Murakami hosts Japanese ghost story reading

TOKYO

Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami hosted a ghost story reading event in Tokyo amid growing attention before the announcement of this year's Nobel Prize in literature, an award he is a perennial favorite to win.

Murakami said at reading on Sept. 28 that he enjoys scary stories and wanted to write more of them. The event featured one from the 18-century collection “Tales of Moonlight and Rain,” which intrigued Murakami since his childhood and is known to have inspired his work.

The classic collection written by Akinari Ueda and called “Ugetsu Monogatari” in Japanese explores a blurry borderline between the real and surreal, which Murakami said in a guide he contributed to a 2021 magazine made him wonder which side he was on.

Borders and walls are important motifs in Murakami's writing. Protagonists in his stories often travel through walls or between two worlds and encounter mysterious, exotic characters. While Murakami has said he grew up mostly reading Western novels, some experts have also noted the influence of Ueda's stories in some of Murakami's work.

Murakami has been a candidate for the Nobel Prize in literature for more than a decade, and the winner of the 2023 prize is scheduled to be announced on Oct. 5. If he wins, he would will be first Japanese writer since Kenzaburo Oe in 1994 to be named a Nobel laureate.