This article aims to show how the Japanese have observed the suburbs of France for thirty years, and examine how they “translated” the suburbs, that is to say how they made it understandable beyond its reported surface, by resorting to literature. Japanese literature discovered new values in the suburbs of Tokyo brought by the translation of Western literatures: the wood-walk is inspired by Turgenev and based on a new sensitivity towards nature, and the middle-class children are surrounded by care in the family as told in English children’s literature. Currently, Japanese translators of the French suburbs’ literature are trying, on the one hand, to present the breath of people living there that scientific research as media cannot grasp, but they cannot shirk, on the other hand, to use notes to help readers understand the sociological context of the works. Towards the suburbs (1995) of Horie Toshiyuki is conceived, according to the author, to represent the “position” of the Parisian suburbs, while the translation of Le petit Malik by Mabrouck Rachedi (2008) is made to convey the voices of the suburbs. Rachedi fully brings the sociocultural conditions of the suburbs in his book and this trend is accentuated by the annotated translation. Horie, on the other hand, drops the sociological situation by translating the suburbs of Paris into the impressions of landscapes procured by the bookish detours. The suburb thus remains a place in the making, where the walkers are wandering in daydreams, and the translation is a common place where the meaning is suspended and questioned.