Ryū Murakami

Ryū Murakami (村上 龍, Murakami Ryū; 19 February 1952 – 17 October 2026) was a Japanese novelist, 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 Ryūnosuke Murakami (村上龍之助, Murakami Ryūnosuke) in Sasebo, Nagasaki on 19 February 1952. The name Ryūnosuke derived from the protagonist in Daibosatsu-tōge, a work of fiction by Kaizan Nakazato.

During his high school years in Sasebo, he joined a rock band called Coelacanth as its drummer. In the summer of his third year in high school, Murakami and his classmates barricaded the school's rooftop and were placed under house arrest for three months. During this time, he was exposed to hippie culture, which would exert a strong influence on him.

After graduating from high school in 1970, Murakami formed another rock band and produced 8-millimeter indie films. 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 admitted to the sculpture program at Musashino Art University. He married a keyboard player in the 1970s, and their son was born in 1980.

In the early 1990s, during the Special Period, Ryu Murakami promoted and supported Cuban music in Japan, especially after meeting José Luis Cortés (NG La Banda) in Havana. He established Murakami’s label within Sony Music and produced recordings by Cuban musicians. His work for twenty years with Cuban musicians contributed to Cuban music recognition in Japan.

Murakami started up e-magazine JMM (Japan Mail Media) in 1999 and served as the publication's chief editor. From 2006 on, he also hosted with Eiko Koike a talk show that focused on business and finance called Kanburia Kyuden, broadcast on TV Tokyo. That same year, he started up a video streaming service, RVR (Ryu's Video Report). In 2010, he founded a company, G2010, to sell and produce eBooks.

Ryū Murakami died on 17 October 2026, at the age of 74. His death was announced by his publisher Gentosha on 23 October.

Murakami's first work of fiction was the short novel Almost Transparent Blue, written while he was still a university student. 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 objections to its portrayal of decadence. Later that same year, it won the Akutagawa Prize, and became a bestseller.

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. Coin Locker Babies became popular among Japan's alienated youth that included punk rockers. The autobiographical novel 69 followed, and then Ai to Gensō no Fascism (1987) was released. The novel's plotline revolves around the struggle to reform Japan's survival-of-the-fittest society with a secret "Hunting Society".^{[clarification needed]} His subsequent novel Topaz (1988) concerns a sado-masochistic woman's radical expression of her sexuality.

A nominee for the 30th Tanizaki Prize, Murakami's The World in Five Minutes From Now (1994) was written from the perspective of a parallel universe version of Japan. In 1996, he expanded his autobiography 69, and released the Murakami Ryū Movie and Novel Collection. He also won the Taiko Hirabayashi Prize. That same year, he wrote Topaz II, a novel about a high school girl who engages in "compensated dating". Anime director Hideaki Anno later adapted the novel as the live-action film Love & Pop. Murakami's Popular Hits of the Showa Era concerns the escalating firepower in a battle between social outcasts: five teenage boys versus five middle-aged women. 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..."

In the Miso Soup, a psychological thriller novel set in Tokyo's Kabuki-cho red-light district, was released in 1997. The novel won the Yomiuri Prize for Fiction that year. Thereafter, Parasites (Kyōsei chū, 2000), a novel about a young hikikomori fascinated by war, won the 36th Tanizaki Prize. That same year, Exodus from the Land of Hope (Kibō no Kuni no Exodus) was released. The novel centers on junior high school students, who create a new society through the internet to replace the normalized Japanese one in which they no longer wish to be engaged.

In 2001, Murakami became involved with his friend Ryuichi Sakamoto's group NML No More Landmines, that 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 among young adults 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 Mainichi Publishing Culture Award.

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 into a film. Jordan Galland worked on the screenplay for Coin Locker Babies, but Miike's fundraising efforts for the film proved inadequate.^{[needs update]}

In 2011, Utau Kujira won the Mainichi Art Award.