Tokyo, Oct. 23 (Jiji Press)–Renowned Japanese novelist Ryu Murakami, known for works such as “Almost Transparent Blue” and “Coin Locker Babies,” died Saturday. He was 74. Born in the city of Sasebo, Nagasaki Prefecture, southwestern Japan, in 1952, Murakami, whose real name was Ryunosuke Murakami, won the Gunzo Prize for New Writers and the prestigious Akutagawa Prize in 1976 for Almost Transparent Blue, his debut work, which he wrote while attending Musashino Art University. Focuses on young people living in a Japanese city with a U.S. military base, the novel became a bestseller, selling about 3.5 million copies. In 1981, Murakami received the Noma Literary Prize for New Writers for Coin Locker Babies, which addresses the abandonment of infants. His writing explored a sense of stagnation and the fragility of modern society, and depicted the loneliness and anger of marginalized people. He won the Yomiuri Prize for Literature in 1998 for “In the Miso Soup,” and the Noma Literary Prize and the Mainichi Publishing Culture Award in 2005 for “From the Fatherland, with Love,” which depicts a military invasion by North Korea. Murakami also served as the chief interviewer on TV Tokyo Corp.’s popular television program “Cambrian Palace” for two decades. From 2000 to 2018, he was a member of the selection committee for the Akutagawa Prize. He was often mentioned alongside another famous Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami, who shares a surname and debuted around the same time. Many of Ryu Murakami’s works have been adapted into films, including his autobiographical novel “69.” He also directed films based on his own works, including Almost Transparent Blue. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]
