Haruki Murakami, the acclaimed Japanese novelist, is set to publish his first novel featuring a woman as the main character this summer. Titled The Tale of Kaho, the book will be released in Japan on 3 July, with an ebook edition available the same day. A UK edition has not yet been announced.
About the Novel
The 352-page novel centres on Kaho, a 26-year-old picture book author. It is based on a four-part series originally published in the literary magazine Shincho between June 2024 and March 2026, now revised and expanded. The first instalment, translated into English by Philip Gabriel, appeared in The New Yorker in 2024. The story opens with Kaho on a blind date where the man tells her: “I’ve dated all kinds of women in my life, but I have to say I’ve never seen one as ugly as you.”
Murakami's Previous Works and Criticism
This novel follows Murakami's The City and Its Uncertain Walls, published in the UK in 2024. In October, Penguin will release Abandoning a Cat, an essay about his father, also translated by Gabriel. Murakami's publisher, Shinchosha Publishing Co, describes The Tale of Kaho as his first full-length novel with a sole female protagonist, though he has featured women as main characters in short stories and as one of two protagonists in his three-book novel 1Q84.
The 77-year-old author has faced consistent criticism for his portrayal of women, often accused of reducing female characters to sexualised or one-dimensional objects. In a 2004 interview in The Paris Review, he stated: “In my stories, women are mediums – harbingers of the coming world. That’s why they always come to my protagonist; he doesn’t go to them.”
Murakami's Perspective on Writing as a Woman
In an interview with The New York Times in February, Murakami described writing from a woman’s perspective as unfamiliar but natural. “I became her,” he said. He also noted that the novel feels more optimistic than his previous work. While giving few plot details, he described Kaho as “a very ordinary girl, not so pretty, not so smart,” but that “so many strange things happen to her, around her.”
Career and Recognition
One of Japan’s best-known contemporary authors, Murakami has written 15 novels over a 47-year career, translated into about 50 languages. His notable works include Norwegian Wood, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore, and 1Q84. He has received several prestigious international awards, such as the Franz Kafka Prize (2006), the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award (2016), and Spain’s Princess of Asturias Award for Literature (2023). He is frequently cited as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
