Nationality 1: Japanese

Birthdate: 1949

Haruki Murakami was born on January 12, 1949 in Ashiya City, Japan, a suburb of Kobe. The son of two high-school Japanese literature teachers, Murakami became fascinated with American pop culture as a teenager and began reading works of American literature in English as an adolescent. In 1968, he began studies at Tokyo's Waseda University, eventually graduating with bachelor's degrees in screenwriting and Greek drama in 1975. In 1971, he had married fellow Waseda student Yoko Takahashi. With Takahashi, Murakami opened a jazz bar called the Peter Cat in a Tokyo suburb in 1974, and together, they managed the club until 1981, when Murakami began devoting himself full-time to his writing.

In 1979, Murakami published his first book, a novel entitled Hear the Wind Sing, which he first wrote in English and then translated into Japanese. Hear the Wind Sing won the prestigious Gunzo Award, a first-novel prize, and the book...