Word: murakami
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...ARTS Tokyo Pop: Takashi Murakami Books: The Tasaday story
...traditionalist cultures, even many younger Asian artists produce work that, like Chen's, acknowledges the history and long-standing cultural practices of their homelands. But preconceptions about the Japanese gift for wabi--refined simplicity--will get you nowhere with the dancing cartoon mushrooms of the post-Pop artist Takashi Murakami. A very visible figure on the international art circuit, Murakami decked out Manhattan's Grand Central Terminal last year with giant balloons covered with eyeballs that owed more to the Japanese obsession with cartoon animation than to tea ceremonies and lacquered trays...
...always prolific, but in the past seven years Murakami has kicked into overdrive. He's translated short stories, nonfiction and children's books, written travelogues, essays, short stories, a short novel and two books of nonfiction. With Kafka on the Shore, Murakami has added his first full-length novel in seven years. Loosely based on Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, it's the story of Kafka Tamura, a 15-year-old boy who flees Tokyo to find the meaning of life. He comes from the kind of dysfunctional family Murakami often portrays. Kafka's mother and elder sister leave when...
...Shimbun newspaper. However, Tetsuo Matsuda, who reviewed it for the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan's best-selling broadsheet, praised the book as a profound philosophical rumination on the turbulent times afflicting Japan. "In any heavy storm, there are always writers who hoist a torchlight in front of people," Matsuda raved. "Murakami has been, and will be, taking that role. Whatever happens in the world, I will watch his light...
...Overseas, Murakami is more revered than ever. In Taiwan, a newspaper recently predicted that his face could one day grace a Japanese banknote, like the Meiji-era novelist Natsume Soseki, whose image appears on 1,000-yen notes. To such devotees, Murakami is not just another obscure Japanese writer. He is a great writer who just happens to be Japanese...