Murata was born in Inzai, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, in 1979. As a child she often read science fiction and mystery novels borrowed from her brother and mother, and her mother bought her a word processor after she attempted to write a novel by hand in the fourth grade of elementary school. After Murata completed middle school in Inzai, her family moved to Tokyo, where she graduated from Kashiwa High School and attended Tamagawa University. Her first novel, Jyunyū, won the 2003 Gunzo Prize for New Writers. In 2013 she won the Mishima Yukio Prize for Shiro-iro no machi no, sono hone no taion no, and in 2014 the Special Prize of the Sense of Gender Award. In 2016 her 10th novel, Konbini ningen, won the prestigious Akutagawa Prize, and she was named one of Vogue Japan's Women of the Year. Konbini ningen has sold over 600,000 copies in Japan, and in 2018 it became her first book to be translated into English, under the title Convenience Store Woman. Throughout her writing career Murata has worked part-time as a convenience store clerk in Tokyo.
Writing style
Murata's writing explores the different consequences of nonconformity in society for men and women, particularly with regard to gender roles, parenthood, and sex. Many of the themes and character backstories in her writing come from her daily observations as a part-time convenience store worker. Societal acceptance of sexlessness in various forms, including asexuality, voluntary and involuntary celibacy, especially within marriage, recurs as a theme in several of her works, such as the novels Shōmetsu sekai and Konbini ningen, and the short story "A Clean Marriage." Murata is also known for her frank depictions of adolescent sexuality in work such as Gin iro no uta and Shiro-iro no machi no, sono hone no taion no. In Satsujin shussan she depicts a future society which may be seen as dystopic for the use of Reproduction Technologies and the strange system called Birth-Murder Sysyem.
Recognition
Books in Japanese
Jyunyū Kodansha, 2005,
Gin iro no uta, Shinchosha, 2009,
Mausu, Kodansha, 2008,
Hoshi ga sū mizu, Kodansha, 2010,
Hakobune, Shueisha, 2011,
Shiro-iro no machi no, sono hone no taion no, Asahi Shimbun, 2012,
Tadaima tobira, Shinchosha, 2012,
Satsujin shussan, Kodansha, 2014,
Shōmetsu sekai, Kawade Shobo Shinsha, 2015,
Konbini ningen, Bungeishunju, 2016,
Translated works
Lover on the Breeze, English translation by Ginny Tapley Takemori, Ruptured Fiction of the Earthquake, 2011.
A Clean Marriage, English translation by Ginny Tapley Takemori, Granta 127: Japan, 2014.
Convenience Store Woman, English translation of Konbini ningen by Ginny Tapley Takemori, Grove Atlantic, 2018,
Earthlings, English translation by Ginny Tapley Takemori, Granta Books, 2020
