Strangers

Strangers

3.59 of 5 stars 3.59  ·  rating details  ·  768 ratings  ·  97 reviews
Set in the great human maelstrom of Tokyo, Strangers is a thinking man's ghost story. When Harada, a jaded TV scriptwriter, runs into his long-dead parents one night, he enters the womb of a city whose living inhabitants have perhaps lost their souls. Can Harada save his?
Paperback, 208 pages
Published September 1st 2003 by Vertical (first published 1987)
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Community Reviews

(showing 1-30 of 1,636)
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Fern
lovely atmospherics in this japanese ghost story that is more elegaic than shocking. well at least till the denouement. yamada was a scriptwriter. so he really knows how to grab your attention. and there's a great portrait of the mind of a salaryman too.
Angela
When one is accustomed to the trends of American fantasy novels, it's a refreshing shock to the system to come across a clean, spare little book like Taichi Yamada's Strangers. The blurbs on the cover call it a "ghost story"; it is exactly that, delivered without pretention and with a classic sort of eerieness that hearkens back to The Twilight Zone and even farther, with echoes of mythic tales of what one must and must not do when encountering the dead.

Hideo Harada is a middle-aged TV scriptwri...more
Nancy Oakes
Feb 20, 2008 Nancy Oakes rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: fans of Japanese ghost stories or fiction
Recommended to Nancy by: amazon
Very brief, this reads quickly & it is easy to read as well. If, like myself, you are a fan of Japanese ghost stories, you're going to see the end coming on this one right away so that kind of spoiled it for me, because this story is very much in line with the old traditional type of ghostly tale from Japan.

A brief summary:

Harada-san (Hideo) is in his mid 40s, is a scriptwriter for television who isn't working all that much any more and lives alone, having been recently divorced and never t...more
Jim
Aug 20, 2007 Jim rated it 3 of 5 stars  ·  review of another edition Recommends it for: Those who like their horror more Ring-like than Nightmare on Elm Street
I bought this for research. It is not my usual fare. It features a solitary script-writer living alone in a tower block which seems to house only him and a young woman. One night the man, suffering from a bout of nostalgia, visits the part of the city where he was brought up only to run into a man who seems identical to his father. In time he meets the man's wife and he is not surprised to find she looks like his mother. Visiting them, as he finds himself compelled to do, takes its toll on his h...more
Rhodri
As much as I wanted this book to work I have to admit that it doesn't deserve more than an average rating. Perhaps something was lost in the translation, but the narrator's musings were heavyhanded and denied the reader any sense of involvement in the book. You were told how things were and that was that. In the moments when the writer decided to let you read the story, and not the narrator's view on matters, there were some genuinely moving moments, but these were too few and far between, which...more
Lolakay
I finished Strangers a few days ago. Odd little book. It basically reads like a bad Japanese horror movie. (Think The Eye, which is actually Chinese.) The amazing plot twist at the end is pretty obvious at the beginning, but it's fun as a ghost story. The narration (or maybe the translation) is a bit stilted at points, but some of the scenes, where the protagonist meets up with his dead parents, who are 'living' in a nearby Tokyo neighborhood, are kind of touching. Anyway, this book gave me craz...more
Roberta
Solitudine

Hideo Harada, un autore di testi per la televisione di mezza età, si ritrova a vivere nell'appartamento che utilizzava come solo studio dopo il divorzio dalla moglie. Ingabbiato in quelle poche stanze in una palazzina enorme circondata dal traffico, Hideo si ritrova più solo che mai: sua moglie non è più sua moglie, il figlio adulto non sente il bisogno di vederlo, i suoi genitori sono morti quando lui aveva dodici anni e non ha più parenti. Persino i suoi collaboratori sono persone co...more
Nick Tramdack
I read this book in a Caribou Coffee on Halsted Street during a depressing time in my life. The windows were rainy, I was almost the only person in the store. But Yamada's absorbing story and sharp style succeeded in distracting me from my troubles.

Some technical observations:

"By the same token, getting divorced wasn't likely to expand the horizons of an over-40 television writer so terribly much. I knew this." Look at how the narration takes 3 words to emphasize that this judgment was being mad...more
Andrew
A mother and father in their thirties with a 48-year-old son could not be of the real world, of course, but if an imagined world could allow such a relationship to exist, then I was ready to embrace that world. The terror I’d felt before was gone; floating before me were my parents’ joyful smiles welcoming me into their home.


***


Harada is a television screenwriter living in Tokyo. He is divorced, estranged from his son, and his best friend and working partner has dissolved their relationship to p...more
Potjy
Jul 29, 2008 Potjy rated it 5 of 5 stars  ·  review of another edition Recommends it for: all Murakami fandom that can stand creepy things
Can I give this book 4-and-a-half or 4-and-three-quarter stars? Huh? Nope? Oh, so bad.

I've read in a magazine somewhere that you should NOT read this as a horror. Well, I agree with the columnist, it is much more profound than that. However, when the author wants to present his idea in the form of horror novel, so it must be a horror novel. Therefore, when some good horror elements were lost, I feel obliged to subtract a quarter or two of a star from my rating.
Our Library Mornington
Set in Japan, this is a very eerie story about a writer (Harada) who upon divorcing his wife feels himself at a loose end. Harada feels great insecurity, although he will not admit it. His life is changing on many levels – amongst them work. He lives in a near empty apartment block. He meets one of the other tenants, Kai and forms a friendship with her which turns to love.

Meanwhile, he is visiting his parents at night and reliving the feelings of great security they gave him before their death i...more
Max
It's not a particularly long book, but wow, this one builds very quickly and had me hooked from the first visit to the protagonist's dead parent's apartment. Yamada has written a wonderful novel here, a really eerie novel that starts off in the light and finishes as dark as they come. Odd really as it actually starts at night and ends in the daytime, but the atmosphere of the novel is almost palpable towards the end, with a twist and a half that just makes me want to shout "read it!!".
Harada is...more
novia
I have to admit that the book is not like what I imagined it to be, I was expecting it to be a full haunting blood chill kinda story…but I wouldn’t say that I don’t like it, in fact I really like it. The story is well-written and like most Japanese novels I had read so far, Strangers (originally titled Ijin-tachi to no Natsu or Summer With Strangers) is closed with great ending. I really like the realization that hits him in the end of his journey. And the ending gives something for us to think…...more
Maisha
As I started opening the first pages, Strangers seemed pretty exciting regardless of the genre, which is horror and personally I do not enjoy such books. I didn't read it as a horror novel, and I found myself reflecting over several things rather getting horrified over the book. The story is well written, pretty different than the styles I have seen before. The language used is easy to comprehend, with several formal English words introduced because I've never heard some of them. But as the stor...more
Susana Pereira
Não sou grande fã do género "terror" (nem em literatura nem em cinema) mas surgiu a oportunidade de ler este livro e resolvi experimentar para testar os meus limites... :)

Acabei por gostar bastante, talvez porque o grau de terror não é assim tão grande. Sim, é uma história de fantasmas, mas o tema principal do livro acaba por ser a relação pais-filho (o facto dos pais já terem morrido há mais de 30 anos é só um pormenor) e tem a quantidade suficiente de suspense para nos fazer ficar a ler pela n...more
Emi
I really liked it. It wasn't ground-breaking but it was interesting enough.

I liked the pace of the novel, the narrative, the way even the most out of this world things seemed utterly normal. Since the very beginning there was a kind of suspense that made me want to keep reading. And while I don't necessarily like who Kei turned out to be, I can see why the author created such a character.

Considering that after reading "Strangers" I would gladly read more of Yamada's books, I can't give this bo...more
Charlotte (Buried in Books)
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.
Noam
i only knew about this book from pretentiously wanting to read it before watching the obayashi movie based on it, but it was well worth the obscure recommendation. good show. i'm not sure how it could possibly be read as a horror story, so the frequent exhortation to "not read it as a horror story" is a little odd: this is much more like a (ryu) murakami book - in a good way - and not just because it's japanese... the terse writing and family dynamic are the winners. but the specters and spooks...more
David Haws
While I like speculative fiction, “ghost stories” aren’t my favorites, and I probably wouldn’t have read the book except that they had it in our library’s section of Japanese fiction. I find the concept a little weak. How did 桂 (I’m grateful the translator left us enough information to determine the kanji of Kei’s name) become so powerful by simply killing herself? What was the point of the misdirection with the parents? Why use a first person narrative so you know the protagonist is going to su...more
Parrish Lantern



When you meet someone for the first time, there's a formality to it, like a polite introduction.This is usually followed by a period of time where you size each other up. Am I going to like this individual, what have we in common, is there enough interest for me to put in the effort? Whether conscious of this or not, we are checking each other out ,but every now & then someone comes along that cuts right through that. Beyond the slight introduction, which you're already laughing at, because...more
Suzanne (Chick with Books)
A Japanese Ghost Story that will Haunt you...

One of the things I love about the Japanese Literature I've discovered this year is its ability to weave the present day with the spirits of the past so matter of fact. Spirits are accepted as existing. Strangers by Taichi Yamada is such a story. It's a ghost story, but more than that. There is an underlying layer that makes this a much more complex story, one that will have you questioning your own heart...

Imagine meeting your parents when they are a...more
Matt
A recently divorced middle-aged scriptwriter, Harada, lives on his own in an apartment complex inhabited mostly by offices.

On an impulse, Harada returns to the town where he lived as a child, before his parents were killed in a freak accident 30-odd years ago. It's there that he meets a man who looks remarkably as his long-dead father did the year of his death. Harada accepts an invitation to the man's house where he discovers the man's wife also bares an uncanny resemblance to his long-dead mo...more
Mira, a escriba
É muito fácil entrar no livro. Primeiro, conhecemos Hideo e depois a sua vida, um homem divorciado recentemente, não fala com o filho e vive num escritório. À medida que a história se desenrola, com um ritmo arrepiante, tudo ganha uma áurea fantasmagórica. No final, algo melancólico e surpreendente acontece, que ninguém esperava, por causa de segredos escondidos... A escrita simples, mas competente, juntamente com os temas que trata faz deste livro fascinante e, ao mesmo tempo, comovente!
Isabel
I suddenly had this feeling that I did not want to meet the man's wife. To meet her would be to instantly obliterate the glorious time I was having because of the man's uncanny likeness to my father; I would have to come crashing back to reality. No, wait. That wasn't it. Or at least that wasn't all. A part of me was actually entertaining a secret hope, experiencing a secret terror. It couldn't be, could it? Surely it couldn't be.

A ghost story set in present-day Tokyo. Middle-aged television scr...more
Maria
This book is rather... odd, wonderfully odd. I had never read anything by Taichi Yamada before and this ended up being quite a lovely surprise. I am glad I bought it! I don't really want to get into the story because I am afraid I will reveal details that might ruin the experience for you. I can tell you one thing though... it makes you think.

Think twice before not listening... to someone's words, to someone's gestures, to someone's eyes... they might tell you something important. Pay attention...more
Mia
Ein typisch japanischer Roman, einzig das Ende fand ich etwas zu überstürzt. "Sommer mit Fremden" lässt sich gut an einem verregneten Tag durchlesen (aufgrund der vorherrschenden melancholischen Stimmung ist das Buch eher wenig für einen unbeschwerten Sommertag geeignet).
Realität und Illusion verschwimmen in jeder Zeile. Der Stil hat mich teilweise an Haruki Murakami erinnert, eventuell liegt das aber nur an der gleichen Übersetzerin. 1 Stern Abzug, weil das Ende so schnell kam.
Gertrude & Victoria
Strangers, by Yamada Taichi, is a story of a middle-aged scriptwriter in the midst of a small personal crisis, who is caught in a bizarre set of circumstances, as his life is interrupted by an unexpected and ghostly encounter. Yamada's style is lucid, concise and modern, which makes for easy reading. He capably delivers you from one scene to the next, with a cool Japanese chic.

The main character, Hara, is stranded between two worlds as he tries to seperate, reality from illusion, apparition from...more
Conta-me Histórias
Mais um brilhante autor japonês.

Neste livro o leitor depara-se com uma história comovente entre homens e fantasmas, entre o mundo dos vivos e o mundo dos mortos, tema muito habitual na literatura e folclore japonês.

Num prédio de escritórios, durante a noite, apenas dois inquilinos permanecem isolados na sua solidão. Quando um deles procura a companhia do outro e esta é recusada, uma série de acontecimentos são despoletados.

Um homem adulto, que perdeu os pais num acidente aos 12 anos de idade, re...more
Liz
I was very disappointed by this book, the premise was interesting and I started expecting good things. The author was a TV scriptwriter before turning his hand to novels - and Strangers reads like mediocre TV drama. The dialogue was terrible, I cringed at every line and the twist in the tale was far too obvious. I may be being unfair, I think the biggest problem with the book was the translation, the clunkiest I've read in a long time.
Tiziana
A haunting ghost story driven by the loneliness and nostalgia of the individual that also underlines the schism between traditional and modern Tokyo. Although it may appear predictable at first (a story about a man meeting his dead parents can't go well, right?), there's a final twist which makes this a worth read.
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Strangers
Strangers (Paperback)
Strangers (Paperback)
Strangers (Hardcover)
Sommer mit Fremden (Paperback)

Taichi Yamada is one of the most famous and highly respected writers in Japan. Winner of many awards for literary excellence from private organizations and from the Japanese government, he is best known for his scripts for TV dramas, but has also written many novels and plays. He was born in Tokyo in 1934, and graduated from Waseda University in 1958 after having studied japanese Language and Lite...more
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“In fact, knowing she'd been through hardship filled me with sweet tenderness.” 2 people liked it
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