structural:summarization
Since 1999

Sputnik Sweetheart was first published in 1999, followed by Kafka on the Shore in 2002, with the English translation following in 2005. Kafka on the Shore won the World Fantasy Award in 2006. The English version of his novel After Dark was released in May 2007. It was chosen by The New York Times as a "notable book of the year". In late 2005, Murakami published a collection of short stories titled Tōkyō Kitanshū, or 東京奇譚集, which translates loosely as "Mysteries of Tokyo". A collection of the English versions of twenty-four short stories, titled Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, was published in August 2006. This collection includes both older works from the 1980s as well as some of Murakami's more recent short stories, including all five that appear in Tōkyō Kitanshū.

In 2002, Murakami published the anthology Birthday Stories, which collects short stories on the theme of birthdays. It includes work by Russell Banks, Ethan Canin, Raymond Carver, David Foster Wallace, Denis Johnson, Claire Keegan, Andrea Lee, Daniel Lyons, Lynda Sexson, Paul Theroux, and William Trevor, as well as a story by Murakami himself. What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, a memoir about his experience as a marathon runner and a triathlete, was published in Japan in 2007, with English translations released in the UK and the US in 2008. The title is a play on that of Raymond Carver 's short story collection What We Talk About When We Talk About Love.

In 2004, Murakami was interviewed by John Wray (novelist) for the 182nd installment of The Paris Review 's "The Art of Fiction" interview series. Recorded over the course of two afternoons, the interview addressed the change in tone and style of his more recent works at the time—such as After the Quake —his myriad of Western influences ranging from Fyodor Dostoevsky to John Irving, and his collaborative process with the many translators he has worked with over the course of his career.

Shinchosha Publishing published Murakami's novel 1Q84 in Japan on May 29, 2009. 1Q84 is pronounced "ichi kyū hachi yon", the same as 1984, as 9 is also pronounced "kyū" in Japanese. The book was longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2011. However, after the 2012 anti-Japanese demonstrations in China, Murakami's books were removed from sale there, along with those of other Japanese authors. Murakami criticized the China–Japan political territorial dispute, characterizing the overwrought nationalistic response as "cheap liquor" which politicians were giving to the public. In April 2013, he published his novel Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage. It became an international bestseller but received mixed reviews.

In 2015, Switch Publishing published Murakami's essay collection Novelist as a Vocation in Japan, featuring insights and commentaries on Murakami's life and career. The essay collection was later translated into English by Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen and released by Alfred A. Knopf on November 8, 2022.

Killing Commendatore (Kishidanchō-goroshi) was published in Japan on February 24, 2017, and in the US in October 2018. The novel is about an unnamed portrait painter who stumbles upon an unknown painting, titled Killing Commendatore, after assuming residence in its creator's former abode. Since its publication, the novel has caused controversy in Hong Kong and was labeled under "Class II – indecent" in Hong Kong. This classification led to mass amounts of censorship. The publisher must not distribute the book to people under the age of 18, and must have a warning label printed on the cover.

Murakami's most recent novel The City and Its Uncertain Walls was published by Shinchosha in Japan on April 13, 2023. His first novel in six years, it is 1,200-pages long and is set in a "soul-stirring, 100% pure Murakami world" that involves "a story that had long been sealed". In promoting his latest book, Murakami stated that he believed that the pandemic and the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine have created walls that divide people, fueling fear and skepticism instead of mutual trust.

In July 2024, the New Yorker published Murakami's short story Kaho, in which a man goes on a blind date with a woman named Kaho and ends it with an insult, which is also the first line of the story.