Trilogy of the Rat Murakami began to write fiction when he was 29. "Before that," he said, "I didn't write anything. I was just one of those ordinary people. I was running a jazz club, and I didn't create anything at all." He was inspired to write his first novel,
Hear the Wind Sing (1979), while watching a
baseball game. He described the moment he realized he could write as a "warm sensation" he could still feel in his heart. He went home and began writing that night. Murakami worked on
Hear the Wind Sing for ten months in very brief stretches, during nights, after working days at the bar. He completed the novel and sent it to the only literary contest that would accept a work of that length, winning first prize. Murakami's initial success with
Hear the Wind Sing encouraged him to continue writing. A year later, he published a sequel,
Pinball, 1973. In 1981, he co-wrote a short story collection,
Yume de Aimashou with
Shigesato Itoi. In 1982, he published
A Wild Sheep Chase, a critical success.
Hear the Wind Sing,
Pinball, 1973, and
A Wild Sheep Chase form the
Trilogy of the Rat (a sequel,
Dance, Dance, Dance, was written later but is not considered part of the series), centered on the same unnamed narrator and his friend, "the Rat". The first two novels were not widely available in English translation outside Japan until 2015, although an English edition, translated by
Alfred Birnbaum with extensive notes, had been published by
Kodansha as part of a series intended for Japanese students of English. Murakami considers his first two novels to be "immature" and "flimsy",
Wider recognition In 1985, Murakami wrote
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, a dream-like fantasy that took the magical elements of his work to a new extreme. Murakami achieved a major breakthrough and national recognition in 1987 with the publication of
Norwegian Wood, a nostalgic story of loss and sexuality. It sold millions of copies among young Japanese.
Norwegian Wood propelled the barely known Murakami into the spotlight. He was mobbed at airports and other public places, leading to his departure from Japan in 1986. Murakami traveled through Europe, lived in the United States and currently resides in
Oiso, Kanagawa, with an office in Tokyo. Murakami was a writing fellow at
Princeton University in
Princeton, New Jersey,
Tufts University in
Medford, Massachusetts, and
Harvard University in
Cambridge, Massachusetts. During this time he wrote
South of the Border, West of the Sun and
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. The processing of
collective trauma soon became an important theme in Murakami's writing, which had previously been more personal in nature. Murakami returned to Japan in the aftermath of the
Kobe earthquake and the
Aum Shinrikyo gas attack. He called
The Wind-up Bird Chronicle a turning point in his career, marking this change in focus. English translations of many of his short stories written between 1983 and 1990 have been collected in
The Elephant Vanishes. Murakami has also translated many works of
F. Scott Fitzgerald,
Raymond Carver,
Truman Capote,
John Irving, and
Paul Theroux, among others, into Japanese.
Since 1999 Sputnik Sweetheart was first published in 1999, followed by
Kafka on the Shore in 2002, with the English translation following in 2005.
Kafka on the Shore won the
World Fantasy Award in 2006. The English version of his novel
After Dark was released in May 2007. It was chosen by
The New York Times as a "notable book of the year". In late 2005, Murakami published a collection of short stories titled
Tōkyō Kitanshū, or 東京奇譚集, which translates loosely as "Mysteries of Tokyo". A collection of the English versions of twenty-four short stories, titled
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, was published in August 2006. This collection includes both older works from the 1980s as well as some of Murakami's more recent short stories, including all five that appear in
Tōkyō Kitanshū. In 2002, Murakami published the anthology
Birthday Stories, which collects short stories on the theme of birthdays. It includes work by
Russell Banks,
Ethan Canin,
Raymond Carver,
David Foster Wallace,
Denis Johnson,
Claire Keegan,
Andrea Lee,
Daniel Lyons, Lynda Sexson,
Paul Theroux, and
William Trevor, as well as a story by Murakami himself.
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, a memoir about his experience as a marathon runner and a triathlete, was published in Japan in 2007, with English translations released in the UK and the US in 2008. The title is a play on that of
Raymond Carver's short story collection
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. In 2004, Murakami was interviewed by
John Wray for the 182nd installment of
The Paris Review "The Art of Fiction" interview series. Recorded over the course of two afternoons, the interview addressed the change in tone and style of his more recent works at the time—such as
after the quake—his myriad of Western influences ranging from
Fyodor Dostoevsky to
John Irving, and his collaborative process with the many translators he has worked with over the course of his career. The book was longlisted for the
Man Asian Literary Prize in 2011. However, after the
2012 anti-Japanese demonstrations in China, Murakami's books were removed from sale there, along with those of other Japanese authors. Murakami criticized the China–Japan political territorial dispute, characterizing the overwrought nationalistic response as "cheap liquor" which politicians were giving to the public. In April 2013, he published his novel
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. It became an international bestseller but received mixed reviews. In 2015, Switch Publishing published Murakami's essay collection
Novelist as a Vocation in Japan, featuring insights and commentaries on Murakami's life and career. The essay collection was later translated into English by
Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen and released by
Alfred A. Knopf on November 8, 2022.
Killing Commendatore (
Kishidanchō-goroshi) was published in Japan on February 24, 2017, and in the US in October 2018. The novel is about an unnamed portrait painter who stumbles upon an unknown painting, titled
Killing Commendatore, after assuming residence in its creator's former abode. Since its publication, the novel has caused controversy in Hong Kong and was labeled under "Class II – indecent" in Hong Kong. This classification led to mass amounts of
censorship. The publisher must not distribute the book to people under the age of 18, and must have a warning label printed on the cover. Murakami's most recent novel
The City and Its Uncertain Walls was published by Shinchosha in Japan on April 13, 2023. His first novel in six years, it is 1,200-pages long and is set in a "soul-stirring, 100% pure Murakami world" that involves "a story that had long been sealed". In promoting his latest book, Murakami stated that he believed that the pandemic and the ongoing
Russian invasion of Ukraine have created walls that divide people, fueling fear and skepticism instead of mutual trust. The novel is based on a 1980 novella written by Murakami, which he says he was never satisfied with. In an interview with
The Guardian, Murakami states, "The situation of the town surrounded by walls was also a metaphor of the worldwide lockdown. How is it possible for both extreme isolation and warm feelings of empathy to coexist?" In April 2026, it was announced that a novel featuring a female protagonist would be published in July. The novel is called
The Tale of Kaho. This will be Murakami's first novel with a female protagonist. ==Writing style==