BW2: Miyuki Miyabe and Haruki Murakami

Courtesy of Goodreads

Our author choices of the month are Miyuki Miyabe and Haruki Murakami.


Miyuki Miyabe was born December 23, 1960 in Tokyo, Japan where she still lives at present.   She began writing classes at the age of 23 while working in a law office. Her  debut short story Warera  ga rinjin no hanzai (Our Neighbor's Crime) was published in 1987 and won the All Yomimono Mystery Prize for new writers.  

She has written short stories, a horror anthology - Apparitions: Ghosts of Old Edo,    numerous adult crime and thrillers plus  science fiction fantasy novels for children. She has received numerous awards for her work including Mystery Writers of Japan in 1992,  Japan SF Award in 1997, and The Best Japanese Crime Fiction of the Year in 1992. She also won the U.S. Batchelder award  for Brave Story as the most outstanding children's book, translated into English and published in the U.S.   

Several of her novels had been made into tv dramas and films.  Brave Story was also adapted into a children's animated film in 2006 and  nominated for an "Animation of the Year" award for the 2007 Japanese Academy Awards. 

Her most recent best selling novels are St. Peter’s Funeral Procession , as well as Solomon's Perjury which has yet to be translated. 

Learn more about Miyuki through Reuter's interview Japan Writer wants world to see new face of Toyko as well as Miyuki Miyabe and Japanese Noir.  

If you are feeling really ambitious, check out Noriko Chino's doctorate dissertation from 2008 on Miyuki Miyabe's Place in the Development of Japanese Mystery Fiction. 

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Courtesy of Time 

Haruki Murakami was born January 12, 1949 in Tokyo, Japan and will be 69 this year. He began writing at the age of 29, inspired by all things, a baseball game. Hear the Wind Sing, his first book in Trilogy of the Rat, was published in 1979 and he won the Gunzou Shinjin Sho, the Gunzo New Writer Award for new writers, established by Gunzo Magazine.

He soon followed up with two more books in his Trilogy of the Rat:  Pinball 1973 in 1979  and A Wild Sheep Chase in 1982.  He won the Noma Bungei Shinjin Sho (Noma Literary Award for New Writers) for A Wild Sheep Chase in 1982.  During this period of time he sold his bar, Jazz Cats, which he had opened in 1974, and began writing full time.

In 1985 he wrote Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the Year  for which he won the  Junichi Tanizaki Award.  In 1991 he moved to the United States where he taught at Princeton and also wrote The Wind Up Bird Chronicle which was published in 1994. He won the prestigious Yomiuri Literary Award.

He moved back to Japan in 1995 and has gone on to write numerous novels both fiction and nonfiction, including his latest short story collection released in 2017 - Men Without Women.

If you want to find out more about Murakami -  Check out his website, follow him on facebook, peak into his interviews in Japan Times including articles on  music, jazz and the brain, and danish award. 

Join me in reading both Miyuki Miyabe and Haruki Murakami this month! 

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