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Haruki Murakami Facts & Worksheets

Haruki Murakami is a Japanese novelist, translator, and marathon runner regarded as an important asset to Japanese literature of the 20th century, as well as an iconic figure of postmodern literature.

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Haruki Murakami is a Japanese novelist, translator, and marathon runner regarded as an important asset to Japanese literature of the 20th century, as well as an iconic figure of postmodern literature. He was known mostly for his unreal, humorous work focusing on the loneliness and empty-mindedness of Japan’s work dominated generation.

See the fact file below for more information on the Haruki Murakami or alternatively, you can download our 26-page Haruki Murakami worksheet pack to utilise within the classroom or home environment.

Key Facts & Information

Early Life

  • Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto, Japan on January 12, 1949, during the post–World War II baby boom. He is the only child of a Buddhist priest and a daughter of a merchant who both taught Japanese literature.
  • Like Kobo Abe, Murakami has been heavily influenced by Western culture since his childhood, particularly Western and Russian music and literature. 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.
  • In 1968 Haruki attended Waseda University as a Theater Arts major. Not very studious, Murakami would spend hours reading film scripts at the Theater Museum at the University.
  • He also met his wife for the first time while in university and they married in 1971. Together they opened a jazz Bar named Peter Cat in Kokubunji, Tokyo which was later transferred to Sendagaya, Tokyo, a quiet locality.

Literary Career

  • Hear the Wind Sing, Haruki’s first novel, which was a part of The Trilogy of the Rat, was published in 1979. He was inspired to write the novel while watching a baseball game in 1978 at the Jingu Stadium, when Dave Hilton, an American, came to bat. According to an oft-repeated story, the instant that Hilton hit a double, Murakami realized that he could write a novel.
  • Murakami went home, began writing that night and worked on Hear the Wind Sing for ten months in very brief stretches, during nights, after working days at the bar. The book received the Gunzou Shinjin Sho (Gunzo New Writer Award).
  • His next publication also a part of The Trilogy of the Rat, Pinball, 1973 was published in 1980. In 1981, Murakami decided to make writing his ultimate profession and sold the bar he ran with his wife.
  • The third part of the same trilogy, A Wild Sheep Chase, was published in 1982. Haruki won the Noma Bungei Shinjin Sho (Noma Literary Award for New Writers) for this book in the same year.
  • After spending some time moving to Fujisawa and then Sendagaya, Haruki published Hard boiled Wonderland and the End of the World in 1985. This book was also immensely praised and received the Junichi Tanizaki Award.
  • Haruki then moved to Oiso and travelled to Rome and Greece before publishing his breakthrough piece, Norwegian Wood (1987), an extremely popular novel among the Japanese youth and abroad about a nostalgic story of loss and sexuality.
  • Murakami then became a writing fellow at Princeton University in Tufts University and Harvard University.
  • During this time he wrote South of the Border, West of the Sun and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which fuses the realistic and fantastic and contains elements of physical violence.
  • It is also more socially conscious than his previous work, dealing in part with the difficult topic of war crimes in Manchukuo (Northeast China). It won the Yomiuri Prize, awarded by one of Murakami’s harshest former critics, Kenzaburō Ōe.

Later Works

  • Sputnik Sweetheart was first published in 1999, followed by Kafka on the Shore in 2002, with the English translation following in 2005 and won the World Fantasy Award for Novels 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 Mysteries of Tokyo.
  • A collection of the English versions of 24 short stories, titled Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, was published in August, 2006. This collection includes both works from the 1980s as well as some of Murakami’s more recent short stories, including all five that appear in Mysteries of Tokyo.
  • In 2002, Murakami published the anthology Birthday Stories, a collection of stories on the theme of birthdays. The collection 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, containing tales about his experience as a marathon runner and a triathlete, was published in Japan in 2007. The title is a play on that of Raymond Carver’s short story collection, What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.
  • Shinchosha Publishing published Murakami’s novel 1Q84 in Japan in 2009 and 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 other Japanese authors.
  • In April 2013, Murakami published his novel Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage which also became an international best seller.
  • Killing Commendatore is Murakami’s most recent work as of 2018. Published in Japan in February, 2017, the novel is a historical fiction that has caused controversy in Hong Kong and was classified “indecent.”

Haruki Murakami Worksheets

This is a fantastic bundle which includes everything you need to know about Haruki Murakami across 26 in-depth pages. These are ready-to-use Haruki Murakami worksheets that are perfect for teaching students about Haruki Murakami who is a Japanese novelist, translator, and marathon runner regarded as an important asset to Japanese literature of the 20th century, as well as an iconic figure of postmodern literature. He was known mostly for his unreal, humorous work focusing on the loneliness and empty-mindedness of Japan’s work dominated generation.

Complete List Of Included Worksheets

  • Authors Online
  • Pop Quiz
  • Haruki Speaks
  • Haruki Through the Years
  • One From the Books
  • Travelogue
  • Norwegian Wood
  • Rising Stars
  • Found in Translation
  • My Daily Routine

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Use With Any Curriculum

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