R.I.P. Ryū Murakami, 村上 龍, 19 February 1952–17 October 2026

Murakami's first short novel, pictured above, is structurally perfect. At least I consider it, alongside Yukio Mishima's The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With the Sea, to be structurally perfect, and this to be the result, in both cases, of a crystalline clarity of expression. The books are also alike in length. Each is of a length that its structure can be held in the mind at once—neither so short it is lacking in complexity, and simple, nor so long that it possesses too many facets, confusing the singular image which it presents, of which it is the distillation. Clarity in this sense too, then—in the sense of simple refinement; so that we can also say, in the way of wabi-sabi, 侘び寂び, that each is flawed.

I look forward to Murakami Ryū having a long afterlife, in English especially, since there are still so many of his books to be translated.