| Ryū Murakami | |
| Birth Date: | February 19, 1952 |
| Birth Place: | Sasebo, Nagasaki, Japan |
| Nationality: | Japanese |
| Movement: | Postmodernism |
| Notableworks: | |
is a Japanese novelist, short story writer, essayist and filmmaker. His novels explore human nature through themes of disillusion, drug use, surrealism, murder and war, set against the dark backdrop of Japan. His best known novels are Almost Transparent Blue, Audition, Coin Locker Babies and In the Miso Soup.
Murakami was born in Sasebo, Nagasaki on 19 February 1952. The name Ryūnosuke was taken from the protagonist in Daibosatsu-tōge, a work of fiction by .
Murakami attended school in Sasebo. While a student in senior high, he joined in forming a rock band called Coelacanth, as the drummer.[1] In the summer of his third year in senior high, Murakami and his fellow students barricaded the rooftop of his high school and he was placed under house arrest for three months. During this time, he had an encounter with hippie culture, which had a strong influence on him.
After graduating from high school in 1970, Murakami formed another rock band and produced some 8-millimeter indie films.[2] He enrolled in the silkscreen department at Gendaishichosha School of Art in Tokyo, but dropped out in the first year. In October 1972, he moved to Fussa, Tokyo and was accepted for the sculpture program at Musashino Art University. He married his wife, a keyboard player, in the 1970s and their son was born in 1980.[3] In the early 1990s, Murakami devoted himself to disseminating Cuban music in Japan and established a label, Murakami's, within Sony Music.
Murakami started the e-magazine JMM (Japan Mail Media) in 1999 and still serves as its chief editor. Since 2006, he has also hosted a talk show on business and finance called Kanburia Kyuden, broadcast on TV Tokyo.[4] The co-host is Eiko Koike. In the same year, he began a video streaming service, RVR (Ryu's Video Report). In 2010, he established a company,, to sell and produce eBooks.[5] [6]
Murakami's first work was the short novel Almost Transparent Blue, written while he was still a university student.[7] It deals with promiscuity and drug use among disaffected youth. Critically acclaimed as a new style of literature, it won the Gunzo Prize for New Writers in 1976, despite some objections on the grounds of decadence. Later the same year, his Blue won the Akutagawa Prize,[8] going on to become a bestseller.[2]
In 1980, Murakami published a much longer novel, Coin Locker Babies, again to critical acclaim, and won the 3rd Noma Liberal Arts New Member Prize. Next came the autobiographical novel 69, and then Ai to Gensō no Fascism (1987), revolving around the struggle to reform Japan's survival-of-the-fittest society with a secret "Hunting Society". His work Topaz (1988) concerns a sado-masochistic woman's radical expression of her sexuality.
Murakami's The World in Five Minutes From Now (1994) is written as a point of view in a parallel universe version of Japan, and was nominated for the 30th Tanizaki Prize. In 1996 he continued his autobiography 69, and released the Murakami Ryū Movie and Novel Collection. He also won the Taiko Hirabayashi Prize. The same year, he wrote the novel Topaz II, about a female high school student engaged in "compensated dating", which later was adapted as the live-action film Love and Pop by anime director Hideaki Anno. His Popular Hits of the Showa Era concerns the escalating firepower in a battle between five teenage male and five middle-aged female social rejects. Literary scholar Barbara Greene suggests that the text reveals how "the invisible violence of post-Bubble Japan’s social order is made explicit through a low-stakes, yet hyperviolent, guerilla war undertaken by a set of ludicrous and narcissistic characters whose increasingly deadly attacks are met with public indifference. Within the consumer-capitalist social order, personal satisfaction is the paramount goal..."[9]
In 1997 came the psychological thriller novel In the Miso Soup, set in Tokyo's Kabuki-cho red-light district, which won him the Yomiuri Prize for Fiction that year. Parasites (Kyōsei chū, 2000) is about a young hikikomori fascinated by war. It won him the 36th Tanizaki Prize. The same year Exodus From Hopeless Japan (Kibō no Kuni no Exodus) told of junior high school students who lose their desire to be involved in normal Japanese society and instead create a new one over the internet.[2]
In 2001, Murakami became involved in his friend Ryuichi Sakamoto's group NML No More Landmines, which sets out to remove landmines from former battle sites around the world.
In 2004, Murakami announced the publication of 13 Year Old Hello Work, aimed at increasing interest in young people who are entering the workforce. Hantō wo Deyo (2005) is about an invasion of Japan by North Korea. It won him the Noma Liberal Arts Prize and .
The novel Audition was made into a feature film by Takashi Miike. Murakami reportedly liked it so much he gave Miike his blessing to adapt Coin Locker Babies. The screenplay for the latter was worked on by director Jordan Galland but Miike failed to raise enough funding for it. An adaptation directed by Michele Civetta is currently in production.[10]
In 2011, Utau Kujira won the .
| Year | Japanese Title | English Title | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1976 | Almost Transparent Blue | English translation by Nancy Andrew | ||
| 1977 | War Begins Beyond the Sea | French translation by Claude Okamoto | ||
| 1980 | Coin Locker Babies | English translation by Stephen Snyder, republished by Pushkin Press, 2013 | ||
| 1983 | All Right, My Friend | |||
| 1985 | Melancholy of Tennis Boy | |||
| 1987 | 69 Shikusuti Nain | 69 | English translation by Ralph F. McCarthy, published by Pushkin Press, 2013 | |
| Fascism of Love and Fantasy | ||||
| 1989 | Raffles Hotel | |||
| 1991 | Cocksucker Blues | |||
| Superconduction Nightclub | ||||
| 1992 | Ibiza | |||
| Nagasaki Holland Village | ||||
| 1993 | Ecstasy | |||
| Fijian Midget | ||||
| 368Y Par4 the 2nd shot | ||||
| The seashore of the music | ||||
| 1994 | Popular Hits of the Showa Era: A Novel | English translation by Ralph F. McCarthy. Published by Pushkin Press, 2013 | ||
| The World in Five Minutes From Now | ||||
| Piercing | English translation by Ralph F. McCarthy. Published in English January 2007. | |||
| 1995 | KYOKO | Kyoko | French translation by Corinne Atlan | |
| 1996 | Hūga Virus: The World in Five Minutes From Now II | |||
| Melancholia | French translation by Sylvain Cardonnel | |||
| Love & Pop: Topaz II | ||||
| 1997 | Audition | English translation by Ralph McCarthy.[11] Spanish translation by J.C. Cortés. | ||
| Strange Days | ||||
| In the Miso Soup | English translation by Ralph F. McCarthy. Published in English 2005. | |||
| French translation ("Miso Soup") by Corinne Atlan. Published in French January 2003. | ||||
| 1998 | Lines | French translation ("Lignes") by Sylvain Cardonnel, Czech translation ("Čáry") by Jan Levora. | ||
| 2000 | Parasites | French translation by Sylvain Cardonnel | ||
| Exodus of the country of hope | ||||
| 2001 | Thanatos | |||
| THE MASK CLUB | The Mask Club | |||
| The Last Family | ||||
| 2005 | From the Fatherland, with Love | Translated into English by Ralph McCarthy, Charles De Wolf and Ginny Tapley Takemori, published by Pushkin Press, 2013 | ||
| 2010 | A Singing Whale[12] | |||
| 2011 | My Love is Beneath You | |||
| 2015 | Old Terrorist |
| Year | Japanese Title | English Title | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1984 | Tropical Sad | reissued under the new title of "Summer in the city" in 1988. | ||
| 1986 | POST, Room with Pop Art | |||
| Run! Takahashi | a series of novels about one baseball player | |||
| New York City Marathon | ||||
| 1988 | Topaz | |||
| The collection of the Ryū Murakami dish novels | ||||
| 1991 | Love is always strange | |||
| 1995 | The collection of the Ryū Murakami movie novels | |||
| 1996 | Monica - Dream of a musician, story of a novelist | Joint work with Ryuichi Sakamoto | ||
| 1997 | Swan | |||
| 1998 | Truth of a cup of wine | |||
| 2003 | ||||
| renamed to in the paperback edition | ||||
| 2007 | The privileged mistress gastronomy: The collection of Ryū Murakami dish & sensuality novels | |||
| 2012 | Hello Life from 55 years old | |||
| 2016 | Tokyo Decadence: 15 Stories | A collection of stories from several of Murakami's story collections, translated by Ralph McCarthy. Spanish translation by J.C. Cortés |
| Year | Japanese Title | English Title | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2004 | It's Been Just a Year and a Half Now Since I Went with My Boss to That Bar | short story published in Zoetrope: All-Story (Vol. 8, No. 4, 2004). English translation by Ralph McCarthy.[13] | ||
| 2005 | I am a Novelist | short story published in The New Yorker (Jan. 3, 2005). English translation by Ralph McCarthy | ||
| 2009 | At the Airport | short story in Zoetrope All-Story (Vol. 13, No. 2, 2009). English translation by Ralph McCarthy. | ||
| 2010 | No Matter How Many Times I Read Your Confession, There's One Thing I Just Don't Understand: Why Didn't You Kill the Woman? | Zoetrope All-Story (Vol. 14, No. 4, 2010). | ||
| 2011 | Penlight | Zoetrope All-Story (Vol. 15, No. 3, 2011). English translation by Ralph McCarthy. |
| Year | Japanese Title | English Title | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1985 | American Dream | |||
| 1987 | Every Man is a Consumable | Vol.1–11 (1987–2010) | ||
| 1991 | All the Ryū Murakami essays 1976-1981 | |||
| All the Ryū Murakami essays 1982-1986 | ||||
| All the Ryū Murakami essays 1987-1991 | ||||
| 1992 | ||||
| 1993 | To you who don't want to exist as "an ordinary girl." | |||
| 1996 | Tokyo Story after you go away | |||
| 1998 | Murder in a lonely country | |||
| Physical Intensity | Vol.1-5 (1998–2002) | |||
| 1999 | From the Lonely country to far-off world soccer | |||
| 2000 | The love that anyone can do | |||
| 2001 | Useless Woman | |||
| 2002 | I studied economics so as not to be deceived: Ryū Murakami weekly report | |||
| Involuntary celibacy | ||||
| From macro, Japanese economy to micro, yourself: Ryū Murakami weekly report | ||||
| 2003 | SEX is better than Suicide: Ryū Murakami's theory of love and woman | |||
| 2006 | Am I spoiling myself? 27 years old, female office worker | |||
| The collection of Ryū Murakami literary essays | ||||
| 2007 | Unexpectedly, I'm a shopping lover | |||
| 2008 | Still I want to love, want to be happy, and also want money | |||
| 2009 | Encouragement of having no hobby | |||
| 2010 | Old and middle age who run away, youths with few wants | |||
| 2012 | Debris is buried under the cherry tree. |
| Year | Japanese Title | English Title | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1977 | Kenji Nakagami vs Ryū Murakami: Our ship unmoors in a stagnant fog | with Kenji Nakagami | ||
| 1981 | Wōku donto ran Murakami Ryū vs Murakami Haruki | Walk, Don't Run: Ryū Murakami vs Haruki Murakami | with Haruki Murakami | |
| 1985 | EV.Cafe ultra-Darwinism | with Ryuichi Sakamoto | ||
| 1992 | See you, my friend | Ryū Murakami = Ryuichi Sakamoto letters | ||
| 1994 | Ryū Murakami + Noi Sawaragi Latest Discussion: God is in the details | with Noi Sawaragi | ||
| 1999 | Ryū Murakami interview collection: The Unbearable Salsa of Being | |||
| 2006 | Dialogue to stare at "individual": Ryū Murakami X Joichi Ito |
| Year | Japanese Title | English Title | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1983 | Picture book: All Right, My Friend | Illustrator: Katsu Yoshida | ||
| 1989 | Illustrator: Sumako Yasui | |||
| 1996 | Wonderful Jennifer | Illustrator: Yoko Yamamoto | ||
| 1999 | What were we able to buy with that money?: Bubble Fantasy | Illustrator: Yuka Hamano | ||
| 2000 | The Straight Story | picture book of the movie (director: David Lynch) of the same title, Illustrator: Yuka Hamano | ||
| 2001 | The old man goes to the mountain for money-making. The investment occasionally produces hope. | Illustrator: Yuka Hamano | ||
| 2003 | Hello Work for 13 years old | Illustrator: Yuka Hamano | ||
| Postman | Illustrator: Yuka Hamano | |||
| Shield | Illustrator: Yuka Hamano |
| Year | Japanese Title | English Title | Role | Director | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1979 | 限りなく透明に近いブルー Kagirinaku tōmei ni chikai burū | Almost Transparent Blue | Novel, Scriptwriter, Director | Ryū Murakami | |
| 1983 | だいじょうぶマイ・フレンド Daijōbu mai furendo | All Right, My Friend | Novel, Scriptwriter, Director | Ryū Murakami | |
| 1989 | ラッフルズホテル Raffuruzu Hoteru | Raffles Hotel | Novel, Director | Ryū Murakami | |
| 1992 | トパーズ Topāzu | Topaz a.k.a. Tokyo Decadence | Novel, Scriptwriter, Director | Ryū Murakami | |
| 1996 | ラブ＆ポップ Rabu & Poppu | Love & Pop | Novel | Hideaki Anno | |
| 1999 | オーディション Ōdishon | Audition | Novel | Takashi Miike | |
| 2000 | KYOKO | Because of You | Novel, Scriptwriter, Director | Ryū Murakami | |
| 2001 | 走れ！イチロー Hashire! Ichirō | Run! Ichiro | Novel | Kazuki Ōmori | |
| 2003 | 昭和歌謡大全集 Shōwa kayō daizenshū | Karaoke Terror: The Complete Japanese Showa Songbook | Novel | Tetsuo Shinohara | |
| 2004 | シクスティナイン Shikusutinain | 69 | Novel | Lee Sang-il | |
| 2006 | ポプラル！ Popuraru! | Popular! | Executive Producer | Jen Paz | |
| 2018 | ピアッシングPiasshingu | Piercing | Novel | Nicolas Pesce |