Haruki Murakami 村上 春樹
Murakami giving a lecture at MIT in 2005
Born	(1949-01-12) January 12, 1949 (age 63) Kyoto, Japan
Occupation	Author, novelist
Nationality	Japanese
Genres	Fiction, surrealist, magical realism
Influences Raymond Chandler, Franz Kafka, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Carver, John Irving, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, J.D. Salinger, Anton Chekov, Gabriel García Márquez, Richard Brautigan, Thomas Pynchon, Kurt Vonnegut, Philip K. Dick, Truman Capote, Honoré de Balzac, William Shakespeare
Signature
www.harukimurakami.com

Haruki Murakami (村上 春樹, Murakami Haruki^?, born January 12, 1949) is a Japanese writer and translator.^[1] His works of fiction and non-fiction have garnered critical acclaim and numerous awards, including the Franz Kafka Prize and the Jerusalem Prize, among others.

Murakami's fiction, often criticized by Japan's literary establishment, is humorous and surreal, focusing on themes of alienation and loneliness.^[2] He is considered an important figure in postmodern literature. The Guardian praised Murakami as "among the world's greatest living novelists" for his works and achievements.^[3]

Biography[link]

Murakami was born in Japan during the post–World War II baby boom.^[4] Although born in Kyoto, he spent his youth in Shukugawa (Nishinomiya), Ashiya and Kobe.^[5][6] His father was the son of a Buddhist priest,^[7] and his mother the daughter of an Osaka merchant.^[8] Both taught Japanese literature.^[9]

Since childhood, Murakami has been heavily influenced by Western culture, particularly Western music and literature. He grew up reading a wide range of works by American writers, such as Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan. These Western influences often distinguish Murakami from other Japanese writers.^[10]

Murakami studied drama at Waseda University in Tokyo, where he met his wife, Yoko. His first job was at a record store, much like Toru Watanabe, the narrator of Norwegian Wood. Shortly before finishing his studies, Murakami opened a coffeehouse and jazz bar, the Peter Cat, in Kokubunji, Tokyo, which he ran with his wife^[11] from 1974 to 1981.^[12]

Many of his novels have themes and titles that invoke classical music, such as the three books making up The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: The Thieving Magpie (after Rossini's opera), Bird as Prophet (after a piano piece by Robert Schumann usually known in English as The Prophet Bird), and The Bird-Catcher (a character in Mozart's opera The Magic Flute). Some of his novels take their titles from songs: Dance, Dance, Dance (after The Dells' song, although it is widely thought it was titled after the Beach Boys tune), Norwegian Wood (after The Beatles' song) and South of the Border, West of the Sun (after the song "South of the Border").^[13]

Murakami is a marathon runner and triathlete enthusiast, though he did not start running until he was 33 years old. On June 23, 1996, he completed his first ultramarathon, a 100-kilometer race around Lake Saroma in Hokkaido, Japan.^[14] He discusses his relationship with running in his 2008 memoir What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.^[15]

[edit] Trilogy of the Rat

Murakami began writing fiction when he was 29.^[16] "Before that," he said, "I didn’t write anything. I was just one of those ordinary people. I was running a jazz club, and I didn’t create anything at all."^[17] He was inspired to write his first novel, Hear the Wind Sing (1979), while watching a baseball game.^[18] In 1978, Murakami was in Jingu Stadium watching a game between the Yakult Swallows and the Hiroshima Carp when Dave Hilton, an American, came to bat. According to an oft-repeated story, in the instant that Hilton hit a double, Murakami suddenly realized that he could write a novel.^[19] He went home and began writing that night. Murakami worked on Hear the Wind Sing for several months in very brief stretches after working days at the bar. He completed the novel and sent it to the only literary contest that would accept a work of that length, winning first prize.

Murakami's initial success with Hear the Wind Sing encouraged him to continue writing. A year later, he published a sequel, Pinball, 1973. In 1982, he published A Wild Sheep Chase, a critical success. Hear the Wind Sing, Pinball, 1973, and A Wild Sheep Chase form the Trilogy of the Rat (a sequel, Dance, Dance, Dance, was written later but is not considered part of the series), centered on the same unnamed narrator and his friend, "the Rat." The first two novels are unpublished in English translation outside of Japan, where an English edition, translated by Alfred Birnbaum with extensive notes, was published by Kodansha as part of a series intended for Japanese students of English. Murakami considers his first two novels to be "weak," and was not eager to have them translated into English.^[20] A Wild Sheep Chase, he says, was "the first book where I could feel a kind of sensation, the joy of telling a story. When you read a good story, you just keep reading. When I write a good story, I just keep writing."

Wider recognition[link]

At Jerusalem Prize ceremony, 2009

In 1985, Murakami wrote Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, a dream-like fantasy that took the magical elements of his work to a new extreme. Murakami achieved a major breakthrough and national recognition in 1987 with the publication of Norwegian Wood, a nostalgic story of loss and sexuality. It sold millions of copies among Japanese youths, making Murakami a literary superstar in his native country. The book was printed in two separate volumes, sold together, so that the number of books sold actually doubled, creating the million-copy bestseller hype. One book had a green cover, the other one red.^[3]

In 1986, Murakami left Japan, traveled throughout Europe, and settled in the United States. He was a writing fellow at Princeton University in Princeton, New Jersey, and at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.^[6] During this time he wrote South of the Border, West of the Sun and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle.^[6]

An established novelist[link]

In 1995, he published The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, a novel that fuses the realistic and fantastic, and contains elements of physical violence. It is also more socially conscious than his previous work, dealing in part with the difficult topic of war crimes in Manchukuo (Northeast China). The novel won the Yomiuri Prize, awarded by one of his harshest former critics, Kenzaburo Oe, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1994.^[21]

The processing of collective trauma soon became an important theme in Murakami's writing, which had previously been more personal in nature. After finishing The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Murakami returned to Japan in the aftermath of the Kobe earthquake and the Aum Shinrikyo gas attack. He came to terms with these events with his first work of non-fiction, Underground, and the short story collection after the quake. Underground consists largely of interviews of victims of the gas attacks in the Tokyo subway system.

English translations of many of his short stories written between 1983 and 1990 have been collected in The Elephant Vanishes. Murakami has also translated many of the works of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Carver, Truman Capote, John Irving, and Paul Theroux, among others, into Japanese.^[6]

Since 2000[link]

Sputnik Sweetheart was first published in 1999, followed by Kafka on the Shore in 2002, with the English translation following in 2005. Kafka on the Shore won the World Fantasy Award for Novels in 2006.^[22] The English version of his novel After Dark was released in May 2007. It was chosen by the New York Times as a "notable book of the year". In late 2005, Murakami published a collection of short stories titled Tōkyō Kitanshū, or 東京奇譚集, which translates loosely as "Mysteries of Tokyo." A collection of the English versions of twenty-four short stories, titled Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, was published in August 2006. This collection includes both older works from the 1980's as well as some of Murakami's more recent short stories, including all five that appear in Tōkyō Kitanshū.

In 2002, Murakami published the anthology Birthday Stories, which collects short stories on the theme of birthdays. The collection includes work by Russell Banks, Ethan Canin, Raymond Carver, David Foster Wallace, Denis Johnson, Claire Keegan, Andrea Lee, Daniel Lyons, Lynda Sexson, Paul Theroux, and William Trevor, as well as a story by Murakami himself. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, containing tales about his experience as a marathon runner and a triathlete, was published in Japan in 2007,^[23] with English translations released in the U.K. and the U.S. in 2008. The title is a play on that of Raymond Carver's short story collection, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.^[24]

Shinchosha Publishing published Murakami's novel, 1Q84, in Japan on May 29, 2009. 1Q84 is pronounced as 'ichi kyū hachi yon', the same as 1984, as 9 is also pronounced as 'kyū' in Japanese.^[25] The book was longlisted for Man Asian Literary Prize 2011.

Recognition[link]

In 2006, Murakami became the sixth recipient of the Franz Kafka Prize from the Czech Republic for his novel Umibe no Kafuka (Kafka on the Shore).^[26]

In September 2007, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Liège,^[27] as well as one from Princeton University in June 2008.^[28]

Murakami was awarded the 2007 Kiriyama Prize for Fiction for his collection of short stories Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, but according to the Kiriyama Official Website, Murakami "declined to accept the award for reasons of personal principle".^[29]

In January 2009 Murakami received the Jerusalem Prize, a biennial literary award given to writers whose work deals with themes of human freedom, society, politics, and government. There were protests in Japan and elsewhere against his attending the February award ceremony in Israel, including threats to boycott his work as a response against Israel's recent bombing of Gaza. Murakami chose to attend the ceremony, but gave a speech to the gathered Israeli dignitaries harshly criticizing Israeli policies.^[30] Murakami said, "Each of us possesses a tangible living soul. The system has no such thing. We must not allow the system to exploit us."^[31]

In 2011, Murakami donated his €80,000 winnings from the International Catalunya prize to the victims of the 11 March earthquake and tsunami, and to those affected by the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Accepting the award, he said in his speech that the situation at the Fukushima plant was "the second major nuclear disaster that the Japanese people have experienced... however, this time it was not a bomb being dropped upon us, but a mistake committed by our very own hands." According to Murakami, the Japanese people should have rejected nuclear power after having "learned through the sacrifice of the hibakusha just how badly radiation leaves scars on the world and human wellbeing".^[32]

Films and other adaptations[link]

Murakami's first novel Hear the Wind Sing (Kaze no uta o kike) was adapted by Japanese director Kazuki Ōmori. The film was released in 1981 and distributed by Art Theatre Guild.^[33] Naoto Yamakawa directed two short films Attack on the Bakery (released in 1982) and A Girl, She is 100 Percent (released in 1983), based on Murakami's short stories "The Second Bakery Attack" and "On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning" respectively.^[34] Japanese director Jun Ichikawa adapted Murakami's short story "Tony Takitani" into a 75-minute feature.^[35] The film played at various film festivals and was released in New York and Los Angeles on July 29, 2005. The original short story, translated into English by Jay Rubin, is available in the April 15, 2002 issue of The New Yorker, as a stand-alone book published by Cloverfield Press, and part of Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Knopf. In 1998, the German film Der Eisbaer (Polar Bear), written and directed by Granz Henman, used elements of Murakami's short story "The Second Bakery Attack" in three intersecting story lines.

Murakami's work was also adapted for the stage in a 2003 play entitled The Elephant Vanishes, co-produced by Britain's Complicite company and Japan's Setagaya Public Theatre. The production, directed by Simon McBurney, adapted three of Murakami's short stories and received acclaim for its unique blending of multimedia (video, music, and innovative sound design) with actor-driven physical theater (mime, dance, and even acrobatic wire work).^[36] On tour, the play was performed in Japanese, with supertitle translations for European and American audiences.

Two stories from Murakami's book after the quake—"Honey Pie" and "Superfrog Saves Tokyo"—have been adapted for the stage and directed by Frank Galati. Entitled after the quake, the play was first performed at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in association with La Jolla Playhouse, and opened on October 12, 2007 at Berkeley Repertory Theatre.^[37] In 2008, Galati also adapted and directed a theatrical version of Kafka on the Shore, which first ran at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theater from September to November.^[38]

On Max Richter's 2006 album Songs from Before, Robert Wyatt reads passages from Murakami's novels. In 2007, Robert Logevall adapted "All God's Children Can Dance" into a film, with a soundtrack composed by American jam band Sound Tribe Sector 9. In 2008, Tom Flint adapted "On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning" into a short film. The film was screened at the 2008 CON-CAN Movie Festival. The film was viewed, voted, and commented upon as part of the audience award for the movie festival.^[39]

It was announced in July 2008 that French-Vietnamese director Tran Anh Hung would direct an adaptation of Murakami's novel, Norwegian Wood.^[40] The film was released in Japan on December 11, 2010.^[41]

In 2010, Stephen Earnhart adapted The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle into a 2 hour multimedia stage presentation. The show opened January 12, 2010 as part of the Public Theater's "Under the Radar" festival at the Ohio Theater, presented in association with The Asia Society and the Baryshnikov Arts Center. The show had its world premiere at the Edinburgh International Festival on August 21, 2011.^[42] The presentation incorporates live actors, video projection, traditional Japanese puppetry, and immersive soundscapes to render the surreal landscape of the original work.

Each short story in Murakami's after the quake collection was adapted into a six-song EP entitled .DC: JPN (after the quake 2011) in March 2011 following the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami to help benefit the relief efforts by musician Dre Carlan.^[43]

Bibliography[link]

Novels[link]

Short stories[link]