Hutchinson Heinemann wins seven-way auction for Ito Ogawa's Tsubaki Stationery Store

Hutchinson Heinemann has triumphed in a seven-way auction for Tsubaki Stationery Store, an upmarket novel by one of Japan’s best-known writers Ito Ogawa.

Publishing director Ailah Ahmed acquired world English-language rights from Bruno Onuki Reynell and Li Kangqin at New River Literary on behalf of Kohei Hattori at The English Agency and Gentosha. Maya Ziv at Dutton, Penguin Random House US, acquired North American rights. 

Tsubaki Stationery Store follows 25-year-old Hatoko who, having recently returned to Kamakura, settles into the small stationery store she has inherited. There, she steps into the profession of public scribe: she is commissioned to write letters, in calligraphy, to heal broken friendships and old romances.

Ahmed said: “I completely fell in love with Tsubaki Stationery Store and Hatoko and her exit from busy city life to slow mornings in her grandmother’s stationery store. There is a beautiful lesson in this novel about slowing down to savour the world and in repairing broken bonds rather than throwing relationships away. It is a transformative and healing classic of Japanese literature.”

Reynell said: “Tsubaki Stationary Store has cemented its status as an enduring favourite among Japanese readers. It is wonderful that this book about the reconciliatory and transformative power of the written word will now be brought to English-language readers in the excellent hands of Ailah and her team.” 

Ogawa is a novelist, lyricist and translator from Yamagata Prefecture, Japan. Since her debut The Restaurant of Love Regained (Alma Books, 2012), she has written many novels, essays and children’s books. Several of her books have been bestsellers and she has been nominated for the Japan Booksellers’ Award on three occasions, including for Tsubaki Stationery Store. 

Cat Anderson is a translator of Japanese books and manga, a National Centre for Writing mentee and winner of the JLPP international translation competition and has translated various other books. 

The Bookseller reported last spring on the growth of "healing fiction", as UK authors lean into a genre powered by Japanese and Korean literature in translation.

Hutchinson Heinemann will publish Tsubaki Stationery Store, translated into English by Cat Anderson, in June 2026.