Haruki Murakami to publish first novel to feature woman as lead character

The Tale of Kaho, out in July, will be 16th novel by Japanese author who has faced criticism for portrayal of women

The Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami will publish his first novel to feature a woman as the main character this summer.

The Tale of Kaho will be published in Japan on 3 July, with an ebook edition released the same day. A UK edition has not yet been announced.

The 352-page novel centres on Kaho, a 26-year-old picture book author, and is based on a four-part series by the author originally published in the literary magazine Shincho between June 2024 and March 2026. The novel is a revised and expanded version. The first instalment, which was translated into English by Philip Gabriel, appeared in the New Yorker in 2024. The story begins with Kaho going on a blind date with a man who 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.”

The book follows Murakami’s novel The City and Its Uncertain Walls, which was published in 2024 in the UK. In October, Penguin will also publish Abandoning a Cat, an essay about his father, also translated by Gabriel.

Murakami’s publisher, Shinchosha Publishing Co, described The Tale of Kaho as his first full-length novel featuring a sole female protagonist. The author has previously featured women as the main characters in short stories. A woman was one of the two protagonists in his three-book novel 1Q84.

The 77-year-old Murakami has faced consistent criticism for his portrayal of women, often accused of reducing female characters to sexualised or one-dimensional objects. In a widely cited 2004 interview in the Paris Review, he said of the female characters in his novels: “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.”

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 said the novel felt 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”, but that “so many strange things happen to her, around her”.

One of Japan’s best-known contemporary authors, Murakami has written 15 novels across a 47-year career, and has been translated into about 50 languages. His works include Norwegian Wood, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Kafka on the Shore and 1Q84.

He is the recipient of 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 has frequently been cited as a contender for the Nobel prize in literature.