Makeup. Hair care. Skin care

He himself does not know when he wanted to become a writer. In an interview, Haruki Murakami said that he always believed that he could write books. He claims that writing is as natural to him as breathing. In the biography of Haruki Murakami, it is almost impossible to find any incriminating facts. He did not have numerous novels, connections with the underworld and addiction to drugs. He just wrote books because he liked it.

Childhood

Haruki Murakami was born on January 19, 1949 in Japan in the village of Kayako, not far from the cultural and historical center of the country, Kyoto. Like all Japanese, the writer behaves with restraint and evades many answers, so the biography of Haruki Murakami contains only general information about his life.

Grandfather Murakami preached Buddhism and was even the head of the temple. My father was a school teacher of Japanese language and literature, in his spare time he also helped at the temple. In 1950, the family moved to the city of Asia, near the port of Kobe. Therefore, the boy's childhood passed in a port city. It was at this time that he began to take an interest in American and European literature.

Student years and youth

An important stage in the biography of Haruki Murakami was his student years. In 1968, he became a student at the prestigious Waseda University. It is not known for what reasons he chose the specialty "classic drama", because he had neither interest nor zeal for reading old scripts.

During the period of study, he was frankly bored, but, as befits a hardworking Japanese, he successfully defended his degree in modern drama. As a student, he took an active part in protests against the Vietnam War.

In 1971, Murakami marries. His wife was a classmate Yoko Takahashi. He lives happily with her to this day. The spouses have no children. On this, information about personal life in the biography of Haruki Murakami exhausts itself. He had no mistresses, and the writer was never seen in curious scandals.

Jazz is to blame

Haruki Murakami has always been passionate about jazz music, so he decided to turn his hobby into a business. In 1974, the future writer opens a jazz bar in Tokyo called "Peter Cat". The institution was successful and brought good income for seven years. Then Murakami sold it. How did it happen? In the biography of Haruki Murakami, brief information about this is also present.

The bar functioned successfully, life unhurriedly went on as usual, and it seemed that nothing would change. But one day Haruki Murakami attended a baseball game, watching the game, he suddenly realized that he could write books. So suddenly an insight came to the writer that it was time to create. After that day, he increasingly lingered at the bar after hours, sketching for future books. Sometimes a sudden thought can change your life dramatically. From the day the decision was made to write books, literature has become an integral part of Haruki Murakami's biography.

Literature

In 1979, the world saw the first story by Haruki Murakami "Listen to the song of the wind." She was immediately noticed. This work won the Gunzoshinjin-sho Award given to beginners and the Noma Award given to writers by the literary magazine Bungei. This book is also known as the first part of the "Rat Trilogy" series.

As for the author, Murakami himself greatly underestimated his works. He considered his works weak: they can still be sold in Japan, but they certainly will not interest a foreign reader. But these were only the thoughts of the writer, the foreign reader did not agree with them. Haruki Murakami's work quickly gained the attention of visitors to secondhand bookshops in America and Europe. Readers were very impressed by the original style of the author.

Time to travel

In 1980, the continuation of the cycle "Rat Trilogy" - "Pinball 1973" (novel) went on sale. Two years later, the final part of the cycle came out - "Hunting for Sheep" (novel, 1982). The 1982 work was also awarded the Noma Prize. It was from this period that Murakami began to develop as a writer. He decides it's time to sell the bar and wants to devote himself entirely to literature.

For his first books, the author received decent fees, which allowed him to travel around Europe and America. His journey spanned several years. He returned to his homeland only in 1996. When Murakami left the Land of the Rising Sun, he managed to publish four collections of stories:

• "Slow boat to China";
• "Great day for kangaroos";
• "The death agony of a carousel with horses";
• "Firefly, burn down the barn and other stories."

In addition to the stories, he managed to publish a collection of fairy tales "Lamb's Christmas" and a fantasy novel "Wonderland without brakes and the end of the world" (1987). The novel receives a prestigious award - the Prize. Junichiro Tanizaki.

When Murkami traveled through Italy and Greece, the impressions inspired him to write "Norwegian Forest". In the biography and work of Haruki Murakami, the work played a key role - this novel brought world fame to the writer. Both readers and critics unanimously call this work the best in the work of the writer. A circulation of two million copies instantly scattered across Europe and America.

The novel "Norwegian Forest" tells about the student life of the protagonist in the 60s. In those days, student protests were common, rock and roll was becoming more and more popular, and the main character was dating two girls at the same time. Despite the fact that the story is told in the first person, this is not an autobiographical novel at all, it's just that the author is much more comfortable writing this way.

Teacher

In 1988, a new stage begins in the biography of the writer Haruki Murakami. He moves to London, where he decides to write a sequel to the "Rat Trilogy" cycle - the novel "Dance, Dance, Dance" is published in the world.

In 1990, in the Land of the Rising Sun, another collection of short stories with the entertaining title Teletubbies Strike Back was published. In 1991, Murakami was offered to become a teacher at Princeton University (USA). A little later, he received the degree of associate professor. While Murakami is teaching, eight volumes of the writer's works are being published in Japan. The collection includes all the things written by the writer over the last decade of his creative activity.

Only in a foreign country did the writer have a desire to tell the world about his country, its inhabitants, traditions, and culture. It is worth noting that he did not like to do this before. Apparently, only when you are far from your native country, you really begin to appreciate it.

In 1992, Murakami moved to California, where he continued teaching: he lectured at Howard Taft University on modern literature. Meanwhile, in the writer's country, a new novel, South of the Border, West of the Sun, is being prepared for release. This time, the author ascribed something from his biography to the main character. Haruki Murakami (photo of the writer is presented in the article) wrote a story about the owner of a jazz bar.

"Aum Shinrikyo"

In 1994, the novel The Clockwork Bird Chronicles goes on sale. It is considered the most difficult in the writer's work: it combines many different literary forms, which are flavored with a good portion of mysticism.

In 1995, in Japan, or rather, in Kobe, there was an earthquake and a gas attack by the Aum Shinrikyo sect. A year after the tragedy, Murakami returns to Japan, now he lives in Tokyo. Being under the impression after the tragedy in Kobe, he writes two documentaries - "Underground" and "Promised Land".

More books

Since 1999, Haruki Murakami has been publishing a book every year. In the biography of Haruki Murakami, a fruitful period begins. So, in 1999, the novel "My Favorite Sputnik" was published, in 2000 - a collection of narratives "All God's Children Can Dance."

In 2001, Haruki Murakami and his wife moved to the village of Oiso, which is located on the ocean, where they live now.

It should be noted that Murakami's works have been translated into 20 languages, including Russian. True, in Russia the author's works are published with a delay of several years (tens of years). So, only in 2002, the novel “Wonderland without brakes” appeared in bookstores in Russia.

In 2003, Murakami visited Russia. While he was traveling, Kafka on the Beach is being published in Japan. It consisted of two volumes, was the tenth novel in the writer's bibliography, and won the World Fantasy Award.

"Legends" and bestsellers

In 2005, the collection "Tokyo Legends" was published, which included not only new stories, but also those that the writer wrote back in the 80s of the last century. In 2007, the writer writes a memoir, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running. When he was 33, he quit smoking and took up running, swimming and baseball. From time to time Murakami takes part in marathons. Constant sports became the source of inspiration that spilled out in a kind of memoir. In 2010 this book was translated into Russian.

2009 was notable for the release of a new trilogy - "1Q84". Two parts of the book were sold out literally on the first day of sales. In this novel, the author considered such topics as religious extremism, generational conflict, mismatch between reality and illusions. A year later, Murakami completed the third volume - another bestseller appeared in the world.

About everything in the world

The next book came out in 2013. It was the philosophical drama Colorless Tsukuru and the Years of Traveling. Murakami writes about a lone engineer who designed train stations. Like all children, in early childhood he had friends, but over time they began to turn away from him one by one. Tsukuru cannot understand what is the reason for this behavior. His new girlfriend advises to find old acquaintances and find out everything directly.

In 2014, another interesting collection is released - “A Man Without a Woman”. In these short stories, the main characters are strange men and real femme fatales, and the main theme is the relationship between them.

Beyond Writing

In addition to writing, Murakami was engaged in the translation of books by European authors. It was only thanks to him that readers in Japan discovered the works of Raymond Carver, Truman Capote, John Irving, and the translation of Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye broke all sales records.

He created several photo albums and guidebooks, in which he realized all his love and interest in Western culture. He created two volumes of the book "Jazz Portraits", where he spoke about 55 jazz performers.

Our days

In 2016, Murakami received the Literary Prize. G. H. Andersen. As they said at the awards ceremony, he received the award:

"For its bold combination of classic storytelling, pop culture, Japanese tradition, fantasy realism and philosophical reflection."

Of course, it was expected that he would also be awarded the Nobel Prize, but so far this has not happened. In the meantime, he continues to write. In 2017, the novel "The Assassination of the Commander" is released, and perhaps the writer will please something in 2018, but so far this is a mystery.

Perhaps the most important thing in the biography of Haruki Murakami was briefly mentioned. As you can see, writing for him really means living.

The living classic of Japanese literature, Haruki Murakami, justifies Gustave Flaubert's principle: "Be simple in life, and then you will be furious in creativity." Murakami leads a good, measured life of a person who enjoys being: he gets up early, goes to bed early, writes a lot, goes in for sports a lot, participates in marathons, sometimes travels. And he writes a bestseller a year.

The writer has few childhood memories. He does not like the concept of "family": "It is more interesting to wade through life alone." His grandfather was a Buddhist priest. My father teaches Japanese literature at school and also serves in the temple. Cultural traditions are indisputable for the father - and cause Haruka's rebellion. He stops talking to his father, abandons Japanese books and starts reading foreign literature. First, Russian in translation, then American in the original, buying second-hand pocketbooks left by sailors from second-hand booksellers. Haruki is studying English on his own. Read completely

Murakami is studying classical (Greek) drama at the Department of Arts at Waseda University. But he prefers to spend time reading scripts of foreign films. Tries to create his script - does not work. Nevertheless, in the future, critics will call Murakami's special style the "cinema method": the heroes of his books are watching everything as if through a movie camera. Perhaps this is how the traditional contemplation of Japanese literature manifests itself in a new, high-tech incarnation.

While studying, Haruki marries a fellow student, Yoko. In 1974, they opened a jazz bar in Tokyo, where art historians have to work hard and not in their specialty. The bar's menu includes cabbage rolls with meat, for which Murakami finely chop a whole basket of onions every morning. The writer laughs that he can still chop a lot of onions very quickly without shedding a single tear. Few of the visitors like it in a jazz bar, the owner gets it from grumblers. But this teaches him to "keep his tail up" and work on, not reacting even to the harshest criticism.

In 1978, while enjoying a baseball game and sipping beer at Jingu Stadium, Murakami suddenly feels it's time for him to write a book. And it begins ... in English. A year later, the author publishes "Listen to the song of the wind" (after all, in Japanese). It is distributed in a large circulation for a debut and brings the author the first national award.

Friends refuse to believe that Murakami wrote something. The main tradition in Japanese literature is shi-sesetsu, a diary, a novel about oneself. And Murakami is just Murakami! The author himself later assured that readers would really fall asleep over a novel about his life: "Despite all my writing baggage, I almost never experienced truly exciting adventures in real life." However, even fictional characters have the traits and predilections of the author. Murakami usually writes in the first person. It is difficult to write in the third person, because then he feels "something like a god": "But I don't want to be a god."

When Murakami began to publish regularly, he sold the jazz bar. And in 1986, he realized his old dream of "getting out of the country." He is disappointed in Japan: "I just hate some systems here." Together with his wife, he travels to Italy, Greece, lives in the capital of Great Britain, then in the USA, where he teaches at various universities. And he writes hard.

At the age of 33, he quits smoking and takes up running. Later, to the journalist's remark that 33 is the age of Christ at the crucifixion, the writer replies: "Really? I didn't know. But it's like reincarnation, right?" By the way, Murakami is a realist and does not believe in the powers of heaven, reincarnation, Tarot or horoscopes. "But when I write - I write mysticism. It's very strange."

In 1996, the writer returns to his homeland, shocked by two national tragedies that happened a year earlier: a gas attack on the Tokyo subway, organized by the Aum Shinrikyo sect, and an earthquake in Kobe, where Haruki Murakami grew up.

For Japanese traditionalists, Murakami means "reeking of oil." For a nation that did not eat milk, this means everything alien. Murakami, they say, laughs at those who build a career and suppress everything personal in the name of the interests of the community. This is true. Murakami's characters are unemployed and carefree outsiders. The writer is sure that work from dawn to dusk destroys a person. His characters are active in a different sense. They eat, drink, listen to music, clean their houses, lose cats, read, sit on the lawn in the park or in the well. They tend to associate with mysterious women and resist Evil, even if it is in their own head.

Murakami admits: "I'm an individualist, and it's not easy for people like that in Japan. I have karaokephobia, litassociationphobia, meeting alumniphobia, who's quailphobia and an old evening manphobia." But no matter what Murakami "smelled", he considers himself a true Japanese writer. However, one that modernizes national literature.

Murakami jokingly calls the genre of his works "sushi noir" (by analogy with "art noir"), since there is nothing worse for the Japanese than darkened rice. There is a lot of darkness, food and music in his books.

"Darkness within man" is a favorite theme. The plot is driven by the energy of the human subconscious. But the author does not analyze it, but displays it. This shows Murakami's "Japaneseness". There is no Evil in the East - there is the Incomprehensible. Often it is within ourselves, and it is impossible to fully know it. If we talk about the outside world surrounding the characters, then each novel has its own Monster, the purpose and purpose of which is also beyond human awareness. Hence the not fully grasped essence of Murakami's books.

Due to timidity and fear of disappointment, Murakami does not reread himself. But sometimes he can take his own book in English and suddenly get carried away reading, because the translation has refreshed the text, and the plot has already been forgotten by the author. And then the translator's question "So how do you rate my work?" takes the writer by surprise.

Murakami translated into Japanese Fitzgerald, Carver, Irving, Salinger, Le Guinn. He has published several guidebooks on Western music, cocktails and cooking. Likes cats and jazz. His collection of records includes 40,000 copies. Favorite writer - Dostoevsky. Favorite book is The Brothers Karamazov. Murakami also likes to waste time just like that. "Life itself, to one degree or another, is a waste of time," he says.

Japanese writer and translator Haruki Murakami was born on January 12, 1949 in Kyoto in the family of a teacher of classical philology. In 1968, Murakami entered one of the most famous and prestigious private universities in Japan - Waseda, where he studied at the Faculty of Theater Arts with a degree in classical drama. As a student, he took an active part in the anti-war movement, opposed the Vietnam War.

In 1974, Haruki Murakami opened the Peter Cat jazz bar in Tokyo, which he ran for seven years.

On April 1, 1978, during a baseball game, Murakami suddenly had the idea of ​​writing his first book, despite the fact that until that moment he had never seriously considered a career as a writer. The novel Hear the Wind Sing was published in 1979 and soon won the Gunzo magazine's Aspiring Writer's Literary Prize. In 1980, his next novel, Pinball 1973, was published. Simultaneously with writing the book, Murakami translated the works of English-speaking authors, in particular, Francis Scott Fitzgerald, wrote an essay about Stephen King. In 1981, Murakami decided to leave his business in order to be able to focus exclusively on creativity. In the same year, he completed his novel Sheep Hunt. The first novels of the writer were included in the "Rat Trilogy" cycle. In 1983-1984, Murakami published several collections of short stories.

Having traveled around the United States, in 1985 the writer published a new novel, Wonderland without brakes and the End of the World. The book was acclaimed by a wide audience and won the author the prestigious Tanizaki Literary Prize (1985).

In October 1986, Murakami left Japan and settled in Rome for a while. From Rome, he moved to Greece, for some time he lived on the islands of Spetses and Mykonos. In early 1987, he returned to Italy again, visited Sicily, Bologna, and then settled in Crete, where he finished work on the novel "Norwegian Forest". This work brought Murakami fame not only in Japan, but throughout the world.

In 1991, Haruki Murakami moved to the United States, accepting an invitation from the faculty of Princeton University. The writer devoted a lot of time to studying the archives of the Princeton University Library, paying special attention to modern Japanese history and the role of his native country in World War II. In the United States, the novel "South of the Border, West of the Sun" was written, which was released in 1992. A month after the novel's release in Japan, the University of California, Berkeley invited him to give a lecture as part of the Una Project, as well as to conduct several seminars. The following July, Murakami moved from Princeton to Medford, Massachusetts at the invitation of Tufts University. Almost all the chapters of the three-volume novel "Chronicles of the Clockwork Bird" were written there.

The first two volumes were published in 1994, and the third in 1995. For him, Murakami received the literary prize of the Yomiuri newspaper (1995).

In 1995, Japan was rocked by two tragedies: in January, the Kobe earthquake claimed thousands of lives, and in March, members of the Aum Shinrikyo sect staged a sarin attack on the Tokyo subway. Murakami decided to return to his homeland and immediately upon his return took up documentary work on what happened in Tokyo. He conducted numerous interviews with the victims and captured organizers of the terrorist attack and published them in the form of a two-volume book - "Underground" (1997) and "Promised Land" (1998).

In 1999, Murakami's new novel "My Favorite Sputnik" was released. Then the writer began work on a collection of stories, united by the general title "after the earthquake" and the time of each story - February 1995. These stories were included in the collection All God's Children Can Dance in 2000.

In 2001, Haruki Murakami finally returned to Japan, settling on the seashore in Naka County. In 2002, Murakami's tenth anniversary novel Kafka on the Beach was published. In the same year, together with friends, the writer founded the Tokyo Dried Cuttlefish travel club. Members of this club visit little-known corners of the world, and then, based on their impressions, write articles for glossy magazines.

In 2003, Jerome David Salinger's novel "The Catcher in the Rye" was published in Murakami's translation and became the leader in sales of translated literature in Japan.

In 2004, Haruki Murakami completed work on the book "Afterdarkness", which was published in 2005. In 2009, the publication of the novel "1Q84", consisting of three volumes, began. In 2010, the film adaptation of Murakami's novel "Norwegian Wood" was filmed by the French film director of Vietnamese origin Tran Anh Hung.

In April 2013, Haruki Murakami's Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Wanderings was released in Japan with a circulation of 500,000 copies. Within a week of sales, the circulation of the book was increased to 1 million copies. - the main literary award of Japan. He is the Franz Kafka Laureate (2006), in 2009 for Literature of the Organizing Committee of the Jerusalem Book Fair. In 2012, Murakami was the recipient of the Japan Foundation Award, which is given to people or organizations that have made a significant contribution to cultural exchange between Japan and other countries.

Murakami's name has repeatedly featured in the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Haruki Murakami is married to Yoko Takahashi, whom he met while studying at the university. The spouses have no children.

The writer is a passionate admirer of jazz; his music collection contains about 40,000 records.

Murakami ran the Athens Marathon solo in 1983 and has been a regular runner ever since, running marathons around the world several times a year.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from open sources

Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto on January 12, 1949. His parents were teachers of Japanese literature. After the birth of Haruki, the whole family moved to a major seaport in Japan - Kobe. Over time, the little boy began to awaken interest in literature, especially in foreign literature.

In 1968, Murakami entered one of the most famous and prestigious universities in Japan - Waseda, he studied at the Faculty of Theater Arts with a degree in classical drama. But the study was not a joy, it was boring for a young man who was forced to re-read a huge number of scripts that were stored in the institute's museum for days on end. In 1971, he married a girl, Yoko, with whom he studied together. During his training, Haruki took an active part in the anti-war movement, while speaking out against the Vietnam War. Despite the lack of interest in studies, Murakami was able to successfully graduate from Waseda University with a degree in modern drama.

In 1974, Haruki was able to open the Peter Cat jazz bar in Tokyo, and ran the bar for 7 years. This year also marked the starting point for writing the first novel. The desire to write this novel arose from the writer during a baseball game, when he suddenly felt that he had to do it. Although before this, Haruka had no writing experience, because he believed that he was not endowed with writing talent. And in April 1974, he began writing the novel Hear the Wind Sing, published in 1979. This literary creation was awarded the nation's literary award for emerging writers.

However, according to the author, these works were "weak" and he did not want them to be translated into other languages. But readers were of a different opinion. They acknowledged these novels, noting that they showed a personal style of writing that other authors did not have. As a result, this novel was included in the "Rat Trilogy" along with the novels "Pinball 1973" and "Sheep Hunt".

Murakami loves to travel. He spent three years in Italy and Greece. Then, upon arrival in the United States, he settled in Princeton, teaching at a local university. In 1980, Haruki had to sell his bar and started making a living from his writing. When The Sheep Hunt was completed in 1981, he received another award. This was the beginning for his formation as a writer and gaining worldwide popularity. After the novel Norwegian Forest was published in 1987, Murakami earned popular recognition. In total, 2 million copies of the novel were sold, which was written during the writer's long journey to Rome and Greece. "Norwegian Forest" brought Murakami fame not only in Japan, but also abroad throughout the world and is currently considered one of his best works. Also at this time, the writer completed work on his novel Dance, Dance, Dance, which became a continuation of the Rat Trilogy.

In the same year, Haruki was invited to teach at the Princeton Institute in New Jersey, where he remained to live. In 1992, he began teaching at the University of California. William Howard Taft. He wrote actively during this time, producing much of the novel The Clockwork Bird Chronicles. This novel is considered the most capacious and complex of Murakami's entire work.

To date, Haruki Murakami is the most popular writer in modern Japan, as well as the winner of the Yomiuri Literary Prize, which has also been awarded to such established authors as Kobo Abe, Kenzaburo Oe and Yukio Mishima. And Murakami's works have already been translated into 20 world languages, including Russian.

He publishes about one novel a year. According to Haruka himself, he rarely goes back to his books and re-reads them. In Russia, the translation of his books is carried out by Dmitry Kovalenin, who published a book that tells about the creative path of Murakami, its name is Murakamiedenye.

Haruki Murakami was one of the first writers to open the world's eyes to modern Japan, which has an alternative youth subculture that is no different from those in London, Moscow or New York. Its main character is a young lazy man who is obsessed with finding a girl with unusual ears. He has strange eating habits. He mixes seaweed with shrimp in vinegar, roast veal with salted plums, and so on. Aimlessly, he drives his car around the city and shares "burning" questions: how can one-armed invalids cut bread? Why is the Japanese "Subaru" more comfortable than the Italian "Maserati"? The hero is one of the last romantics and idealists who sadly recalls unjustified hopes, but is still convinced of the power of good. He loves popular culture: David Lynch, the Rolling Stones, horror films, detective stories and Stephen King, in general, everything that is not recognized by high-browed aesthetes in the sacred intellectual bohemian circles of youth. He is closer to carefree guys and girls from disco bars who fall in love only for a day or an hour and remember their hobbies only on a motorcycle rushing along the road. Perhaps that is why he is interested in the unusual ears of a girl, and not in her eyes, because he does not want to pretend and wants to always be himself in every situation and with absolutely any person.

At 33, Haruki Murakami quit smoking and began to actively train, running many kilometers every day and swimming in the pool. After he moved to live from Japan to the West, speaking excellent English, he was the first in the history of Japanese national literature to begin to see his homeland through the eyes of a modern European. He says that after he left his country, he suddenly wanted to write about it, about its inhabitants, about the past and present of Japan. It is easier for him to write about Japan when he is far from it, because then he can see the country as it really is. Before that, he did not want to write about his homeland, just wanting to share with readers his thoughts about himself and his own world. Now Japan occupies a significant place in all the literary creations of Haruki Murakami.