Tag - murakami

 
 

MURAKAMI

Hawks pitcher Livan Moinelo has a 1.13 ERA in 19 starts this season.
BASEBALL / Sac Bunts
Aug 18, 2025
Candidates preparing to make final pitches for Sawamura Award
The prize’s committee did not deem anyone worthy last year and simply did not name a winner.
Swallows slugger Munetaka Murakami celebrates after hitting a home run against the BayStars in Yokohama on July 29.
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball / Sac Bunts
Aug 4, 2025
Return of Munetaka Murakami could get hearts racing at Jingu Stadium again
The Swallows have not been good this year but have a chance to end the season on a positive note.
Fuji Media Holdings says it will consider issuing free stock acquisition rights if an investor buys up 20% or more of its voting shares.
BUSINESS / Companies
Jul 10, 2025
Fuji Media shares dip after company floats poison pill defense
The broadcaster said it's considering measures to stop one of Japan’s most prominent activist investors from gaining control of the firm.
June is Pride Month, which means it’s the perfect time to get acquainted with how sexual minorities have been represented in Japanese fiction if you’re not familiar with these narratives already.
CULTURE / Books
Jun 11, 2025
Pride and prose: Novels that illuminate queer lives in Japan
From Yukio Mishima and Haruki Murakami to Li Kotomi and Akira Otani, dive into Japanese fiction’s LGBTQ+ narratives in honor of Pride Month.
The Tokyo Yakult Swallows' Munetaka Murakami bats during spring camp on March 14 in the city of Urasoe, Okinawa. Murakami returned from a spring injury on Thursday but was taken off the roster again the next day.
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball / NPB NOTEBOOK
Apr 21, 2025
Munetaka Murakami's return cut short as Swallows’ struggles deepen
The Tokyo team’s star slugger returned on Thursday but was taken off the roster again the next day.
Though Haruki Murakami's trademark whiff of offbeat existentialism is threaded throughout NHK's "After the Quake," the final episode — conceived as a sequel to the story "Super-Frog Saves Tokyo" — is the most stylized, featuring an anthropomorphic talking frog (voiced by Non) and his erstwhile associate Katagiri (Koichi Sato).
CULTURE / TV & Streaming
Apr 3, 2025
Haruki Murakami TV adaptation revisits 30 years of watershed moments
NHK's new four-episode miniseries, “After the Quake,” probes the ripple effects of past major disasters across Japanese society.
A model wears items that are part of Takashi Murakami's collaboration with MLB.
BASEBALL / MLB
Feb 28, 2025
Famed artist Takashi Murakami partners with MLB for Tokyo Series
The new collection includes t-shirts and sweatshirts adorned with Murakami’s signature style, along with hats, baseballs and gloves.
Together, Shinsuke Yamagai (right) and his younger brother, Ryota, have elevated the cuisine at Shintaku, putting it on the map as one of Niigata Prefecture’s premier gastronomic destinations.
LIFE / Food & Drink / Destination Restaurants
Feb 9, 2025
Brothers’ local focus lifts Shintaku to Niigata’s highest rank
From the ashes of a devastating 2005 fire, Shinsuke and Ryota Yamagai have remade their family’s historic Niigata restaurant into a beacon of Japanese gastronomy.
Jay Rubin’s new translation of Haruki Murakami’s “End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland,” in part set in a walled city where inhabitants’ shadows are forcibly removed, speaks to the author’s quirky, exhaustive attention to detail when rendering his imaginative world on the page.
CULTURE / Books
Dec 16, 2024
Jay Rubin takes us back to Haruki Murakami's world
A new translation of “End of the World and Hard-Boiled Wonderland” brings the fan favorite closer to the original Japanese text.
"Butter," Asako Yuzuki’s thrilling novel inspired by a real-life femme fatale, was named the Waterstones Book of the Year in 2024.
CULTURE / Books / 2024 in Review
Dec 15, 2024
Women are writing a new chapter in Japanese literature in the 2020s
From the deadly serious and deeply weird to the fluffiest of diversions, a bounty of Japanese fiction in translation has delighted readers and critics this decade so far.
For “The City and Its Uncertain Walls,” translated into English by Philip Gabriel, Haruki Murakami confronts the ghosts who won't leave him alone.
CULTURE / Books
Nov 19, 2024
Haruki Murakami's 'The City and Its Uncertain Walls' gives deep deja vu
“The City and Its Uncertain Walls,” newly translated into English, is an explicit rerun of the author’s older works with an alternate ending.
Democratic Party for the People head Yuichiro Tamaki speaks to reporters in Tokyo on Nov. 8.
JAPAN / Politics
Nov 15, 2024
DPP leader clashes with governors over tax-free income limit
Prefectural governors fear that raising the ¥1.03 million limit would means less central government tax money for local services.
Internal affairs minister Seiichiro Murakami speaks during an interview at the ministry in Tokyo's Kasumigaseki district on Friday.
JAPAN / Politics
Oct 7, 2024
Japan's new internal affairs minister looks to boost regional revitalization
Seiichiro Murakami aims to increase the number of regional development cooperation volunteers from 7,200 to 10,000.
Masanori Murakami poses with a Willie Mays-themed clock during a news conference at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan in Tokyo on Monday.
BASEBALL / MLB
Sep 3, 2024
The man who opened MLB's door to Japanese players
Masanori Murakami's time with the San Francisco Giants in the 1960s made him something of an accidental trailblazer.
“Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman” incorporates six Murakami short stories from three books into a single intertwined narrative that centers on a trio of lonely Tokyoites.
CULTURE / Film / CULTURE SMASH
Jul 20, 2024
'Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman' is an immersive journey into Murakami's world
Pierre Foldes' beautiful adaptation of six Haruki Murakami stories features one of the author's most memorable characters, who injects the film with self-aware humor.
Josh Rawitch, president of the National Baseball Hall of Fame, holds a baseball thrown by former Dodgers pitcher Hideo Nomo during a no-hitter in 1996 while seated next to a Dodgers uniform used by Shohei Ohtani this season during a news conference at the U.S. ambassador's residence in Tokyo
BASEBALL
Apr 19, 2024
Baseball Hall of Fame to highlight history of Japan-U.S. ties in new exhibition
The exhibition, "Yakyu/Baseball: The Transpacific Exchange of the Game between Japan and the United States," is slated to open in July 2025.
The titular city in Haruki Murakami's most recent novel, "The City and Its Uncertain Walls," appears to exist in the protagonist's dream world.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Apr 19, 2024
Before Murakami’s English release, try him in Japanese one more time
An English version of "The City and Its Uncertain Walls" won't come out till fall, so practice reading it in Japanese before checking the translation.
BASEBALL / Japanese Baseball / NPB NOTEBOOK
Feb 9, 2024
Roki Sasaki gets back to business after weeks of speculation about future
After weeks of rampant rumors, the "Monster of the Reiwa Era" is back to the business of baseball, and the MLB questions are back on the shelf for now.
Cosmo Energy Holdings has said it will call another shareholder vote in December to seek approval for a "poison pill" takeover defense against a group of activist investors.
BUSINESS / Companies
Oct 25, 2023
Cosmo calls another shareholder vote in activist defense
Japan's third-biggest oil refiner said it will not prevent the group a group of activist investors from voting this time.
Reader opinions have been mixed on Haruki Murakami's latest novel, “The City and Its Uncertain Walls.”
CULTURE / Books
Aug 20, 2023
Haruki Murakami’s latest has readers and reviewers perplexed
Following the arrival of the renowned author’s first full-length novel in six years, critics and readers have been left scratching their heads.

Longform

Sumadori Bar on Shibuya Ward's main Center Gai street targets young customers who prefer low-alcohol drinks or abstain altogether.
Rethinking that second drink: Japan’s Gen Z gets ‘sober curious’