Ryū Murakami, the Japanese novelist and filmmaker whose raw, violent fiction captured the restless underside of postwar Japan, died at his home on October 17, 2026. He was 74. His publisher, Gentosha, announced his death on October 23, saying his family had already held a private funeral and asked that no condolence visits or gifts be sent.
A debut that shook Japanese literature
Murakami was born on February 19, 1952, in Sasebo, a port city in Nagasaki Prefecture that was home to a large US naval base, an influence that ran through his early work. While still a student at Musashino Art University he wrote Almost Transparent Blue, a frank portrait of young people drifting through drugs, sex and rock music near an American base. Published in 1976, it won both the Gunzo Prize for New Writers and the Akutagawa Prize, Japan’s most prestigious literary award for new writers. The book became a phenomenon, selling about 3.5 million copies, and Murakami went on to adapt it into a film himself in 1979.
Coin Locker Babies, Audition and In the Miso Soup
His 1980 novel Coin Locker Babies, about two boys abandoned as infants in railway station lockers, cemented his reputation as one of Japan’s boldest writers and found a devoted following abroad. Later books including In the Miso Soup and Audition turned his unflinching eye on loneliness and cruelty in modern Tokyo. Takashi Miike’s 1999 film of Audition became an international cult classic, and Murakami also worked as a director, screenwriter and television host.
Tributes
The game designer Hideo Kojima, creator of the Metal Gear series, paid tribute by posting the cover of Coin Locker Babies on social media and calling it “my bible”. He was often mentioned alongside the unrelated novelist Haruki Murakami, but readers and critics knew the two as very different voices: Ryū was the darker, more confrontational chronicler of a country that, in his novels, had lost its sense of purpose.