Browse a rack of translated Japanese literature these days and you’re likely to spot a certain motif among the book covers: cats.
Often recognized as an atmospheric trope or plot device in the fiction of Haruki Murakami, cats feature prominently in a range of other translated Japanese books. A significant number of books published in the past decade have the word “cat” in their very titles.
You could simply chalk it up to humanity’s soft spot for fuzzy felines. But with more titles on the horizon, it’s evident that this literary cat craze may also be indicative of something else: a yearning for comfort and consolation against the existential dread of the present.
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