[5][6][7][8] Growing up in Ashiya, near Kobe before moving to Tokyo to attend Waseda University, he published his first novel Hear the Wind Sing (1979) after working as the owner of a small jazz bar for seven years.

[11][12] His official website cites Raymond Chandler, Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan as key inspirations to his work, while Murakami himself has named Kazuo Ishiguro, Cormac McCarthy, and Dag Solstad as his favorite contemporary writers.

He grew up reading a wide range of works by European and American writers, such as Franz Kafka, Gustave Flaubert, Charles Dickens, Kurt Vonnegut, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Richard Brautigan and Jack Kerouac.

Shortly before finishing his studies, Murakami opened a coffee house and jazz bar, Peter Cat, in Kokubunji, Tokyo, which he ran with his wife,[29] from 1974 to 1981.

Murakami has also translated many works of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Raymond Carver, Truman Capote, John Irving, and Paul Theroux, among others, into Japanese.

Some of his works that appeared in German turned out to be translations from English rather than Japanese (South of the Border, West of the Sun, 2000; The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, 2000s), encouraged by Murakami himself.

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.

[52][53] Murakami criticized the China–Japan political territorial dispute, characterizing the overwrought nationalistic response as "cheap liquor" which politicians were giving to the public.

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.

[61] 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.

He states that because family plays a significant role in traditional Japanese literature, any main character who is independent becomes a man who values freedom and solitude over intimacy.

At an October 2013 symposium held at the University of Hawaii,[73] associate professor of Japanese Nobuko Ochner opined "there were many descriptions of traveling in a parallel world as well as characters who have some connection to shamanism"[74] in Murakami's works.

As I write, a kind of axis forms that makes possible the appearance of certain characters, and I go ahead and fit one detail after another into place, like iron scraps attaching to a magnet.

He continued: "One of the things I most enjoy about writing novels is the sense that I can become anybody I want to be," noting that "Characters who are—in a literary sense—alive will eventually break free of the writer's control and begin to act independently.

[77] In January 2009, Murakami received the Jerusalem Prize, a biennial literary award given to writers whose work deals with themes of human freedom, society, politics, and government.

Accepting the award, he said in his speech that the situation at the Fukushima plant was "the second major nuclear disaster that the Japanese people have experienced ... however, this time it was not a bomb being dropped upon us, but a mistake committed by our very own hands".

According to Murakami, the Japanese people should have rejected nuclear power after having "learned through the sacrifice of the hibakusha just how badly radiation leaves scars on the world and human wellbeing".

[89] In 2024, Murakami received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement[90] and was elected as a Royal Society of Literature International Writer.

The original short story, translated into English by Jay Rubin, is available in the April 15, 2002, issue of The New Yorker, as a stand-alone book published by Cloverfield Press, and part of Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman by Knopf.

Murakami's work was also adapted for the stage in a 2003 play entitled The Elephant Vanishes, co-produced by Britain's Complicite company and Japan's Setagaya Public Theatre.

The production, directed by Simon McBurney, adapted three of Murakami's short stories and received acclaim for its unique blending of multimedia (video, music, and innovative sound design) with actor-driven physical theater (mime, dance, and even acrobatic wire work).

[104] In 2008, Galati also adapted and directed a theatrical version of Kafka on the Shore, which first ran at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre Company from September to November.

In 2007, Robert Logevall adapted "All God's Children Can Dance" into a film, with a soundtrack composed by American jam band Sound Tribe Sector 9.

[110] The presentation incorporates live actors, video projection, traditional Japanese puppetry, and immersive soundscapes to render the surreal landscape of the original work.

[112][113] Memoranda, a 2017 adventure video game, is based on various short stories from After the Quake, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, and The Elephant Vanishes, and features several Murakami characters, with Mizuki Ando as the protagonist.

[118] Directed by Ryusuke Hamaguchi, it also takes inspiration from Chekhov's play Uncle Vanya as well as "Scheherazade" and "Kino," two other stories in the collection Men Without Women.

[119] In 2022, director Pierre Földes adapted six short stories from Murakami's books After the Quake, Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman and The Elephant Vanishes into an animated feature film.

In his 2015 essay for Literary Hub "The Moment I Became a Novelist", Murakami describes how attending a Swallow's game in Jingu Stadium in 1978 led to a personal epiphany in which he decided to write his first novel.

[131][132] In another interview, Murakami stated: "The issue of historical understanding carries great significance, and I believe it is important that Japan makes straightforward apologies.

Van Compernolle of Amherst College wrote that the fact that many such books existed about "a living author in the relatively small field of Japanese literary studies in the English-speaking world is unprecedented.