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The name arrived late. Publishers now apply “healing fiction” to Japanese and Korean novels in translation set in cafés, bookshops and libraries, built on quiet plots with a thread of feeling running through them. Booksellers also call it cosy fiction, or simply cat fiction. In Japan, the sensibility long predates the label, since iyashikei, the healing mode, has been established in manga and anime for decades. What is new is the export.