Ryu Murakami, author of Almost Transparent Blue, dies aged 74
Japanese novelist Ryu Murakami died at home on 17 October, his publisher Gentosha said. His 1976 debut, Almost Transparent Blue, won the Akutagawa Prize.
Ryu Murakami, the Japanese novelist whose first book, Almost Transparent Blue, won the Akutagawa Prize in 1976, has died at his home. He was 74. His publisher, Gentosha, announced on 23 October that he died on 17 October and that a private family funeral has already taken place. No cause of death has been given.
The notice, issued jointly by Gentosha's editorial department and Murakami's own office, says the family is declining condolence visits, gifts and flowers, and asks the press not to approach relatives.
A debut that sold in the millions
Murakami was born in Nagasaki Prefecture in 1952; Jiji Press gives his birthplace as Sasebo. He wrote Almost Transparent Blue while still a student at Musashino Art University. It won the Gunzo Prize for New Writers and then the Akutagawa Prize. Gentosha puts its sales, hardback and paperback together, at about 3.5 million copies.
Coin Locker Babies followed in 1980 and won the Noma Literary Prize for New Writers. Jiji describes it as a novel about the abandonment of infants. In 1997 In the Miso Soup won the Yomiuri Prize for Literature, and in 2005 Hantō wo Deyo won the Noma Literary Prize and the Mainichi Publishing Culture Award.
His publisher's notice also recalls Gofungo no Sekai (1994), a novel set in a world where Japan did not surrender at the end of the Second World War, and Topaz and Kyoko, two of his books that he adapted for the screen himself as writer and director.
Beyond the novels
Murakami worked well outside the novel. In 2003 he published 13-sai no Hello Work, a guide to more than 600 jobs for young readers, which sold over 1.8 million copies. For about twenty years he was the main interviewer on Cambrian Palace, a business talk show on Japanese television. His publisher names his last book as YouTuber.
Gentosha's notice remembers him as a writer who kept publishing work that shocked and spoke to the young, from his debut onward. Anadolu Agency's report describes the themes he returned to as violence, drugs, sexuality and alienation.
English-language readers should not confuse him with Haruki Murakami, a different writer.
Where to start
If you have not read him, his debut is the natural place to begin: it is the book that made his name. Coin Locker Babies and In the Miso Soup show where he went next.
Sources
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