Do we like Haruki Murakami?
Our score: 8 out of 10. A clean harm record and a long run of speaking up and giving back, with the LGBTQ+ side of the record thin.
Murakami is the reclusive bloke who made a global name writing dreamy, jazz-soaked novels. In a New York Times interview he said he has no plan when he starts a book and doesn't think he's a genius. He also said he felt like an outsider in Japanese literary circles early on, and credits music, including his vinyl collection, with shaping his writing more than books did.
The nearest thing to a stoush on the record isn't his doing. In 2018 Hong Kong's Obscene Articles Tribunal ruled his novel Killing Commendatore indecent, so it had to be sold sealed and kept from minors. Twenty-one groups petitioned against the ruling, and Murakami didn't immediately respond to AFP's request for comment. That's a censorship story, not a scandal about him.
On the harm test, we searched for anything he has said or done against LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the planet and found nothing. What turned up points the other way. In a 2023 speech he said suspicion was replacing mutual trust and walls were going up between people, and he hoped stories could help rebuild that trust. Honest gap: his LGBTQ+ record is thin in what we could source, so this is a pass on what's there, not a glowing reference.
He'll also pick a fight for a good cause. In 2011 he accepted Catalonia's international prize and said Japan should have said no to nuclear energy, then pledged the 80,000 euro prize money to disaster victims. In 2023 he came out on his radio show against the Jingu Gaien redevelopment in Tokyo, which would take out a historic baseball stadium and trees. Whether you agree with every call, he put his name behind them.
In 2018 he announced he would donate his manuscripts, foreign editions and a collection of more than 10,000 records to Waseda University, his alma mater. That became a library for scholars and fans alike. His latest novel is reportedly his first told mainly from a young woman's perspective, and he told the Times he felt more optimistic writing it. That's a nice turn after a career where critics have long picked at his female characters, though we haven't sourced those critiques here.