Murakami Namiroku

was a Japanese writer known for his popular fiction frequently set in the Edo period featuring chivalric gangsters. In 1891, he published his first work Mikazuki (Crescent Moon) under the alias Chinunoura Namiroku (ちぬの浦 浪六), which was well received. He would go on to write more than 100 novels until 1930 and become a prominent writer of the time.

He was the maternal grandfather of Otoya Yamaguchi, the 17-year-old ultranationalist who assassinated Japan Socialist Party chairman Inejirō Asanuma in 1960. His father died when he was very young, and was a result was raised by his mother. When he was in elementary school, he was adopted by a politician of the time named Saisho Atsushi. Namiroku wanted to become a politician and businessman, but ultimately failed at those endeavors. In 1890, Namiroku joined the staff of the Tokyo-based mail order magazine company Hochi Shimbun as a proofreader. Thereafter, he embarked on a series of novels about heroic chivalric street gangsters, which came to be known as "bachibin novels" after the hairstyle worn by their dashing streetwise heroes, whereby the hair (hin) on the head was shaved in the shape of a shamisen plectrum (bachi).