Ryu Murakami Dies: Japanese Author & Filmmaker, Best Known For ‘Almost Transparent Blue’, Was 74

The Japanese writer and filmmaker Ryu Murakami has died. He was 74.

Murakami’s publisher, Gentosha, announced his death today in a lengthy statement on their website.

“Author Ryu Murakami passed away at his home on October 17, 2026, at the age of 74. We hereby express our deepest condolences and share this news,” the statement read.

“The funeral was held as a private family service. In accordance with the family’s wishes, they are declining all condolence visits, monetary offerings, floral tributes, telegrams, and other gifts.”

Born in Nagasaki Prefecture in 1952, Murakami made his writing debut in 1976, while still a university student, with Almost Transparent Blue, which won both the 19th Gunzo New Writers’ Award and the 75th Akutagawa Prize.

The book became a hit, selling more than 3.5 million copies across its hardcover and paperback editions. In 1980, he received the 3rd Noma Literary Newcomer’s Award for Coin Locker Babies.

Murakami also wrote and directed several film adaptations of his own works, including Tokyo Decadence, which explores the lives of women in Tokyo during the bubble economy, and Kyoko, the story of a young Japanese woman’s relationship with a Cuban-American serviceman stationed in the country. In 1994, he published A World Five Minutes Later, set in an alternate reality where Japan did not surrender in World War II. In 1997, he won the 49th Yomiuri Literary Prize for In the Miso Soup.

Away from writing, he also served as the primary interviewer on the long-running economic and business talk show Cambrian Palace on TV Tokyo.