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Haruki Murakami (in Japanese: 村上 春樹) is a highly regarded and popular modern Japanese writer and translator. Goodreads describes his work as ‘easily accessible, yet profoundly complex’. That is a considerable understatement on so many levels.
He can be located on Facebook at: Murakami on Facebook.
On the internets! Haruki Murikami’s Webpage
His works appear influenced by American culture, including its music and literature. One can sense traces of Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan peaking through the paragraphs.
Murakami studied drama at Waseda University in Tokyo, where he met his wife, Yoko. His worked initially at a record store, and we revisit that in Norwegian Wood with one of his classic characters works – Toru Watanabe. Shortly before finishing his studies, Murakami opened the coffeehouse Peter Cat which was a jazz bar in the evening in Kokubunji, Tokyo.
Many of his novels have themes and titles that invoke classical music, such as the three books making up The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: The Thieving Magpie (after Rossini’s opera), Bird as Prophet (after a piano piece by Robert Schumann usually known in English as The Prophet Bird), and The Bird-Catcher (a character in Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute). Some of his novels take their titles from songs: Dance, Dance, Dance (after The Dells’ song, although it is widely thought it was titled after the Beach Boys tune), Norwegian Wood (after The Beatles’ song) and South of the Border, West of the Sun (the first part being the title of a song by Nat King Cole).