Murakami, Haruki (1949-…), is a popular Japanese author whose works have been widely translated in the West. Murakami has developed one of the most original styles in modern literature. His works contain a unique blend of realism, fantasy, mystery, and science fiction. Murakami’s novels and short stories reflect a strong interest in pop culture as well as Western classical music. They show alienation from traditional Japanese culture, though many also reveal an appreciation for the spirituality and folklore of traditional Japanese religion.
Murakami was born on Jan. 12, 1949, in Kyoto. He grew up in Ashiya, near Kobe. As a youth he read much Western literature, including the American science-fiction writer Kurt Vonnegut and the American detective story writer Raymond Chandler. Murakami graduated from Waseda University in Tokyo in 1975 with a B.A. degree. He began writing while operating a jazz bar in Tokyo with his wife. Murakami’s first novel, Hear the Wind Sing, was published in 1979 and won the Gunzo award, a literary prize for new writers. Following the publication of his second novel, Pinball, 1973 (1980), Murakami sold the jazz club and devoted himself to writing full time.
Murakami’s third novel, A Wild Sheep Chase (1982), describes the search for a mysterious supernatural sheep. His next novel, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), tells two alternating stories that converge at the end. One tale takes place in a secret part of the Japanese subway system. The other takes place in a dying land where the narrator is employed in a library as a reader of dreams stored in animal skulls.
Murakami’s fifth novel is Norwegian Wood (1987). Compared with his early novels, Norwegian Wood is a more conventional realistic work about a young man who loses a friend and then a girlfriend to suicide. The novel Dance, Dance, Dance (1988) is a sequel to A Wild Sheep Chase. It is a murder mystery with science-fiction elements.
Murakami lived outside of Japan from the mid-1980’s through the mid-1990’s. During the early 1990’s, he taught in American universities, where he continued to produce fiction. His novel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (1994-1995) centers on an aimless young man who has a sequence of strange, dreamlike experiences while searching for his cat and his wife, both missing.
Kafka on the Shore (2002) concerns two main characters whose stories are told in alternating chapters. One character is a 15-year-old boy who runs away from home and from his father, a famous sculptor. The other story involves an elderly man who can talk to cats after what may have been exposure to aliens as a youth. After Dark (2004) is a dreamlike novel that follows a teenage girl as she encounters a series of strange characters over the course of a late-night journey through Tokyo. 1Q84 (2009-2010) is a long novel in which a female assassin finds herself in a parallel world. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage (2013) follows a man who searches through his past to find out why his life took a wrong turn years earlier. Killing Commendatore (2017) is a long, dreamlike novel about a Japanese painter. In addition to his novels, Murakami published his short stories in such collections as The Elephant Vanishes (1993); After the Quake (2000); Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman (2006); Men Without Women (2014); and First Person Singular (2020).
Much of Murakami’s nonfiction relates to modern Japanese history. Underground (1997) features interviews with survivors of a 1995 poison gas attack on the Tokyo subway, as well as members of the religious cult behind the attack. Murakami is a dedicated triathlete and marathon runner. He discussed this aspect of his life in What I Talk About When I Talk About Running (2007). He wrote an essay collection about writing called Novelist as a Vocation (2022). Murakami has also translated several modern American writers into Japanese.
