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Haruki Murakami - Coggle Diagram
Haruki Murakami
Childhood
Born in Kyoto, Japan in 1949 and grew up in Kobe
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Heavily influenced by Western culture from a young age, including music and literature
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Career
Wrote his first novel Hear The Wind Sing at age 29 after being inspired to write for the first time, which went on to win a Gunzou Literature Prize
Published Pinball, 1973 and A Wild Sheep Chase in following years as sequels to Hear The Wind Sing, loosely forming the Trilogy of the Rat
Wrote several more novels with often more serious themes that reached international popularity in following years before moving to the US in 1991
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Went on to teach at Princeton, Tufts, and Harvard between '91 and '95 while continuing writing before moving back to Japan following the Kobe Earthquake and Aum Shinrikyo gas attack
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Themes/writing style
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Inspired largely by music in his writing, often naming works after songs or incorporating themes of classical or jazz music
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Common themes include love, loss, sexuality, and music, as well as more real-world themes such as the actions of the Japanese government or deeper themes such as the nature of reality
Personal life
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Invested in music as a "mental journey" and means of self expression and at one point aspired to be a jazz musician
Also runs marathons and competes in triathlons, a hobby he adopted at the age of 33 to stay in shape
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Important works
His 1995 work The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle marked a turning point in the themes and purpose of his works as it dealt with Japanese war crimes and a shift in the intentions of his works
His 1987 work Norwegian Wood, named after the Beatles song of the same name, established him as an international literary celebrity as it recieved worldwide attention
Underground (1997) and After the Quake (2000) were his first nonfiction works that explored the effects of the subway gas attack and Kobe Earthquake respectively
IQ84 (2009) explores several sociopolitically relevant themes whole title is a reference to George Orwell's 1984 that contains similar themes
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