I enjoyed The Woman in the Dunes as well. Very well written, though it left me feeling a bit disturbed. Another great novel (also Japanese) is Kokoro by Natsu

I enjoyed The Woman in the Dunes as well. Very well written, though it left me feeling a bit disturbed. Another great novel (also Japanese) is Kokoro by Natsume Soseki. It's not sci-fi and the plot isn't especially thick, however just like a lot of Japanese novels, the focus is on the character development, and it is done very very well.