Haruki Murakami, the acclaimed Japanese novelist, will release his first novel to feature a woman as the lead character this July. Titled The Tale of Kaho, the book is set to be published in Japan on 3 July, with an ebook edition available the same day. A UK edition has not yet been announced.
Plot and Background
The 352-page novel centers 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, and has been revised and expanded into a full-length novel. The first installment, translated into English by Philip Gabriel, appeared in the New Yorker in 2024. The story begins with Kaho attending 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 also 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 women have been main characters in his short stories and one of the two protagonists in his trilogy 1Q84.
Murakami, 77, has faced consistent criticism for his portrayal of women, often accused of reducing female characters to sexualized or one-dimensional objects. In a 2004 interview with the Paris Review, he said of female characters: “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.”
Author's Perspective
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. He gave few details about the plot but described Kaho as “a very ordinary girl, not so pretty, not so smart,” yet “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 47 years, translated into about 50 languages. His works include Norwegian Wood, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore, and 1Q84. He has received several prestigious international awards, including the Franz Kafka Prize in 2006, the Hans Christian Andersen Literature Award in 2016, and Spain’s Princess of Asturias Award for Literature in 2023. He is frequently mentioned as a contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
