Nearly five decades into one of the most influential literary careers of the modern era, Haruki Murakami still begins every novel the same way: without a plan. As he explained in a recent interview reported by the New York Times, he sits down to write with no clear sense of what will happen next — a startling confession from an author who has published more than 40 books and helped carry Japanese literature into the global mainstream.
“I don’t have any plan, I’m just writing,” Murakami said during the interview in New York. As the words accumulate, he slips into what he describes as another world — a subconscious realm where strange things unfold naturally and without effort. His task, as he sees it, is simply to visit that place and return with observations. He does not present himself as a virtuoso stylist or a towering intellectual. Instead, he frames his gift as something quieter and more elusive: the ability to cross between realities and report back.
That humility extended to his demeanor when he met the New York Times reporter in a dim, cavernous cocktail lounge beneath a Midtown Manhattan hotel. The setting felt almost custom-built for a Murakami novel — shadowy, still and slightly unreal. Dressed casually in a hooded sweatshirt and sneakers, Murakami appeared comfortable in near darkness, speaking slowly and deliberately, often in English, his gaze drifting upward as if tracking thoughts only he could see.
Public appearances are not something Murakami relishes. He avoids television and rarely enjoys talking about himself or interpreting his work. Still, during a December visit to New York, he made a rare exception. He delivered two public speeches, including one at Town Hall on the globalization of Japanese literature — a transformation he himself helped bring about — and another while accepting a lifetime achievement award from the Center for Fiction, presented by Patti Smith. Guests at the gala were instructed not to photograph him, a reminder of his enduring preference for privacy.
During his acceptance remarks, Murakami thanked his wife of more than 50 years, whom he described as his first and most demanding reader. He also recalled a humbling moment from early in his American career: a book signing attended by only a handful of people. Sitting with a pen and no one to sign for, he remembered, was “one of the longest hours of my life.”
That scene is almost unimaginable today. As the New York Times notes, Murakami now occupies a rare position in world literature: a writer with both immense critical prestige and massive popular appeal. His novels inspire midnight release parties, fan-made playlists, cookbooks based on his fictional meals and even social media accounts devoted entirely to his recurring references to spaghetti. He has won major international prizes, including the Franz Kafka Prize and the Jerusalem Prize, and is perennially mentioned as a Nobel contender — speculation his agent says has become something of a running joke.
In the United States alone, Murakami’s books have sold more than six million copies, and his presence in the literary marketplace shows no signs of fading. Knopf is preparing several releases, including “Abandoning a Cat,” a short, intimate book about Murakami’s relationship with his father, and a forthcoming volume centered on his classical music record collection. His backlist is also being repackaged with new covers, a testament to the enduring demand for his work.
Remarkably, Murakami remains prolific at 77. He recently completed a new novel that will be published in Japan this summer and is already being translated into English. Much of it was written after he recovered from a serious illness that left him hospitalized for a month and caused him to lose roughly 40 pounds. Accustomed to running an hour a day, he suddenly struggled to walk. During the worst of the illness, the desire to write vanished — a loss that frightened him more than the physical symptoms. When the urge returned, it felt, he said, like a resurrection.
The new novel marks a departure. It is more optimistic in tone and is Murakami’s first book written primarily from a woman’s perspective. Long criticized for portraying female characters as marginal or overly sexualized, Murakami said he was surprised by how natural the shift felt. “I became her,” he said of the protagonist, a young artist and children’s book illustrator named Kaho. Beyond that, he offered few details, except the promise that strange things — very strange things — happen.
Such strangeness has always been Murakami’s signature. His stories often begin in the most ordinary circumstances — cooking spaghetti, sitting in traffic — before slipping seamlessly into parallel realities. The transition is so subtle that readers barely notice they’ve crossed over. As his editor at Knopf told the New York Times, Murakami starts in our world and quietly brings readers into his own.
Murakami did not grow up expecting to be a writer. Raised near Kobe and Osaka by parents who taught Japanese literature, he avoided it entirely as a teenager. Instead, he gravitated toward American and Russian writers — Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dostoyevsky — and immersed himself in music. Jazz, in particular, shaped his sense of rhythm and improvisation. In his 20s, he ran a jazz club in Tokyo called Peter Cat. The decision to write his first novel came suddenly, during a baseball game, and almost by accident.
Struggling to find his voice, Murakami began writing in English and translating his sentences back into Japanese, a process that helped him develop the spare, unadorned style that would later become his hallmark. That first novel, “Hear the Wind Sing,” won a literary prize and was published in 1979, when he was 30.
Alongside his fiction, Murakami has long worked as a translator, bringing English-language writers like Raymond Chandler, J.D. Salinger and Raymond Carver into Japanese. Translation, he said, keeps his mind flexible and allows him to inhabit other voices — another form of crossing between worlds.
While his international reputation grew rapidly, his reception in Japan was initially hostile. Critics dismissed his work as too Western, too fantastical, too lightweight. Feeling like an outsider, he left Japan for several years, living in Europe and the United States to write freely, away from the criticism. Over time, that resistance softened, especially as Murakami’s global stature rose and a new generation of Japanese writers found international audiences partly because of the path he cleared.
Today, Murakami no longer feels like a pariah at home. Age has brought a certain respect, and his recent work has grown more reflective and philosophical. Novels like “The City and Its Uncertain Walls” grapple openly with memory, loss and mortality. Longtime collaborators describe a new depth and gravitas in his writing — quieter, heavier and more moving.
For Murakami himself, the routine remains simple: wake early, write, run, do household chores. He admits he doesn’t know how many novels he has left. But he feels there is still room to explore — inward, outward, and into the dark spaces he has never feared.
“Even when I got old,” he said, “there’s still space to explore.”
