The cult Japanese writer and “rebellious genius” Ryu Murakami has died at the age of 74
Kyiv • UNN
The cult Japanese writer and filmmaker Ryu Murakami died on October 17 at his home. He wrote more than 40 works.
Ryū Murakami, the cult Japanese writer and filmmaker whose provocative novels, filled with black humor, found millions of readers, has died at the age of 74. According to the Japanese publishing house Gentosha, he passed away at his home on October 17, UNN reports, citing The Guardian.
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Murakami, who was called the "enfant terrible" (rebel genius) of contemporary Japanese literature, wove scenes of violence, explicit drug use, and sex into his works, using them to offer sharp criticism of Japanese and American cultures.
"It was a tremendous honor for us to present English-speaking audiences with many of Ryū Murakami’s strange, distinctive, and cinematic novels," said Adam Freudenheim, publisher and managing director of Pushkin Press, which publishes translations of Murakami’s works in the United Kingdom together with Bloomsbury.
Ryū Murakami was born in 1952 in the city of Sasebo (Nagasaki Prefecture) to a family of teachers. In high school, he played drums in a rock band, and after taking part in a protest on the roof of a building, he was placed under house arrest for three months. He published his first novel, "Almost Transparent Blue," in 1976. Written while he was still a student, the book is narrated by a character named Ryū and depicts the hedonistic lifestyle of a group of disillusioned young people gripped by nihilism. The work won the Gunzo New Writers’ Prize, as well as the Akutagawa Prize—the most prestigious literary award in Japan.
Ryū Murakami was not related to his more famous namesake—Haruki Murakami. Ryū Murakami’s books are "sharper and more vicious," journalist David Pilling wrote in 2013. "If Haruki is the Beatles of Japanese literature, then Ryū is its Rolling Stones."
Over the course of his life, Murakami wrote more than 40 novels and collections of short stories, including "Coin Locker Babies," "In the Miso Soup," "Audition," "Piercing," and "Popular Hits of the Shōwa Era." Most of his books have still not been translated into English.
Many of the author’s works were adapted for the screen—both with his own involvement and by other filmmakers. His best-known work is "Audition"—a 1999 feature film directed by Takashi Miike. The plot follows a widower who stages fake auditions in order to find a new partner. In 2009, writing about the novel in The Guardian, Irvine Welsh described its prose as "elegiac and touching, yet at the same time sharp and palpable on a physical level—like the touch of a butcher’s knife or a surgical scalpel."
Murakami’s third novel, "Coin Locker Babies"—the story of children abandoned in coin lockers—was recognized with the Noma Literary Prize in the "New Face" category. In 2020, Russell Thomas, selecting the work for a list of the best books set in Japan, wrote in The Guardian: "It is a surreal coming-of-age horror story that hurtles the reader from the heights of love and stardom to the depths of madness and murder." "In his works, Murakami never shies away from the opportunity to shed light on the darkest corners of society," he added.
"All of us at Pushkin Press are deeply saddened by the news of his death and extend our condolences to the writer’s many readers around the world," Freudenheim said.