Stream Big Playlists of Music from Haruki Murakami’s Personal Vinyl Collection and His Strange Literary Worlds

Haru­ki Muraka­mi read­ers, or even those of us who’ve just read about his nov­els, know to expect cer­tain things from his books: cats, ears, wells, strange par­al­lel real­i­ties, and above all music. And not just any music, but high­ly delib­er­ate selec­tions from the West­ern clas­si­cal, pop, and jazz canons, all no doubt pulled straight from the shelves of the writer’s vast per­son­al record library. That per­son­al library may well have grown a few records vaster today, giv­en that it’s Murakami’s 69th birth­day. To mark the occa­sion, we’ve round­ed up a few hit playlists of music from the Nor­we­gian Wood, The Wind-Up Bird Chron­i­cle, and 1Q84 author’s work as well as his life.

At the top of the post we have a Youtube playlist of songs from the artists fea­tured in Murakami’s non-fic­tion Por­trait in Jazz books, still, like most of his essay­is­tic writ­ing, untrans­lat­ed into Eng­lish. We orig­i­nal­ly high­light­ed it in a post on his for­mi­da­ble love of that most Amer­i­can of all musi­cal tra­di­tions, which got him run­ning a jazz bar in Tokyo years before he became a nov­el­ist. Just above, you’ll find a 96-song Spo­ti­fy playlist of the songs fea­tured in his nov­els, fea­tur­ing jazz record­ings by the likes of Miles Davis, Duke Elling­ton, and Thelo­nious Monk, the clas­si­cal com­po­si­tions of Mozart, Bach, Beethoven, and Haydn, and pop num­bers from the Beach Boys, Elvis Pres­ley, Hall and Oates, and Michael Jack­son.

Final­ly, you can close out this musi­cal Muraka­mi birth­day with the Spo­ti­fy playlist above of music from his own vinyl col­lec­tion — though at 3,350 songs in total, it will prob­a­bly extend the cel­e­bra­tion beyond a day. Even that lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence sure­ly rep­re­sents only a frac­tion of what Muraka­mi keeps on his shelves, all of it offer­ing poten­tial mate­r­i­al for his next inex­plic­a­bly grip­ping sto­ry. And though the Eng­lish-speak­ing world still awaits its trans­la­tion of Murakami’s lat­est nov­el Killing Com­menda­tore, which came out in Japan last year, you can hear the music it name-checks in the Youtube playlist below. Some­thing about the mix — Richard Strauss, Sheryl Crow, the Mod­ern Jazz Quar­tet, Duran Duran — sug­gests we’re in for anoth­er Murakami­an read­ing expe­ri­ence indeed:

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Intro­duc­tion to the World of Haru­ki Muraka­mi Through Doc­u­men­taries, Sto­ries, Ani­ma­tion, Music Playlists & More

A 3,350-Song Playlist of Music from Haru­ki Murakami’s Per­son­al Record Col­lec­tion

Haru­ki Murakami’s Pas­sion for Jazz: Dis­cov­er the Novelist’s Jazz Playlist, Jazz Essay & Jazz Bar

A Pho­to­graph­ic Tour of Haru­ki Murakami’s Tokyo, Where Dream, Mem­o­ry, and Real­i­ty Meet

Haru­ki Muraka­mi Lists the Three Essen­tial Qual­i­ties For All Seri­ous Nov­el­ists (And Run­ners)

Read Online Haru­ki Murakami’s New Essay on How a Base­ball Game Launched His Writ­ing Career

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.