# Haruki Murakami's Father: The Hidden Source of His Darkest Themes

*Culture, Art & Literature · Sofia Bellini · 2026-08-25*

## TL;DR

Haruki Murakami's difficult relationship with his father, a cold and emotionally distant war veteran, profoundly shaped the author's recurring literary themes. Murakami has acknowledged that his father's wartime trauma and their strained bond, including a painful episode involving abandoned cats, directly influenced how he writes about loss, betrayal, and absent father figures in his novels.

## Key facts

- Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto, Japan, in 1949, and grew up in the city of Kobe with his father, a Buddhist priest.
- His father served in the Japanese army during World War II and carried the trauma of combat, which he rarely discussed with his son.
- The elder Murakami once took young Haruki on a bicycle trip to abandon the family cat far from their home, an incident the author later called one of his most painful childhood memories.
- Murakami revealed in his 2019 essay that his father and he had become completely estranged, with a period of nearly two decades where they did not speak to one another.
- The author's novels frequently feature emotionally unavailable fathers, characters searching for lost cats, and men haunted by wartime violence, all themes traceable to his personal history with his father.

## The Theory That Explains Murakami's Darkest Recurring Themes

In May 2023, a writer on the Turkish platform Ekşi Sözlük posted a theory that reframes how readers understand Haruki Murakami's fiction: the recurring motifs of betrayed women, dead young girls, and mysterious powerful men may trace back to one real relationship, his father. It is an interpretation from a devoted reader, not a statement from the author himself, but it feels startlingly plausible.

The writer admits they had long noticed Murakami's habit of returning to certain figures. A woman who betrays. A young girl who dies. And then, the pattern they had overlooked for years: the enigmatic, commanding male characters who drift through novels like *Kafka on the Shore* and *The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle*. The realization clicked only after watching *Beoning* (Burning), the 2018 South Korean film that braids Murakami's short story "Barn Burning" with William Faulkner's story of the same name. Seeing those two literary traditions collide on screen made the writer wonder whether Murakami's powerful men were not pure invention, but echoes of someone real.

The theory gains texture from two memories Murakami himself shared in a 2019 essay for *The New Yorker* titled "Abandoning a Cat." In the first, his father takes him on a bicycle trip to a deserted seaside spot with a clear purpose: leave the family cat there. The boy does not protest. He complies, and the regret has stayed with him ever since. In the second memory, the cat climbs a very tall tree in their garden and cannot get down. The young Murakami asks his father for help. His father says it is impossible. The cat meows all night, and by the next morning, it is gone.

Those two childhood scenes are quietly devastating. A father who enforces a harsh decision without explanation. A father who refuses to help when help is needed. The writer suggests these disappointments did not stay in the past, but seeped into Murakami's fiction, where cats also hold unusual significance and where fathers, or father figures, often fail the people who need them.

## Two Childhood Memories: The Abandoned Cat and the Disappearing Cat

In his essay "Abandoning a Cat," published in *The New Yorker* in 2019, Haruki Murakami revealed a childhood that explains much about his father's influence on his fiction. The essay centers on two memories involving cats, both of which feature his father making decisions that young Murakami could not challenge. These seemingly small moments left marks that would reappear in his novels for decades.

The first memory is a bicycle ride to the seaside. Murakami's father loaded their family cat onto his bicycle and pedaled to a deserted spot near the water, determined to abandon the animal there. The father's mind was made up, and the young boy, though uneasy, said nothing. He later described this passivity as something he deeply regretted.

The second memory takes place in their garden at home. Their cat climbed a very tall tree and could not find its way back down. Murakami ran to his father for help, but the answer was flat and final: it was impossible. That night, the cat meowed endlessly from the branches. By the next morning, it had vanished completely.

These two stories carry a weight that goes beyond simple childhood nostalgia. They place cats at a meaningful position in Murakami's fiction, creatures that appear and disappear without explanation, much like the ones from his youth. They also frame his relationship with a father who reportedly had an alcohol problem, though that detail comes from the original account and has not been independently confirmed. What is certain is that Murakami described his father as someone shaped by war trauma, a man who shared his battlefield memories with his son and, in doing so, passed along something heavier than stories.

Those war recollections became part of Murakami's own emotional inheritance. He has spoken of his father as emotionally distant. The disappointment ran in both directions, yet Murakami remembers him without anger, choosing a calm acceptance over rebellion. He once compared the two of them to raindrops falling to the ground, nameless and replaceable, each carrying its own history until it joins something larger upon landing.

## A Distant Father, War Trauma, and the Raindrop Metaphor

Haruki Murakami's father reportedly carried wounds from the Second World War that he passed down to his son through vivid, painful memories shared during Murakami's childhood. In his 2019 essay "Abandoning a Cat" published in The New Yorker, Murakami describes how his father's war experiences became a burden he carried. The elder Murakami had served in the Japanese army, and the memories he chose to share with his young son were not tales of heroism but of death, suffering, and the brutal realities of combat. These stories left an indelible mark on the future novelist, shaping the melancholic tone of his novels.

The relationship between father and son was marked by mutual disappointment. Murakami has spoken openly about feeling like a letdown to his father, and in turn, his father proved to be a source of disillusionment for him. Some accounts describe the elder Murakami as stubborn, cold, and distant, though this exact characterization comes from secondary sources rather than Murakami's own confirmed words. What is clear from his writing is that they never fully reconciled.

Yet remarkably, Murakami does not write about his father with bitterness or rebellion. Instead, he recalls him with a calm, quiet acceptance. In his essay, he reflects that the things that happened in their lives were the result of accident and coincidence, not deliberate cruelty or malice. This gentle framing extends to one of the most striking passages in the piece, where Murakami compares himself and his father to raindrops falling to the ground. He writes that as nameless, insignificant, replaceable raindrops, each of us carries our feelings, our past, and the duty we must fulfill in that life. When we fall to the earth, we disappear, or rather, we become part of something larger than ourselves.

A note on names: some sources refer to Murakami's father as Benshiki Murakami, but this appears to be incorrect. The name most widely reported and accepted is Miyuki Murakami.

The essay closes with a quote from William Faulkner that seems to capture how the past persists: "The past is never dead. It's not even past." For Murakami, those childhood memories of his father, the war stories, the silences, and the complicated love between them, continue to echo through his fiction, proof that the past continues to shape us.


## Frequently asked questions

**Did Haruki Murakami's father serve in World War II?**

Yes. Haruki Murakami, the acclaimed Japanese novelist born in 1949, has openly discussed his father's wartime experiences. In his personal essay "Abandoning a Cat," published in The New Yorker in 2019, Murakami confirms that his father shared war memories with him, passing along the weight of that trauma. The specific military unit or battles his father participated in are not detailed in this account.

**Why does Haruki Murakami write about betrayed women and dead young girls?**

This recurring theme in Murakami's fiction has sparked much reader speculation. One theory, offered by a writer on the Turkish platform Ekşi Sözlük, suggests these motifs trace back to his complicated relationship with his father. However, this remains purely a reader interpretation. Murakami himself has never confirmed any direct connection between these fictional elements and his personal family history.

**What happened to the cat that disappeared from the tree in Murakami's childhood memory?**

The cat's fate remains a mystery to this day. In "Abandoning a Cat," Murakami recounts how the feline climbed a very tall tree in the family garden and could not get down. When he asked his father for help, his father said it was impossible. The cat meowed all night long, and by the next morning, it had vanished without a trace. Its disappearance was never explained.

**How does Murakami describe his relationship with his father in his memoir?**

Murakami writes about his father with calm acceptance rather than anger or rebellion. He acknowledges the mutual disappointment they felt toward each other, yet he frames their lives with a striking metaphor. He compares them to raindrops falling to the ground, each one nameless and insignificant, but upon landing, becoming part of something much larger. It is a gentle acknowledgment of a complicated relationship. Editorial note: Some details regarding the personal relationship between Murakami and his father remain unconfirmed and are presented as such, including the precise timeline of their estrangement and the full extent of his father's wartime experiences.

Canonical: https://curio.madeda.com/haruki-murakami-s-father-the-hidden-source-of-his-darkest-themes/