Takamitsu Muraoka passed way on February 10th, 2026, just one day after his 88th birthday. Born in 1938 in Hiroshima, Muraoka studied general linguistics and biblical languages under Masao Sekine at the Toyko University of Education and then completed a doctorate under the supervision of Chaim Rabin at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1970 on the topic of Emphasis in Biblical Hebrew. After teaching Semitic languages at Manchester University (1970-80) and Melbourne University (1980–91), he taught at Leiden University from 1991 to 2003 where he was Chair of Hebrew, Israelite Anitqiuities, and Ugaritic.

Along with his accomplishments as a scholar of Semitic languages, Muraoka contributed many publications related to Septuagint studies, including A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint (2009) and A Syntax of Septuagint Greek (2016). Most recently he completed commentaries on The Books of Hosea and Micah in Hebrew and Greek (2022), Wisdom of Ben Sira (2023), The Wisdom of Solomon in the Septuagint (2024), and a study of the Appendices to the Septuagint Book of Daniel (2025).

After retiring from teaching in Leiden in 2003, Muraoka sought to establish dialogue and reconciliation by lecturing in Asian countries which had been suffered under Japanese militarism during World War 2. These experiences were recounted in his autobiographical account My Via Dolorosa: Along the Trails of the Japanese Imperialism in Asia (2016).