Famous People in Japan



Murakami Haruki

Date of Birth 12 January 1949
Place of Birth Hyogo

Murakami Haruki graduated from the Drama course of the Department of Literature of Waseda University in 1973. After graduating school,he managed a jazz coffee room at Kokubunji. Whrn he was 29, he began to write a novel and he got the Gunzou Literature Prize for a budding writer with his maiden work "Kazeno Utao Kike." He published two books in a row "1973 nen no Pinball", and "Hitsujio Meguru Bouken." These are known his "three early works" or "three works of the rat" because these are in agreement on the theme which they all take place in the early '70s, during the times of student struggle.

" Norway-no nori" (Noweigean Wood), which is named after Beatles song, was sold 27 million volumes just in a year. The phenomenon created Murakami Boom. He wrote this and "Dance Dance Dance" during traveling around southern Europe for three years. Later he wrote about this trip in the essey named "Tooi Taiko".

His literature is a mirror of society, which is set in the big cities of the 1960's to 1980's. Truly, it can be said that his style couldn't be born without the high degree economic growth, that is, the prosperity which is after 1960 in this country. He wrote the story of people who make a living there.

His works are characterized by a construction of the world which has nothing to do with the real world of the 70's, making up a fictitious world through his sensitivity and conception.

His main work was "Sekaino owarito hard-boiled Wonderland" for which he received the Akutagawa Ryunosuke Prize.

References: Murakami Haruki -the lost world-, p.179,195

Reported by: Maiko Hisada
Data verified by: Mariko Matano
Date of Report: November 1995
Updated by: Hisako Kinoshita October, 1997
Updated by: Naomi Satou, May 1998

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