Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami was born in 1949 in Kyoto, the only child of his parents. His father was the son of a Buddhist priest and his mother the daughter of a merchant in Osaka. Murakami spent his childhood in a suburb of Kobe, where both parents taught Japanese literature. Contrary to the parental profession, the young Haruki was less interested in Japanese than in Western literature and music. Due to its status as a port city, he could easily get to used books of American naval soldiers stationed there.Murakami studied theatre at Waseda University from 1968. There he met his wife Yoko. They married after completing their studies in 1971, and the couple remain together until today. It was deliberately decided not to have children. Questioned about the reasons, he said: "I didn't want to become a father because I knew my children would hate me.During his studies, he worked in a record store before opening his own jazz bar in Tokyo in 1974, Peter Cat, which he led with his wife until 1982. These experiences can also be found in Murakami's work: Several of his books are named after songs, including Noruwei no mori (Japanese for Norwegian Wood, after the Beatles' song of the same name); in German translation: Naoko's smiles) and Dansu dansu dansu (Japanese for dance, dance, dance, after a title of the Beach Boys; in German translation: In 1978, Murakami began writing with the Schafsmann – inspired by an impressive blow in a baseball game. In 1979 and 1980 his first two novels, Kaze no uta o kike (English: When the wind sings) and 1973-nen no pinb'ru (English: Pinball 1973), from which he explicitly distanced himself, and which appeared only in a German translation in 2015. In 1984, he moved several times to Fujisawa, Tokyo, and then travelled to Italy and Greece. In 1991 he became a guest lecturer at Princeton University, New Jersey, then a guest professor. In July 1993, he joined Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, to return to his hometown two years later. Since 2001 he has lived in Eiso.

In 2015, Time magazine listed him as one of the 100 most influential personalities in the world.Haruki Murakami is not related to the three-year younger Japanese writer and screenwriter Ryo Murakami.