Departures of note

Ryu Murakami was born in 1952 in Sasebo, Nagasaki Prefecture. While still a student at Musashino Art University, he published his debut novel Almost Transparent Blue in 1976, a vivid portrait of young people living chaotic lives around a US military base. The book won the Gunzo Prize for New Writers and the Akutagawa Prize and became a million-seller, launching him as one of Japan's most prominent literary voices.

He went on to publish a wide range of acclaimed works, including Coin Locker Babies (1980), which won the Noma Literary Prize, and the large-scale political novel Love and Pop (Ai to Genso no Fascism, 1987). Alongside Haruki Murakami, he was celebrated as one of the 'W Murakami' pair of leading contemporary novelists. His novel In the Miso Soup and the 2005 work Exit from the Peninsula, which won the Mainichi Publishing Culture Award and the Noma Literary Prize, further cemented his reputation.

Beyond fiction, he wrote the million-selling career guide 13-sai no Hello Work (2003) for young readers, directed the film adaptation of his own work Topaz, and hosted the economic talk program Cambria Palace for two decades from 2006. He died on 17 October 2026 at the age of 74.