Ryu Murakami, provocateur of postwar Japanese fiction, dies at 74
The author of "Almost Transparent Blue" and "Coin Locker Babies" died at home on 17 October, his Japanese publisher Gentosha announced; the news reached French outlets on Friday.
Ryu Murakami has died at the age of 74, his publisher Gentosha said, according to Livres Hebdo, Le Monde, Télérama and the Guardian. He died at home on 17 October; the announcement came on Friday, 23 October.
He was 24 when his debut novel, Almost Transparent Blue (Bleu presque transparent), won the Akutagawa Prize in 1976, launching a career built on unflinching depictions of sex, drugs and violence at the margins of Japanese society, according to Livres Hebdo. Télérama and Le Monde both describe him as one of the defining and most provocative voices of contemporary Japanese letters, with a reputation in English-language press — cited by the Guardian — as the country's literary enfant terrible.
His later novel Coin Locker Babies (Les Bébés de la consigne automatique) is named in the Télérama headline as one of his best-known works in French translation. The Guardian notes his novel Audition was adapted into a film that became a landmark of independent horror cinema, and credits him with more than 40 works across his career, many of them offering a sharp critique of both Japanese and American culture.
Across several generations of readers, Livres Hebdo writes, his work left a lasting mark on how Japanese fiction addressed the darker undersides of consumer society — a body of writing now closing with his death.
Sources
This article was written from these reports.