Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami has been named one of the world’s 100 most influential people by Time magazine, backed by Yoko Ono as “a valuable voice for peace” as Japan’s government becomes “more conservative”.

Alongside Pope Francis, Kanye West, Kim Jong-un and Hillary Clinton, there are two novelists on a list of 100 names Time has dubbed “the most influential people in the world: the titans, pioneers, artists, icons and leaders who are shaping the future” - Murakami, and the Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie.

The Japanese writer, whose most recent novel Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage sold one million copies in a week in Japan, is regularly named as one of the frontrunners for the Nobel prize in literature. The author of novels from Norwegian Wood to Kafka on the Shore, he is described as an “icon” by Time, sitting alongside the likes of the Icelandic singer Björk and the US fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg.

Writing up his entry, Ono says that he “deserves the honour”.

“He is a writer of great imagination and human sympathy, one who has enthralled millions of readers by building fictional worlds that are uniquely his,” writes the artist. “Murakami-san has a singular vision, as informed by pop culture as it is by deep channels of Japanese tradition. And he’s a Japanese writer – while Murakami-san spends much of his time in the US and has earned acclaim internationally, he and his books are very much a product of Japan. In recent years, as the government in Japan has become more conservative, Murakami-san has become a valuable voice for peace.”

Murakami has been using this voice in recent days, calling on his country to continue apologising for its brutal military actions in the 20th century in China, Korea and elsewhere. Interviewed by Kyodo News, he said: “I think that is all Japan can do - apologise until the countries say: ‘We don’t necessarily get over it completely, but you have apologised enough.’” His words come as new conservative prime minister Shinzo Abe has begun advocating a “less masochistic” attitude to its history.

Adichie, who won the Orange prize for her second novel Half of a Yellow Sun, sits in Time’s “artist” category alongside actor Bradley Cooper and film-maker Richard Linklater. “It’s the rare novelist who in the space of a year finds her words sampled by Beyoncé, optioned by Lupita Nyong’o and honoured with the National Book Critics Circle award for fiction,” writes Time deputy managing editor Radhika Jones of the author.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED talk on feminism

“Adichie writes of the complex aftermath of Nigeria’s colonial history and her nation’s rise to prominence in an era when immigration to the west no longer means a one-way ticket,” she continues. “With her viral TEDxEuston talk, We Should All Be Feminists, she found her voice as cultural critic … But her greatest power is as a creator of characters who struggle profoundly to understand their place in the world.”

Previous novelists to have made Time’s list of the world’s most influential movers and shakers include Hilary Mantel, George Saunders, Ann Patchett and EL James.