Ryu Murakami, a leading bestselling author of the Japanese literary world, has died at the age of 74. Japanese media including the Asahi Shimbun reported on the 23rd that he died on the 17th (local time) and that the funeral was held as a private family ceremony.
The late author was born and raised in Sasebo, Nagasaki Prefecture, in 1952. While attending Musashino Art University in 1976, he won the Gunzo Prize for New Writers and the Akutagawa Prize for “Almost Transparent Blue,” beginning his career as a writer. The novel portrayed the decadent lives of the younger generation, based on his hometown, where a U.S. military base is located, and his experiences living in Fussa, Tokyo. The work became a million-seller and won recognition for both its literary merit and its popularity.
He then rose to the ranks of bestselling authors by publishing “Coin Locker Babies” in 1980, which depicts the survival of children abandoned in coin lockers, and “Love and Fantasy Fascism” in 1987, which deals with the process by which Japanese young people emerge as a political force amid a global depression. He was grouped with Haruki Murakami, who published “Norwegian Wood” the same year, earning the nickname “the double Murakami.”
In works such as “Exodus to the Land of Hope” and “Old Terrorists,” he took war, sex and violence as subjects, exploring the shadows of modern society and pointing out the contradictions of Japanese society. His 2005 work “Out of the Peninsula” is set in a scenario in which North Korean special forces seize the Fukuoka Dome, and for the writing he personally met and interviewed North Korean defectors.
His stage was not limited to literature. As a film director and screenwriter, he directed his own work “Topaz” (1988) and brought it to the screen. From 2006, he met viewers for 20 years as host of the economic talk show “Cambrian Palace.”