[1][2][3] Red Circle Authors was set up in 2016, by Richard Nathan and Koji Chikatani, to showcase Japan's best creative writing.
[7][8] Some of the group's authors already have well-established reputations in Asia (in China, Taiwan, Korea, and Thailand, for example)[9] and are starting to win international literary prizes.
Red Circle Authors launched this imprint and publishing programme on 23 November 2018 with the launch of its first series Red Circle Minis[14] and the publication of its first three Minis:[15] Stand-In Companion by Kazufumi Shiraishi,[16][17][18][19] Backlight by Kanji Hanawa[20][21][22][23] and Tokyo Performance by Roger Pulvers[24][25] Commentators and reviewers said after their publications that the approach taken was "not about resizing big books into small objects, but rather about celebrating textual brevity in book form itself",[26][27] a longtime tradition in Japan.
This imprint was launched in 2024 with the publication of Kaleidoscope Japan: A nation through the lens of literature, by one of the company’s co-founders, drawing on his experience within the world of Japanese letters.
It promotes its select curated group of contemporary Japanese and Japan-based authors and their creative works to the international publishing industry and readers from these two locations.