The Passengers on the Hankyu Line: a novel

Come along on a heartwarming, funny, and a perfectly cosy voyage with the charming and relatable passengers—including one dashing dachsund—whose lives intersect and affect each other on one of Japan's most romantic railway lines.

Between the two beautiful Japanese towns of Takarazuka and Nishinomiya, in a stunning mountainous area of Japan, rattles the Hankyu train. Passengers step on and off, lost in thought, contemplating the tiny knots of their existence. On the outward journey we are introduced to the emotional dilemmas of five characters, and on the return journey six months later, we watch them resolve.

A young man meets the young woman who always happens to borrow a library book just before he can take it out himself; a woman in a white bridal dress boards looking inexplicably sad; a university student leaves his hometown for the first time; a girl prepares to leave her abusive boyfriend; and an old lady discusses adopting a dog with her granddaughter. These fully developed stories crisscross each other like the railway lines in the book.

As ever with Arikawa’s writing, the characters are vivid and delightful, their predicaments touching on universal human desires and emotions that feel utterly familiar. Her warmth spills over, alongside a fierce wit, a bit of fun railway geekery, and plenty of delicious detail about the beauties and traditions of the Japan we travel through with these unforgettable passengers.

Hiro Arikawa is a renowned author from Tokyo. Her novel The Travelling Cat Chronicles is a bestseller in Japan and has been published around the world.

Allison Markin Powell won the PEN Translation Prize for her translation of Hiromi Kawakami’s The Ten Loves of Nishino and is also the translator of Kawakami’s Strange Weather in Tokyo and The Nakano Thrift Shop as well as Shunmyo Masuno’s The Art of Simple Living and works by Osamu Dazai, Fuminori Nakamura, and Kanako Nishi, among others. She was the guest editor of the first Japan issue of Words Without Borders and maintains the online database Japanese Literature in English. She lives in New York.