The news that 88-year-old Doris Lessing received the 2007 Nobel Prize in literature was not greeted by the Japanese media with as much fanfare as former U.S. Vice President Al Gore's winning the Nobel Peace Prize. This perhaps was because Japanese literary circles were more interested in whether Haruki Murakami would become this year's Nobel laureate in literature.

Murakami would have been the third Japanese recipient of the literature prize after Yasunari Kawabata in 1968 and Kenzaburo Oe in 1994.

Murakami has long been an important figure in the Japanese publishing industry because whatever novel he writes becomes a best-seller. Indeed, his "Norwegian Wood" has sold about 9 million copies, including the paperback edition.