emotion, free from jealousy or anger, and immeasurable.

The book recounts the vivid, bittersweet memories of Sakutaro with his high school girlfriend. The first love between Sakutaro and Aki comes naturally, like destiny, not a love at first sight but a slow, steady rain. They start as class confidants, chosen to play Romeo and Juliet, sharing a diary... until they realize they have feelings for each other. But their story cannot reach its conclusion, as Aki stops at seventeen, and Sakutaro moves forward - left alone...

The story's setting is pristine yet tinged with melancholy, with a troubled ending. All the shyness, hesitation, even the hesitant confessions of love, are all in the past – a past that seems so distant yet so close, because Aki is gone, cancer has taken Sakutaro's Aki, and all that remains is the memory of a loving heart, of the call of love still echoing in life.

Link to buy: shopee.vn/Sách-Nhã-Nam-Socrates-In-Love-The-Call-of-Love-in-the-Heart-of-the-World-i.64983116.6134852296?