Ryu Murakami, the renowned Japanese author behind works such as Audition, has died. He was 74.
Murakami’s passing was first announced by his publisher, Gentosha, on its website as well as on its X/Twitter account. According to the publisher (as translated by the Guardian), Murakami died on October 17 at his home. According to Deadline, Murakami had a private funeral.
村上龍氏 ご逝去のお知らせ
作家の村上龍氏が2026年10月17日に 自宅で逝去されました 享年74歳
ここに謹んで哀悼の意を表し ご報告申し上げます
葬儀におきましては 家族葬として執り行われました
『限りなく透明に近いブルー』に始まり… pic.twitter.com/fInLzZmYEK— 幻冬舎BOOKS (@BOOKS_GENTOSHA) October 23, 2026
Lauded as one of Japan’s greatest cult writers, Murakami’s first book, Almost Transparent Blue, written while he was still a high school student, won the Gunzo Prize for new writers and the Akutagawa Prize, Japan’s most prestigious literary award, according to Deadline. In his lifetime, Murakami wrote over 40 novels that depict society’s darker underbelly. All of them were teeming with themes surrounding loneliness, desire, and obsession. Key among them were In the Miso Soup, Coin Locker Babies, and Piercing.
Arguably his most famous work in the West was his 1997 psychological horror novel Audition, which director Takashi Miike adapted into a film two years later. The story follows an ill-fated romance between a widower who stages a fake casting call to find a new partner, only to meet a woman who, not to give too much away, is way too much for him to handle. Audition is widely regarded as one of the most influential horror films of all time, a feat that wouldn’t have happened had Murakami not put pencil to paper and written the source material.
Other works of Murakami, like Coin Locker Babies, would act as an inspirational boon for other Japanese creatives like video game developer Ryu Ga Gotoku in its Yakuza/Like A Dragon series as well as the fourth entry in Konami’s psychological horror series, Silent Hill 4: The Room.
Likewise, Death Stranding developer Hideo Kojima shared a post memorializing Murakami, uploading a photo of Coin Locker Babies to his official X/Twitter account, calling it his bible.
This was my bible.
R.I.P. pic.twitter.com/m8AoaEJ6BY
— HIDEO_KOJIMA (@HIDEO_KOJIMA_EN) October 23, 2026
Murakami was more than an author and essayist. As Deadline notes, Murakami also wrote and directed a couple of his own films, like Tokyo Decadence, which followed the lives of women in Tokyo during the bubble era; Kyoko, a romance between a Japanese woman and a Cuban-American soldier; and A World Five Minutes Later, an alternate history tale where Japan didn’t surrender in World War II.
“From Almost Transparent Blue onward, Ryu Murakami consistently released shocking works aimed at younger generations, and the news of his untimely passing fills us with profound sorrow that is hard to bear,” Gentosha wrote in its statement. “We pray for the peaceful rest of this leader who raced at the forefront of our era.”
As the Guardian notes, many of Murakami’s works have yet to be published in English. Hopefully, more of his works will be translated so readers around the world can experience his brilliance.
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