Murakami's Asian impact

Tomoko Nishida of Yomiuri Shimbun writes: At a recent symposium focusing on the writer (Murakami) held at Kobe University, participants discussed how his orks are received in East Asian nations and how he touches on East Asia's modern history in his novels.

The symposium, "Haruki Murakami@East Asia," was organised by the university as part of "East Asian Week," a project aimed at reviewing the relations between Japan and its East Asian neighbors.

Haruki Murakami is extremely popular not only in the United States and Europe, but also in East Asia.. In China, 1.4 million copies of Norwegian Wood and 300,000 copies of Kafka on the Shore have been published. This number exceeds the number of copies of his translated works in the European and US markets. And China is still a long way from being a fully-grown market (and these numbers do not include pirated editions).

Lin Shaohua, professor at Ocean University of China is quoted, :... Murakami's works fill the gap between precocious young people in the urban areas and immature urban literature ..."