Murakami was speaking in Berlin after being awarded the Welt-Literaturpreis by leading German newspaper Die Welt yesterday on the eve of celebrations marking 25 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The author spoke of his own memories of the wall that divided East from West Germany and attributed ongoing conflicts throughout the world -- including protests in Hong Kong and violence in Gaza -- to a system of walls that drive people apart, Kyodo News agency reported.
Murakami, one of Japan's best known writers who has repeatedly been tipped as a future Nobel Literature laureate, said it was the task of novelists to help readers pass through these walls, and that harnessing the power of each person's imagination "could be the starting point of something".
"We can see (a world without walls) with our own eyes -- we can even touch it with our own hands if we try hard."
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The demonstrations, the worst civil unrest Hong Kong has experienced since its 1997 handover from British rule, were sparked by Beijing's decision in August to restrict who can stand for the city's top post.
Publicity-shy Murakami, 65, is the first Japanese author to win the Berlin-based prize since it was established in 1999, reports said.
When he received the 2009 Jerusalem Prize, Israel's highest literary honour for foreign writers, he obliquely criticised authoritarian systems in the Middle East for claiming the lives of innocent civilians.
Murakami's latest novel "Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage" was released in Europe and the United States earlier this year.