The famously taciturn novelist Haruki Murakami has made his first appearance in Japan since 1995. Murakami’s new novel – Shikisai wo Motanai Tazaki Tsukuru to Kare no Junrei no Toshi (the English reads Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and the Year of His Pilgrimage, though this title may change) – has been selling over a million copies each week since the Japanese edition went on sale last month, according to the Associated Press.

Murakami spoke at a seminar in his birthplace, Kyoto, to mark the establishment of a new literary prize in memory of the Jungian psychotherapist and writer Hayao Kawai, who died in 2007. Tickets were limited to 500 and issued by lottery. No recording was permitted.

The new book's plot - closely guarded until publication - focuses on Tsukuru Tazaki: a 36-year-old railway station architect who returns to his hometown of industrial Nagoya before travelling as far as Finland to discover why he was rejected by his four closest friends 16 years previously, in the hope of confronting them and moving on.

Where Murakami’s previous novel, the huge three-volumed IQ84, relied heavily upon allusion, action and surrealist detachment, the new work is said to be grounded in a more traditionally novelistic mode - with a greater focus on characters and their relationships.

“At the beginning, I was planning to write something allusive, as in my past works,” Murakami said at the seminar on Monday. “But this time I developed a great interest in expanding on real people. Then the characters started to act on their own. I was intrigued by the relationships between people.”

He also described writing – not for the first time – as akin to descending a very dark basement in the psyche, one in which all sense of structure is lost. “For novelists or musicians, if they really want to create something, they need to go downstairs and find a passage to get into the second basement,” he said. “What I want to do is go down there, but still stay sane.”

Murakami is a noted marathon runner, who despite calling himself “an ordinary runner whose times are nothing special” has run marathons across the world and ultra-marathons (100 miles) in Greece and Japan. As with writing, he began later than most, at the age of 33. In his memoir on the subject, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, he outlined his daily routine – early mornings spent writing, afternoons running increasingly long distances and doing housework, admin and spending time with family – and the need for stamina in art, as in sport.

Throughout the book Murakami plays down his personal discipline, while simultaneously cataloguing his astonishing capacity for regimented activity. When questioned about his apparent dislike for publicity (arguable, yes – but he’s not on social media, and seldom gives interviews), Murakami said the idea of being recognised on the street made him deeply uncomfortable:

“Please thing of me like an endangered species and just observe me quietly from far away. If you try to talk to me or touch me casually, I may get intimidated and bite you. So please be careful.”

Murakami’s last public appearance in Japan followed the Kobe-Hanshin earthquake in 1995. He currently lives in Japan and Hawaii. There is as yet no English publication date for Colourless Tsukuru.