Japanese author Ryu Murakami dies; wrote novels depicting society

[Financial News] Japan's bestselling author Ryu Murakami has died. He was 74.
According to Kyodo News, NHK and others on the 23rd, Murakami died on the 17th, and a family-only funeral was held.
Born in 1952 in Sasebo, Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan, he drew attention from both the literary world and the public when he won the Akutagawa Prize, a prestigious Japanese literary award, for Almost Transparent Blue, a novel he wrote while attending university.
Born in Sasebo, home to a U.S. Navy base, and having lived in Fussa, Tokyo, where there is a U.S. military base, he drew on those experiences to vividly portray young people leading decadent lives in the novel. He was praised for exploring the self at the core of human nature.
He earned a reputation as a bestselling author with works including Coin Locker Babies, which depicts in a distinctive style how children abandoned in coin lockers (storage lockers) survive, and The Fascism of Love and Fantasy, about young people rising to political prominence in Japan amid the global Great Depression.
In Exodus from the Land of Hope, he portrayed Japanese society as a patient slowly dying. He also wrote The Old Terrorist, about elderly people carrying out terrorist attacks on targets such as public broadcasters and idol groups in an effort to build a new society.
He also worked as a film director and screenwriter, and from 2006 served as the main host of Cambrian Palace, TV Tokyo's current affairs and economics program.
His 2005 novel From the Fatherland, with Love, about North Korean special forces occupying Fukuoka Dome, was reportedly inspired by his reading of memoirs by North Korean defectors.
To write the novel, he spent about 10 years developing the idea and about four years gathering research materials. He is also said to have read about 200 books related to North Korea and conducted in-person interviews with dozens of North Korean defectors.
Speaking through Dr. Seraki, a character in the novel, he said of the Japanese colonial period, "Japan did many good things, such as building factories and laying railways in Korea, but it also killed many people." He was also criticized for allegedly advocating the colonial modernization theory.
Through novels that sharply examined aspects of modern society, including war, sex and violence, he criticized Japan's social system and emphasized individualism over totalitarianism.
In Japan, he was called one half of the "Double Murakami" alongside fellow author Haruki Murakami, who was active during the same period.


[email protected] Lee Seok-woo, International Affairs Correspondent Reporter