HARUKI MURAKAMI was born in Kyoto in 1949. He met his wife, Yoko, at university and they opened a jazz club in Tokyo called Peter Cat. The massive success of his novel Norwegian Wood (1987) made him a national celebrity. He fled Japan and did not return until 1995 when he came to regard the Kobe earthquake and the Tokyo gas attack as twin manifestations of a violence just beneath the surface of Japanese life.