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Haruki Murakami (b. 1949) | |
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Japanese novelist, short-story writer, essayist, and translator, whose work combine postmodern techniques and fantasy with influences from Amererican culture. Murakami is one of the most popular and widely translated of all contemporary Japanese authors. "I wake up, but where? I don't just think this, I actually voice the question to myself: "Where am I?" As if I didn't know: I'm here. In my life. A feature of the world that is my existence." (from Dance, Dance, Dance, 1988) Murakami Haruki was born in Kyoto, but he grew up in Ashiya, Hyogo. Both his parents taught Japanese literature. However, Murakami himself was more interested in American hard-boiled detective stories and science fiction. "Alone in my room I would listen to American jazz and rock-and-roll, watch American television shows and read American novels," Murakami recalled in an interview. (New York Times, September 27, 1992) In 1968 Murakami moved to Tokyo to study theater at Waseda University, graduating in 1975. In 1974 Murakami opened with his wife, Yoko Takahashi, a jazz club, which they managed until 1981. Between 1986 and 1989 Murakami lived in Greece. He has been a visiting fellow in East Asian studies at Princeton University and taught at Tufts University in Medford, MA. After spending years abroad, Murakami returned to Japan in 1995. Murakami started to write in the 1970s. His first novel, Kaze no uta o kike (1979, Hear the Wind Sing) won the Gunzo New Writer's Award. It was followed by Sen kyuhyaku nanaju san nen no pinboru (1980, Pinball 1973), which was awarded Kondansha publisher's Shinjin Bunkaku prize for best newcomer in 1980. These works introduced Murakami's nameless protagonist, whose character owes debt to Chandler's Philip Marlowe and the existentialist antiheroes of the nouveau roman. He was also the narrator in Hitsuji o meguru boken (1982, A Wild Sheep Chase), in which he searched for a mysterious sheep. Before disappearing, the creature had "lived" inside a powerful businessman as the embodiment of his Nietzschean will-to-power. Murakami has regarded A Wild Sheep Chase as his real debut work. The Sheep Man appeared again in Dance Dance Dance (1988), saying: "Dance. As long as the music plays." Murakami's fourth novel, Sekai no owari to hadoboirudo wandarando (1985, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World), a kind of science fiction novel built on two separate but intricately related stories, won the Tanizaki Prize. In Noruwei no mori (1987, Norwegian Wood), named after the Beatles song, Murakami's approach was untypically realistic and straightforward. The two-volume love story set in the 1960s became the author's most popular novel in Japan, selling over four million copies. Until Nejimaki-dori kuronikuru (1994-95, Wind-up Bird Chronicle) Murakami had not touched political subjects in his imaginative novels, but in this work he also dealt with the Japanese campaign in Manchuria during the Pacific War. "In trying to depict a fragmented, chaotic and ultimately unknowable world, Mr. Murakami has written a fragmentary and chaotic book," said Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times (October 31, 1997). After the Quake (2000), a collection of short fiction, was inspired by the 1995 Kobe earthquake. Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche (1997-98), Murakami's first book on non-fiction, was about the terrorist attack on the Tokyo subway system in 1995 by the Aum Shinrikyo cult. Murakami has also translated into Japanese works by F.Scott Fitzgerald, Truman Capote, Raymond Carver, Paul Theroux, John Irving, Tim O'Brien, and others. Note: This page is under work! For further reading: Murakami Haruki: The Simulacrum in Contemporary Japanese Culture by Michael Robert Seats (2006); Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words by Jay Rubin (2005); Postmodern, Feminist and Postcolonial Currents in Contemporary Japanese Culture: A Reading of Murakami Haruki, Yoshimoto Banana, Yoshimoto Takaaki and Karatani Kojin by Murakami Fuminobu (2005); Haruki Murakami's The Wind-up Bird Chronicle: A Reader's Guide by Matthew Strecher (2002); Encyclopedia of Wold Literature in the 20th Century, vol. 3., ed. by Steven R. Serafin (1999); Contemporary World Writers, ed. by Tracy Chevalier (1993) Selected works:
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