Kafka on the Shore
HARUKI MURAKAMI
2005

INTRODUCTION

Kafka on the Shore (2005), Haruki Murakami's tenth novel, marks a slight departure from his previous work. While most of Murakami's protagonists are thirty-something men who favor isolation and have unremarkable histories with women, the main character in this novel is a fifteen-year-old runaway. For the most part, though, Kafka on the Shore is classic Murakami. The story is rich in references to music and Western culture, dreamy scenarios that expose the spooky underbelly of ordinary life, utterly unadorned language, and elements of magical realism that challenge the reader's grasp of reality.

Murakami's intention was to write a story about a boy who escapes his dangerous father and goes in search of his long-lost mother. The myth of Oedipus is thrown in along with a cast of supporting characters that includes an old man who talks to cats, a female hemophiliac who lives as a gay man, and two World War II soldiers trapped in time. The familiar themes of isolation, reality versus fantasy, and the connection between past and present are handled with Murakami's trademark humor.

Kafka on the Shore marks another critical and popular success for Murakami. According to the Washington Post, Kafka on the Shore is "an excellent demonstration of why [Murakami is] deservedly famous [for] postmodern fiction that's actually fun to read." The New York Times Book Review enthused, "Anyone can tell a story that resembles a dream, it's the rare artist, like this one, who can make us feel that we are dreaming it ourselves."

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Haruki Murakami was born on January 12, 1949, in Kyoto, Japan. His parents taught high school Japanese literature and allowed their only child to read whatever he wanted. From an early age, Murakami was drawn to the works of Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky, preferring them to writers of classic Japanese literature. He made good grades despite a laissez-faire attitude toward teachers and studying. He spent a good amount of time pursuing his interests in Western literature (especially the novels of Raymond Chandler, Truman Capote, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Kurt Vonnegut), jazz, rock 'n' roll, and film. Before graduating from Waseda University, he and his new wife opened a jazz club called Peter Cat. Murakami continued running the club after graduating from Waseda in March 1975.

The story behind Murakami's decision to become a writer has become lore among his fans. It was April 1978, and Murakami was at a baseball game watching the Yakult Swallows and the Hiroshima Carps. The Swallows' first batter, American Dave Hilton, hit a double his first time at bat. Just as the ball flew into left field, Murakami thought, "I could write a novel." He bought a pen and paper on his way home from the game and started writing that night. He submitted his first novel, Hear the Wind Sing to Gunzo magazine and won its 1979 Newcomers Award. With a well-received first novel under his belt, Murakami went on to write short stories, essays, translations, and more novels. Norwegian Wood, published in Japan in 1987, gained Murakami international acclaim.

Introverted by nature, Murakami's sudden and wild fame was an unwelcome shock. He and his wife escaped first to Europe, then to the United States, where he accepted a writer's fellowship at Princeton University in 1991. Murakami was drawn back to Japan in 1995 after two catastrophes struck his homeland. On January 17, 1995, an earthquake killed 6,500 people in the Osaka-Kobe area of Japan. Two months later, Aum Shinrikyo cult members perpetrated a rush hour nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway system, killing eleven and affecting some five thousand other commuters. Upon his return to Japan, he wrote After the Quake, a collection of six short stories that characterize the aftereffects of the earthquake, and Underground, a nonfiction book of interviews with attack victims and Aum members and former members. After his foray into the world of nonfiction, it took Murakami four years to write his next novel, Sputnik Sweetheart.

Murakami has become a respected international literary figure largely due to his originality. His straightforward style of writing stands in sharp contrast to the surreal, humorous, postmodern stories he tells. His characters are dreamy nonconformists who find themselves in situations that invite comparisons to dreamscapes or other worlds. By successfully rebelling against traditional Japanese literature and culture, Murakami has made his mark on a rapidly changing society while forging a path for young, upcoming authors. As of 2006, Murakami lives in Japan with his wife, Yoko Takahashi.

PLOT SUMMARY

Chapter 1

In the first chapter of Kafka on the Shore, the unnamed narrator describes items he takes from his father's study before running away from home. A "boy named Crow," who appears to be the narrator's alter ego, gives him advice and mirrors his own thoughts in words. The narrator boards the night bus for Takamatsu.

Chapter 2

This chapter is presented as a declassified document generated by the U.S. Department of Defense. In it, Second Lieutenant Robert O'Connor and Master Sergeant Harold Katayama interrogate Setsuko Okamochi in the town hall of Yamanashi Prefecture. The year is 1946 and the title of their report is "Report on the Rice Bowl Hill Incident, 1944."

Okamochi is asked about her involvement in events that took place two years prior, on November 7, 1944, when she was the teacher of sixteen students at the local public school. She describes how she led her class on a hike to Rice Bowl Hill to pick mushrooms and all sixteen students collapsed, one after another.

Chapter 3

The narrator wakes up at dawn, still on the bus for Takamatsu, on the first day of his "brand-new life." The bus stops at a highway rest stop an hour before arriving in Shikoku. In the rest stop, a young woman sits down next to the narrator and asks if she can sit next to him on the bus the rest of the way. Back on the bus, the narrator thinks that the girl could possibly be his sister.

Chapter 4

This chapter features another interview, this time between Lt. Robert O'Connor and Dr. Nakazawa, the physician Okamochi called to tend to the collapsed students.

By the time he arrived back at Rice Bowl Hill, he reports, some children had started to regain consciousness. None of them had any memory of the incident. One student, Satoru Nakata, did not regain consciousness and had to be taken to a military hospital for treatment. The doctor reported that Nakata never returned to town and was not heard from again.

Chapter 5

The narrator and his traveling companion arrive in Takamatsu. She tells him her name is Sakura, and he tells her his name is Kafka Tamura. Tamura is Kafka's real last name, but he has given himself a new first name to help disguise his identity. Sakura gives Kafka her cell phone number and tells him that she does not give it out to just anybody.

Kafka decides to kill time at a library before checking into his hotel room. Although he has come armed with a list of libraries to visit, he is most interested in visiting the Komura Memorial Library. Here, he meets Oshima, a soft-spoken male librarian who gives Kafka a brief introduction to the unusual library.

Later that afternoon, he takes a tour of the library given by the head librarian, Miss Saeki. The beautiful, refined, intelligent woman makes a strong impression on Kafka and he thinks, "Wouldn't it be great if this were my mother?" It is Kafka's fifteenth birthday.

Chapter 6

In this chapter, the reader meets Mr. Nakata, an old man who has the ability to talk to cats. Nakata has just met an elderly black tomcat he names Otsuka. People sometimes ask Nakata to find their lost cats and reward him with money and food when he does.

Nakata tells Otsuka that he is looking for a young tortoiseshell cat named Goma and shows him a photo of the cat. After Otsuka tells Nakata that he has not seen the little cat, they talk some more. Nakata reveals that he had an accident when he was nine, one that left him unconscious for three weeks. When he came out of his coma, he was unable to read or write, but he found he could talk to cats. Otsuka tells Nakata that his problem is not that he is dumb; it is that his shadow is "only half as dark as that of ordinary people."

Chapter 7

Kafka finishes his free hotel breakfast but realizes he is still hungry. The boy named Crow appears and tells him that he should get used to not eating so much, that he is supposed to be "the toughest fifteen-year-old on the planet."

Kafka goes to the front desk and asks for an extension on his discount rate. He explains that he is conducting research at the Komura Memorial Library, that he is on a budget, and that the project he is working on for his high school is taking longer than expected. He goes to a nearby gym to work out before returning to the library.

The hotel front desk clerk calls the library to see if Kafka is actually there and tells him that his discount rate has been extended.

Chapter 8

This chapter is another military interview, this time between Lt. Robert O'Connor and Dr. Shigenori Tsukayama, a "professor in the Department of Psychiatry in the School of Medicine, Tokyo Imperial University."

In 1944, the military ordered him and his team to examine the children involved in the incident on Rice Bowl Hill. They were warned that whatever they learned was a military secret. Major Toyama, the military doctor who examined the children immediately after the incident, told them that the children's experience on the hill was erased from their memory and that although the military was definitely developing poison gas and biological weapons, there was no evidence these children were affected by them.

Dr. Tsukayama concluded, after a series of interviews, that the children had undergone some kind of mass hypnosis. He could not explain why one of the children did not regain consciousness, though. The boy Nakata's behavior, he said, reminded him of "spirit projection," an experience described in many Japanese folktales.

Chapter 9

Kafka wakes up late one night in a small woods behind a Shinto shrine with no memory of how he got there. He is covered in blood, his shoulder hurts, and his palms sting. Terrified, he calls Sakura, the girl from the bus. She offers to meet him and takes him back to where she is staying. She tells him that she ran away from home when she was about his age, which is why she gave him her phone number in the first place. Kafka tells Sakura his whole story, except "the omen part."

Chapter 10

Nakata meets a cat he calls Kawamura, a cat he has trouble communicating with. While struggling to understand the cat, a beautiful Siamese named Mimi offers to help translate. Mimi is clever, educated, and helpful. She tells Nakata that Kawamura had seen Goma, the cat he was looking for, in a vacant lot nearby, but not for several days. She tells Nakata that a bad man, a cat-catcher, may have taken her. The cat-catcher is very tall and wears a tall hat and long leather boots. Mimi warns Nakata to be very careful when he goes to the lot looking for Goma. Nakata goes to the lot and waits.

Chapter 11

Kafka has told Sakura his whole story, including the fact that his mother abandoned him when he was four years old, taking his sister with her. Sakura tells Kafka to think of her as a sister.

When Kafka wakes up the next morning, Sakura has already left for work. She leaves a note saying that no bloody incidents were reported on the news. Kafka has breakfast, calls the hotel and checks out, showers, cleans the apartment, writes Sakura a note thanking her for helping him, then leaves.

Chapter 12

A letter dated Oct 19, 1972, addressed "Dear Professor" makes up the whole of this chapter. Written by Setsuko Okamochi, it contains a confession related to the Rice Bowl Hill Incident. She wishes to correct a wrong that may affect his conclusions about the case. She admits to lying in her original statement to the military officers and the professor himself because, at the time, because of the war, citizens lived under strict censorship.

She describes an erotic dream she had the morning of the incident, and says that, while up on the mountain, she unexpectedly started her menstrual period. Nakata, the little boy who did not regain consciousness, found some bloody towels she had used to clean herself with and hidden way out in the woods. Her embarrassment was so great, it sent her into a kind of shock and she began to beat the child. Soon after, the children began collapsing. When they woke up, they had forgotten Nakata's beating as well their collapse.

Chapter 13

Oshima offers to talk to Miss Saeki about Kafka becoming his assistant and taking up residence in the empty room in the library. He drives Kafka to his mountain retreat in Kochi. Kafka stays there for a few days while Oshima arranges things and prepares for Kafka's new position.

On the drive to Kochi, Oshima admits to being a hemophiliac, explains his love of the composer Franz Schubert, and tells Kafka a little bit about the cabin. Before he leaves, Oshima warns Kafka to keep the cabin within sight when he wanders into the woods. "I had a terrible experience there once … once you get lost in these woods, believe me, you stay lost."

Chapter 14

Nakata goes to the empty lot Mimi told him about and meets a cat he calls Okawa. Okawa warns Nakata of the danger of the lot. Soon after, a huge black dog with blood on his teeth and bits of meat matted around his mouth approaches Nakata. Not knowing enough to be afraid of the dog, Nakata obeys the dog's silent but insistent command to follow him. The dog takes Nakata straight to the dreaded cat-catcher. The man has an unusual appearance and thinks Nakata should recognize him, but he does not. He then introduces himself as Johnnie Walker, saying that he has borrowed his appearance and name from the figure that appears on the label of the famous Johnnie Walker brand of Scotch whisky. "A person's got to have an appearance and name, am I right?" he argues. He tells Nakata he can give Goma to him if Nakata will do something for him in return.

Chapter 15

Oshima leaves Kafka alone in the cabin in the woods. Kafka tries to fall asleep but is too frightened of the sounds outside and the sense that someone is watching him. He wakes the next morning and resumes his orderly daily existence, choosing a book on the trial of Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann to read to while away his day. In it, he finds a note written by Oshima that refers to a line by Irish poet W. B. Yeats: "In dreams begin responsibilities." This causes Kafka to consider his own responsibilities, namely those connected with the forgotten memory of the night he blacked out.

The next day, Kafka is less afraid of the woods, less afraid of the stars. He is visited by Crow's voice telling him "that calm won't last long." Crow tells him that he is afraid of his imagination, more afraid of his dreams. "Afraid of the responsibility that begins in dreams."

Chapter 16

Johnnie Walker's black dog leads Nakata to his freezer where he finds the decapitated heads of twenty cats. Walker describes his mission to collect cats' souls, which he uses to create a special kind of flute. Because Nakata wants to save cats and Walker wants to kill cats, Nakata is the perfect person to goad into killing him. To rile Nakata into killing him, Walker kills three cats right before Nakata's eyes. Before he has a chance to do this to Mimi and Goma, Nakata takes a knife and kills Walker, then collapses himself.

Chapter 17

Kafka becomes even more comfortable in the cabin, but he prepares himself for his imminent return to the city. Oshima arrives and tells Kafka that he and Miss Saeki have decided to take Kafka on as an assistant. He tells Kafka the history of Miss Saeki's life, including the fact that she wrote a hit song called "Kafka on the Shore" many years ago.

Chapter 18

Nakata wakes up in the vacant lot he had been staking out. Goma and Mimi are with him, but he no longer has the ability to speak to them. Neither Mimi nor Nakata has any blood on them, and Nakata has no memory of how he got there. Nakata goes to the police, tells the story of how he got to Johnnie Walker's house, and confesses to stabbing Walker to death. The policeman thinks Nakata is just crazy so he does not file a report. He tells the policeman fish will fall from the sky the next day.

When fish rain down on a section of Nakano Ward the next day, the policeman worries that the old man's story about murdering someone might be true.

Chapter 19

Oshima shows Kafka his new living quarters in the library. Kafka is drawn to the painting above the desk in his new room. It features a boy on a beach, possibly the boy Miss Saeki loved many years before.

Two women come into the library and complain that the facilities "limit and deprive women of the rights they're due." Oshima and the women engage in a debate, which leads Oshima to confess that he is actually a woman.

Chapter 20

Nakata hitchhikes from Nakano to Fujigawa. At the Fujigawa rest area, he witnesses a fight in the parking lot and tries to break it up. When he is rebuffed, he opens his umbrella, backs away, and leeches begin falling from the sky. He finds a truck driver willing to take him as far as Kobe.

Chapter 21

Oshima shows Kafka a newspaper article announcing the stabbing death of his father, Koichi Tamura. Tamura, an internationally renowned sculptor, was found by his housekeeper. According to the article, police are on the lookout for Kafka as he has not been seen in ten days.

Kafka fears that he may have killed his father because the stabbing took place the night he woke up behind the Shinto shrine covered in blood. Kafka confesses that his father once told him he would some day murder his father and "be with" his mother and sister. He tells Oshima everything about the night he lost consciousness. He believes that he may have killed his father through a dream, recalling the Yeats quote, "In dreams begin responsibilities."

Chapter 22

Hoshino is the truck driver who drives Nakata to Kobe. He is kind to the old man because he reminds him of his grandfather. Nakata tells his new friend that he has to go to Shikoku to cross a big bridge. Hoshino offers to take him there, but he drops Nakata off at a park to wait while he takes care of his cargo delivery. While at the park, Nakata goes over his life story in his head. When Hoshino comes back for Nakata, he says he has taken a few days off to accompany Nakata on his search for whatever it is he is looking for.

Chapter 23

The ghost of Miss Saeki at fifteen visits Kafka's room in the middle of the night. The next day, Kafka asks Oshima for a record of "Kafka on the Shore" and tells him that he saw a fifteen-year-old girl in his room the night before.

During lunch that day, Oshima gives Kafka the single of "Kafka on the Shore" he got from his mother. The photo of Miss Saeki on the record jacket convinces Kafka that it was Miss Saeki's ghost that visited him the night before. He feels himself falling in love with that ghost. When Kafka asks Oshima if he thinks it possible for someone to become a ghost while they are still alive, Oshima tells him about "living spirits" like those that appear in Japanese literature, such as The Tale of Genji.

When Kafka listens to "Kafka on the Shore," he understands why it sold well over a million copies. He reads the mysterious lyrics line by line in an effort to decode the song's meaning and becomes convinced that "this Kafka on the shore is the young boy in the painting on the wall." He reads The Tale of Genji before bed, then waits for the fifteen-year-old Miss Saeki to visit his room again.

Chapter 24

Hoshino and Nakata arrive in Shikoku on a bus. They check into a hotel and Nakata immediately goes to sleep. While Nakata sleeps, Hoshino considers his situation. Taking time off from work to stay in a cheap hotel with a strange old guy he knows nothing about causes him "to have doubts about himself," but he cannot help but stay and find out where Nakata is going and "what he'd end up doing when he got there."

After sleeping for over thirty-four hours, Nakata wakes up and eats a huge breakfast with Hoshino. The two men plan to go to Takamatsu. Once they arrive at Takamatsu Station, Nakata announces that they must find the "entrance stone."

Chapter 25

Miss Saeki's ghost appears to Kafka again. He realizes that both he and the girl are in love with someone "who's no longer of this world." Kafka asks Oshima for the sheet music for "Kafka on the Shore." He reveals that the family register reveals no name or age for either his mother or older sister and he has no recollection of what his mother looked like. He admits that he is very much in love with Miss Saeki.

Kafka takes a cup of coffee up to Miss Saeki's office and she asks him if he ran away from home and why. She tells Kafka that he reminds her of a fifteen-year-old boy she knew a long time ago. As Kafka leaves her office, she stops him by saying that she wrote a book on lightning once. Kafka feels he needs to remember something important.

That evening, Kafka practices "Kafka on the Shore" on the piano using the sheet music Oshima found for him. He is fascinated by two strange chords and wonders how Miss Saeki came up with them. He remembers his father talking about being struck by lightning. Kafka finds the coincidences that keep cropping up overwhelming.

Chapter 26

Nakata describes the stone he is looking for and tells Hoshino "it's about time somebody moved it." Their first visit to a library does not bring them any closer to the entrance stone. That evening, Nakata falls asleep and Hoshino wanders around, exploring the new city. Someone calls his name and he turns to find Colonel Sanders of Kentucky Fried Chicken fame standing there. He promises Hoshino a "nineteen-year-old beauty" to have sex with and information about the entrance stone if Hoshino follows him.

Chapter 27

Miss Saeki's ghost appears in Kafka's room again. The next morning, Oshima tells Kafka that a detective from a local precinct had asked about him. Oshima describes his physical body as a "defective container" and Kafka admits to hating his own container.

Kafka takes coffee to Miss Saeki again and asks if she has any children. She tells him that she cannot give him a yes or no answer at the moment. Kafka wonders if he is in love with the fifteen-year-old Miss Saeki, or the fifty-something Miss Saeki.

Chapter 28

Colonel Sanders takes Hoshino to a shrine where they wait for a beautiful prostitute to show up. Hoshino and the woman check into a love hotel where she introduces him to a few philosophical ideas and has sex with him. Afterward, Hoshino returns to the shrine to find Colonel Sanders waiting for him. The corporate icon tells Hoshino that the entrance stone lies right inside the shrine.

Chapter 29

The real Miss Saeki comes to Kafka's room in the middle of the night. She undresses and Kafka realizes that she is asleep with her eyes open, as if sleepwalking. Kafka wants to wake her up, but he feels he is being sucked into a time warp. At this point, the voice of the boy named Crow begins to narrate, in future tense, the lovemaking that ostensibly occurs between Kafka and Miss Saeki.

Chapter 30

Colonel Sanders explains that he is not really Colonel Sanders, that he does not have a name or a shape and just took on Colonel Sanders's appearance for a time. He is a "metaphysical, conceptual object" or "concept" whose job is to check "the correlation between different worlds, making sure things are in the right order." Hohsino removes the entrance stone from the shrine, takes a cab back to the hotel, and places the stone beside the old man's pillow.

Chapter 31

Kafka confesses to Miss Saeki his theory that she came back to Takamatsu to die. She explains that she is not trying to die; she is just "waiting for death to come." She feels cursed, as Kafka does, and does not fear her imminent death. Kafka asks where she came up with the two strange chords and she answers, "I found those chords in an old room, very far away."

Oshima relates falling in love with "stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven't seen in a long time." Miss Saeki comes to Kafka's room that night and says, after Kafka lets her in, "I haven't seen this room in a long time." They go for a walk and she shows Kafka the place on the beach where the artist painted the boy on the shore. The narrative tense shifts to second person, Kafka seems to have changed into Miss Saeki's dead boyfriend. Someone, it is unclear if it is the dead boyfriend or Kafka, returns to the room in the library and makes love to Miss Saeki.

Chapter 32

Nakata wakes to find the entrance stone beside his pillow. He explains how, back during the war, the lid came open and he "left here." He says that he came back by chance, which made him not normal, caused his shadow to be half of what it should be, and gave him the ability to talk to cats and make things fall from the sky. He admits to being scared ever since he met Johnnie Walker.

Nakata asks Hoshino to pick up the stone. By now, it is incredibly heavy. He strains but finally lifts the stone and flips it over, just as Nakata instructed. Nakata tells him that, thanks to him, the entrance opened up.

Chapter 33

Kafka gets the library ready for opening and tells Oshima he is going into town to work out. He wants to clear his head before seeing Miss Saeki again. When he returns to the library, Oshima tells Kafka that his backpack is a symbol of freedom and that most "[p]eople actually prefer not to be free." Kafka brings coffee to Miss Saeki in her office and tells her Kafka means "crow" in Czech. They talk about the book she wrote about lightning. Miss Saeki tells Kafka she feels "things are starting to change around me." He tells her he believes he is her son and her lover. That night, they make love again.

Chapter 34

Hoshino lets Nakata sleep while he eats breakfast alone and takes in a retrospective of François Truffaut movies. He goes back to the café and talks to the proprietor again. They talk about the Haydn concerto that is playing, and Hoshino makes a connection between Truffaut's films and Haydn's music. Having been awakened to the world of film and music, he becomes inspired and declares, "Damn it, I don't care what happens…. I'm going to follow Mr. Nakata as long as I live. To hell with the job!"

Chapter 35

Oshima takes Kafka back to his cabin because the police are after him. The police have linked Kafka with an old man whose movements overlap his exactly. They believe that Kafka may have hired the old man to be an accomplice in his father's murder.

Chapter 36

Hoshino receives a call on his cell phone from Colonel Sanders. He tells Hoshino to wake Nakata, grab the stone, get a cab, and get out of there as soon as he can because the police are on their trail. He gives Hoshino an address for an apartment in Takamatsu and says that he has arranged for them to stay there for a while.

Nakata wakes up after sleeping forty hours and realizes he forgot to tell Hoshino the most important part of the Johnnie Walker story—that he killed him.

Chapter 37

Oshima remembers that he forgot to tell Kafka "the most important thing": two soldiers went missing back before World War II when "a large unit of Imperial troops carried out some training exercises" in the woods near the cabin. No one ever heard from them again or figured out what happened to them.

Chapter 38

Hoshino rents a nondescript car and buys a Beethoven CD. Nakata tells Hoshino he has been having lots of dreams of being able to read. Hoshino sees a short news item on television that gives a description of Nakata and the possible connection between him and the murder victim's fifteen-year-old son. When they stumble upon the Komura Memorial Library, Nakata tells Hoshino that they have found the right place.

Chapters 39-44

Kafka ventures into the forest and has a sexual dream about Sakura. Hoshino and Nakata wander into the Komura Memorial Library, converse with Oshima, and take the tour guided by Miss Saeki. Nakata tells Miss Saeki that he needs to talk to her about the entrance stone. Miss Saeki tells Nakata that she has been waiting for him. She asks if Nakata ended up murdering someone because she opened the entrance stone a long time ago. He tells her that it is time for her to leave. He promises to burn the files containing her life story in a dry riverbed. After Nakata and Hoshino leave, Oshima finds Miss Saeki dead on her desk. Kafka sheds his baggage and forges through the forest until he comes upon two soldiers guarding the "entrance."

Chapters 44-47

Nakata and Hoshino find a dry riverbed and burn Miss Saeki's files. Nakata says he needs to sleep and Hoshino thanks him for everything he has done for him. Nakata nods out before they get back to the apartment. By noon the next day, Nakata has died in his sleep. Hoshino knows he must close the entrance, but he does not know how. He waits for a sign. The soldiers take Kafka on a brisk hike to the place he is to enter. He is escorted to a simple dwelling where he is to stay for the time being. There are no books there, but there is a television, food, and simple furnishings. The fifteen-year-old Miss Saeki comes to cook and clean for Kafka. Hoshino realizes that he can talk to cats. Kafka asks Miss Saeki many questions about this strange place and she changes from being her fifteen-year-old self to her mature self. She tells Kafka that he must leave this place and return to where he came from, even though he will not find her there when he arrives. He follows her advice and makes his way back to Oshima's cabin.

Chapters 48-49

Toro, the cat, tells Hoshino that he must kill "it" to close the entrance. "It" manifests itself as a "long, pale, thin object" Hoshino finds squirming out of Nakata's mouth. Using all sorts of weapons, Hoshino finally obliterates the object and flips the entrance stone over, successfully closing the entrance.

Oshima's brother, Sada, comes to retrieve Kafka. On their way back to the library, Sada asks Kafka if he ran across the soldiers in the woods. This prompts Kafka to ask what Sada did when he came upon them ten years prior. Sada explains that he will probably never tell anyone about that, and he bets that Kafka will not either. Once they get to the library, Oshima tells Kafka about the death of Miss Saeki and how she left the painting for him. Kafka tells Oshima that he is headed back to Nagano to finish junior high. Kafka talks to Sakura on the phone on his way out of town and calls her "sister" before hanging up.

CHARACTERS

The Boy Named Crow

The identity of the boy named Crow is unclear. The chapter preceding chapter 1 in Kafka on the Shore is titled "A Boy Named Crow" and he is given the first line of the novel. His voice is described as being sluggish, but the reader learns very little else about him. In his self-titled chapter, he appears to be Kafka Tamura's imaginary friend, leading him through a visualization game while the two sit side by side. As the novel progresses, the boy named Crow is sometimes a voice in Kafka's head, Kafka himself (Kafka means crow in Czech), or an actual crow. Sometimes he appears to Kafka; other times Kafka only hears his thoughts. The boy named Crow functions as Kafka's alter ego, giving Kafka advice, cheering him on, and narrating present and future events.

Goma

Goma is the one-year-old tortoiseshell cat Nakata is looking for at the beginning of the novel. Nakata saves the cat's life when Johnnie Walker threatens to kill it.

Hagita

Mr. Hagita is the fresh fish truck driver who gives Mr. Nakata a ride to the Fujigawa rest area. He tells Nakata to be aware of the connections between things and buys him eel for dinner.

Hoshino

Mr. Hoshino has a ponytail, wears Hawaiian shirts, and drives a truck. He gives Nakata a ride from Fujigawa to Kobe and the two become fast friends. Hoshino regrets the way he treated his grandfather when he was alive, so he tries to makes up for it by taking care of Mr. Nakata.

While traveling with Mr. Nakata, Hoshino goes to the library for the first time and begins to appreciate classical music and François Truffaut films. He compares his relationship with Nakata to that of a disciple's relationship to Buddha or an apostle's relationship to Jesus Christ. He tells the old man that the time they spent together was the most meaningful time in his life. After Nakata dies, Hoshino is able to talk to cats.

Kawamura

Kawamura is the name Mr. Nakata gives a striped brown cat. When the cat was young, it hit its head on the concrete after a child hit it with his bicycle. It was never able to communicate very well after that. Kawamura is caught and killed by Johnnie Walker.

Koizumi

Mrs. Koizumi is the owner of Goma. She and her husband hire Mr. Nakata to find the cat after it goes missing. Mrs. Koizumi gives Nakata food whenever he goes to their house to give them updates on his progress.

MEDIA ADAPTATIONS

Kafka on the Shore was released in an unabridged version on audio CD by Naxos of America in May 2006. It is narrated by Sean Barrett and Oliver Le Sueur. It is also offered as an audio download on www.audible.com.

Mimi

Mimi is the name of the clever, beautiful, educated Siamese cat that translates what Kawamura says for Mr. Nakata. It is one of the cats, along with Goma and Kawamura, caught by Johnnie Walker. Mr. Nakata saves its life.

Satoru Nakata

When he was nine, Satoru Nakata and fifteen classmates collapsed while picking mushrooms on Rice Bowl Hill. He spent three weeks in a military hospital and woke to find that he could not read or write. His memory was completely erased so he did not recognize his parents or understand anything about what happened to him. His shadow becomes half as dark as it should be. He can, however, talk to cats and make fish and leeches fall from the sky.

Nakata is an old man throughout most of Kafka on the Shore. He tells everyone he meets that he is not very bright. He lives on a government subsidy and any money that he makes finding lost cats. He lives a contented, simple life within the bounds of Nakano Ward, never venturing out lest he get lost. He has no concept of time, so he never gets impatient. He does get angry, though, when he witnesses violence.

When Johnnie Walker threatens to kill Goma and Mimi, after killing Kawamura right before Nakata's eyes, the old man stabs the cat-catcher to death.

Juichi Nakazawa

Dr. Nakazawa is the town physician called to examine sixteen children after they collapse on Rice Bowl Hill in 1944. He describes the details of that day in a U.S. Army intelligence report in 1946. He is characterized by the interviewer as being "big boned and dark skinned…. He has a calm manner but is very brisk and concise and says exactly what's on his mind."

Setsuko Okamochi

Setsuko Okamochi describes the events of the Rice Hill Bowl Incident of 1944 in a U.S. Army intelligence report in 1946. She was the teacher of a class of sixteen students who mysteriously collapsed on a mushroom-gathering outing to the woods near the school. She was the only person among the group who did not collapse.

Although she appeared to provide an accurate and honest account of what transpired that day, at least according to the lieutenant who interviewed her at the time, Setsuko confesses twenty-six years later that she had not been completely truthful. In a letter addressed "Dear Professor," she confesses private details she was too embarrassed or ashamed to reveal in her original report in 1946. She hopes the truth might assist the professor in his quest for the truth of that day.

Oshima

Oshima lives and thinks like a man but is genetically a woman. He is very attractive, almost pretty, and dresses impeccably. His manner is relaxed and soothing, and he seems to have a calming effect on most people. Because he is a hemophiliac, he cannot play sports, travel, or cook, though he does drive his Mazda Miata very fast when he can. He helps Miss Saeki run the Komura Memorial Library and quickly becomes Kafka's confidant. The two become friends because they both left school at an early age and love books and libraries. Despite his lack of a formal education, Oshima is incredibly intelligent, always citing quotes from ancient philosophers, world literature, and Greek mythology. Because he is a "special person," he is especially sensitive and kind to other people who do not quite fit in to social molds. He lends the mountain cabin he shares with his brother to Kafka when the boy needs a place to stay or hide out. He tells him he thinks Kafka is either running away from something or seeking something out. Although he and Kafka are close, Oshima is guarded about the details of his personal life, preferring instead to advise or engage him in intellectual discussions.

Otsuko

Otsuko is the name Mr. Nakata gives to an elderly black tomcat. Nakata shares details of his life with the cat and asks if he has seen Goma. Otsuko tells Mr. Nakata that, for a human, he has an odd way of talking. He tells Nakata that he has not seen the cat he is looking for, and he advises the old man to stop looking for cats and start looking for the other half of his shadow.

Sada

Sada is Oshima's older brother. Unlike Oshima, Sada is a rough and rugged outdoorsman who owns a surf shop. When he drives Kafka from the cabin to the library, he admits to having seen the two soldiers in the woods, though he does not share any details of his experience. He tells Kafka that Kafka will probably opt to keep his experience to himself, too.

Saeki

Miss Saeki is the mysterious head librarian of the Komura Memorial Library. When she was still in grade school, she became the sweetheart of a distant relative, a young boy of the Komura family. The two were never apart and fell in love when they became adults. When she was nineteen, she recorded a song called "Kafka on the Shore," which became a huge hit. A year later, her boyfriend was senselessly killed. She dropped out of college and vanished for twenty-five years. She returned to Takamatsu and became head of the Komura family library.

Miss Saeki is beautiful and smart, elegant, and aloof. When Kafka becomes part of the library staff, he wonders if she might be his mother. He shares his father's ominous prophecy with her and tries to get her to admit to giving birth to him. Her fifteen-year-old self comes to Kafka as a ghost a few times during his stay in her old boyfriend's room in the library, and then cooks and cleans for him after he enters a parallel world. The fifty-year-old Miss Saeki comes to Kafka's room in the library and makes love to him, once while she sleepwalks, once while she is awake. She never admits to knowing Kafka's father and does not speak of Kafka's older sister. She tells Kafka she is waiting to die, that her return to Takamatsu was prompted by her desire to die there.

Sakura

Sakura is a hairdresser Kafka meets on the bus from Nagata to Shikoku. She is drawn to Kafka because she sees a little of herself in him. She, too, ran away from home when she was fifteen. Upon arriving in Shikoku, Sakura gives Kafka her telephone number and tells him to call if he needs anything. Kafka uses the number the night he wakes up disoriented and bloody in a field behind a Shinto shrine. He stays the night at her apartment and tells her his story, except the part about his father's omen. Kafka believes that Sakura might be his sister, but he lets her get physically intimate with him anyway.

Sanders

Colonel Sanders, the Kentucky Fried Chicken icon, guides Hoshino to the entrance stone and sets Hoshino and Nakata up in an apartment when they are trailed by the police. Colonel Sanders is really just a "metaphysical, conceptual object" with no shape or form. He simply takes the appearance of Colonel Sanders to give him substance.

Kafka Tamura

Kafka Tamura is a fifteen-year-old runaway living in Shikoku. His mother and older sister left him and his father when Kafka was only four. He does not know anything about their identities or what they look like, which leads him to wonder about the women he meets. His father prophesied that Kafka would murder his father and "be with" his mother and sister. This omen plays a large part in his decision to run away from home. He intimates that his father is a dangerous and violent man, but he does not offer any details.

Kafka decides to run away on his fifteenth birthday and trains for the big day for two years. He works out to build strength and bulk, which makes him look older than he really is. He also reads voraciously, spending most of his time in the library, and pays attention in class. He isolates himself from other people, never laughs or smiles, and prefers to be alone.

Koichi Tamura

Koichi Tamura is Kafka's father and a famous sculptor. He prophesies that Kafka will murder him and "be with" Kafka's mother and sister. He is found stabbed to death by a kitchen knife. His best-known work is a series called "Labyrinth."

Togeguchi

Mr. Togeguchi is a young office worker who drives Mr. Nakata to the Tomei Highway. He is bashful when he first meets Nakata, but he soon opens up and shares many personal stories with his elderly passenger.

Toyoma

Major Toyoma is the military internal medicine specialist who examined the children right after the Rice Bowl Hill Incident. He shared all of his findings in an honest, straightforward way with Professor Tsukayama and his team of physicians. He admitted that the Japanese were "definitely developing poison gas and biological weapons," but the possibility of the children being affected by them was highly unlikely.

Shigenori Tsukayama

Dr. Tsukayama is the leading Japanese psychiatrist called in by the military to examine the children after the Rice Bowl Hill Incident. His account of the examinations is recorded in a U.S. Army intelligence report dated May 12, 1946.

Johnnie Walker

Johnnie Walker, like Colonel Sanders, is a metaphysical, conceptual object who takes on a Western corporate identity: Johnnie Walker is a brand of Scotch that features a man in a top hat with a walking stick on the label. This is the form the character Johnnie Walker assumes. He is the feared cat-catcher who prowls an empty lot favored by strays. His diabolical plan to collect cats' souls to make a special flute includes capturing them, slicing open their bellies, eating their hearts, and decapitating them. He lures Mr. Nakata to his home and makes the old man watch him perform his sadistic ritual, hoping this will make Nakata kill him. It works. Nakata stabs Johnnie Walker with a knife until he is dead.

THEMES

Oedipus

Haruki Murakami fashions one thread of Kafka on the Shore after the myth of Oedipus. In the Greek tragedy, Oedipus, son of Laius and Jocasta, was fated from birth to kill his father and marry his mother. Laius was fearful that the prophecy would come true, so sent his son to the wilderness to die. A servant took pity on young Oedipus, gave him to a shepherd who handed the child over to King Polybus and Queen Merope of Corinth. They raised Oedipus as their own. Years later, Oedipus quarrels with a man on a mountain road and kills him. The man turns out to be Laius. When Oedipus correctly answers a riddle posed by a mystical creature terrorizing the city of Thebes, he saves the city and is granted the hand of the widowed queen, Jocasta. Soon after, pollution and misfortune fall upon the city and the source of the curse is discovered. Jocasta commits suicide and Oedipus blinds himself.

Murakami alters the myth slightly, but its inclusion in the novel, as well as references and allusions to other Greek tragedies, makes the point that myths are touchstones for a variety of human experiences and the stories that explore them. In an interview at RandomHouse.com, Murakami explains, "Myths are the prototype for all stories…. Myths are like a reservoir containing every story there is." It becomes a device that allows Murakami to examine Kafka's emotions and the decisions he makes.

Survival

Throughout the novel, various characters grapple with the notion of survival. Crow tells Kafka he has to be the world's toughest fifteen-year-old because it is the only way for him to survive. His survival, as Kafka sees it, depends on physical strength and mental agility, so he follows a rigorous routine of exercise and academics. After two years of training, he feels ready to leave home on his fifteenth birthday, confident that his well-built body and intelligent mind belie his real age. Before he leaves home, he carefully chooses tools he believes will aid in his survival: a folding knife, a flashlight, sunglasses to mask his age, basic clothing, and a mobile telephone.

When Kafka lies to the hotel desk clerk, he chalks it up to survival: "I feel a little bad about lying, but there's not much I can do about it. I've got to bend some rules myself if I want to survive." Kafka even bases his choice for a name on the idea of survival. Kafka tells Miss Saeki, "You have to be strong to survive. Especially in my case…. I have to get stronger—like a stray crow. That's why I gave myself the name Kafka. That's what Kafka means in Czech, you know—crow.

Oshima feels that making it from one day to the next is especially difficult for him. His "defective container"—his body that is neither fully male nor female—sets him apart from other people and makes getting by a real challenge. "For me, inside this physical body—this defective container—the most important job is surviving from one day to the next."

Nakata and Hoshino have no trouble surviving, but they feel as though they do not really live. Nakata has always relied on the kindness of strangers for food, lodging, and work, but his simple life begins to feel empty when he thinks about all the things he does not know. "It's not just that I'm dumb…. Nakata's like a library without a single book…. I want to be a Nakata with his own ideas, his own meaning." Likewise, Hoshino becomes aware of how much he has missed once he begins to appreciate music, books, and film. He attributes his awakening to spending time with Nakata. "I feel like I'm exactly where I belong. When I'm with Mr. Nakata I can't be bothered with all this Who am I? stuff. Maybe this is going overboard, but I bet Buddha's followers and Jesus' apostles felt the same way." Kafka and Oshima live the envious life of the mind but struggle to survive, while Nakata and Hoshino merely survive and struggle to really live.

The Myth of Freedom

Freedom as myth is a central theme in Kafka on the Shore. From the very beginning of the novel, Murakami challenges the idea that it is possible to be completely free of one's demons. In Kafka's case, those demons take the form of his mother's early abandonment and his father's ominous prophecy. Crow tells Kafka, "I don't want to rain on your parade or anything, but I wouldn't count on escaping this place if I were you. No matter how far you run. Distance might not solve anything." Kafka can run away from home, then, but running away will not free him of the damage that has already been caused there. Throughout the novel, Crow reminds Kafka that freedom cannot be gained through distance.

Kafka becomes aware of the elusive nature of freedom the first night of his brand-new life:

I'm free, I think. I shut my eyes and think hard and deep about how free I am, but I can't really understand what it means. All I know is I'm totally alone…. Is that what it means to be free?

After Kafka has taken up residency at the library and become friends with Oshima and Miss Saeki, he finds himself in front of the train station. He realizes he has everything he needs to get by in his backpack. "I'm one hundred percent free," he thinks. He is attracted to the idea of leaving Shikoku and starting from scratch somewhere else, "like turning a new page in a notebook." Crow reminds him of all the things Kafka has grown accustomed to: "There's no way you can leave here. You aren't free. But is that what you really want? To be free?"

TOPICS FOR FURTHER STUDY

• Read the myth of Oedipus and write a paper noting the similarities and differences between the ancient Greek myth and the prophecy of Kafka's father in Kafka on the Shore. Include Kafka's reaction to the prophecy and how it influenced his actions.
• The idea of war and its effects permeate Kafka on the Shore. World War II forces the young Nakata from his home and toward his fate in the forest. His teacher's emotional strain is brought on by separation from her solider husband. Unexplained military research may have played a role in what happened to Nakata. Hoshini was part of the Japanese Self-Defense Force. Two deserters from the Japanese army help Kafka on his spiritual journey. Write an essay in which you examine these and other instance of "military presence" in the novel and what you think Murkami is saying about war in general and World War II in particular.
• Murakmi twice refers to the François Truffaut film The Four Hundred Blows in Kafka on the Shore, once in connection with Hoshini and once in connection with Kafka. Watch the film and discuss the similarities among the film's young protagonist, Hoshini, and Kafka.
• Murakmi refers to several specific pieces of music in connection with various key scenes in Kafka on the Shore: Franz Schubert's "Sonata in D Major," Ludwig Beethoven's Archduke trio, and John Coltrane's "My Favorite Things." Listen to these pieces and discuss Murakami's possible reasons for featuring them so prominently in his novel.
• The contradictory concepts of freedom and fate are very important to Kafka, though he seems unable to form an exact definition of either. Write an essay in which you define freedom and fate, then explain what impact both concepts have in the lives of Kafka, Miss Saeki, and Nakata.

Oshima sees Kafka's backpack as the boy's symbol of freedom and suggests that "having an object that symbolizes freedom might make a person happier than actually getting the freedom it represents." He says he, like most people, prefers not to be free, as freedom is just an illusion.

If they really were set free, most people would be in a real bind…. Jean-Jacques Rousseau defined civilization as when people build fences…. So I want you to be careful. The people who build high, strong fences are the ones who survive the best.

In Kafka on the Shore, then, the search for freedom is intrinsically connected with the struggle to survive. Both quests tend to inform the seekers' decisions to run away, stay where they are, or return home—sometimes all three.

STYLE

Alternating Chapters

Murakami uses the device of alternating chapters to tell the coinciding, though never colliding, stories of Kafka Tamura and Satoru Nakata. The odd-numbered chapters belong to Kafka and the characters that orbit his world. Even-numbered chapters tell Nakata's story, beginning with excerpted interviews culled from U.S. Army intelligence reports from 1946. Murakami's use of alternating stories allows him to illustrate the connections between the two protagonists while still keeping them separate. This device aids in propelling the narrative forward and organizing the sometimes confusing storylines.

Back-Story

Murakami uses fictional top secret U.S. Army intelligence reports to provide back-story in Kafka on the Shore. The 1946 interviews attempt to explain what happened to Nakata when he was nine years old, but they also provide cultural and historical clues that give the reader necessary perspective. One interview reveals the fact that people living in rural areas fared better than urban dwellers during the war because they were able to forage for food. More than a trivial detail, this fact suggests that the tragic mass starvation incurred during World War II still lingers in the Japanese collective memory. The same goes for Murakami's mention of Japanese biological weapon research. Though this detail may seem unimportant to the overall story, it takes on significance when the reader imagines the impact such research would have on the citizens of Japan.

The occasional descriptions of characters' past histories also provide back-story. These histories explain the motivations and points of view of the characters, but they also reveal clues that link them to other characters, times, or places. This device is critical in Kafka on the Shore, which challenges the readers' understanding of past and future, reality and fantasy. These character histories act like clues readers use to unravel the novel's many mysteries.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Japan's Violent Past

In an interview with Salon, Haruki Murakami, born in Tokyo, Japan, during the waning years of the American occupation, admitted to being heavily influenced by World War II:

I have drawers in my mind, so many drawers. I have hundreds of materials in these drawers. I take out the memories and images that I need. The war is a big drawer to me, a big one…. My father belongs to the generation that fought the war in the 1940s. When I was a kid my father told me stories—not so many, but it meant a lot to me. I wanted to know what happened then, to my father's generation. It's a kind of inheritance, the memory of it.

The Sino-Japanese War, the Russo-Japanese War, the Manchurian Incident, the Rape of Nanking, the Pacific War, and the subsequent occupation of Japan by American troops are related historical events that contribute to this memory. Murakami nods to all of them, either directly or indirectly, in much of his work. Murakami translator, biographer, and self-described fan, Jay Rubin, writes, "Although Murakami's works have been dismissed by critics as apolitical and ahistorical, most of them are set in carefully defined periods and, taken in aggregate, can be read as a psychological history of post-post-war Japan."

Contemporary Japan

On January 17, 1995, a powerful earthquake hit Kobe, Japan. Two months later, on March 20, members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult released sarin nerve gas on the Tokyo subway system during rush hour. Murakami, still living in the United States, felt compelled to return home. In an interview with Velisarios Kattoulas for Time, Murakami said,

I thought 1995 was a turning point for our society. I didn't know if it was good or bad, only that everything had changed. At the same time, it was a turning point for me. I made up my mind that I had to commit to my society again.

The change Murakami experienced mirrored the societal changes brought about by the earthquake, the gas attack, and the crash of the Japanese economy. The company-man mentality was suddenly challenged by economic uncertainty. In his 1997 interview with Laura Miller for Salon, Murakami said, "Ten years ago, Mitsubishi or other big companies were very solid, unshakable. But not anymore. Especially right now. Young people these days don't trust anything at all." Reactions to Underground, the title given to Murakami's collection of victim interviews, were positive, as he recounted to Miller:

It was a strange reaction to a crime nonfiction book. But they said they were encouraged. People are working so hard and so sincerely, and they were moved by that. This isn't the same as what we used to think—that working so hard was a good thing. It's not that.

CRITICAL OVERVIEW

It is impossible to critique Haruki Murakami's Kafka on the Shore without making comparisons to his other works of fiction, most notably, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Given the fact that critics and longtime fans already have a favorite Murakami novel, Kafka, the author's tenth, is judged as not quite measuring up and praised for exhibiting all the elements that make his books such a joy to read.

Some fault the novel's lack of resolution. David Mitchell of The Guardian (U.K.) wrote,

Unless I am being particularly dim-witted, loose ends remain far looser than in any Murakami novel to date…. The mythic motifs also remain frustratingly shady…. For Murakami devotees, this fantasy's loose ends will tantalize; to his admirers, they may invite flummoxed interpretation; but for the unconvinced, they will just dangle, rather ropily.

As if in answer to Mitchell's frustration, Matt Thorne of the Independent (U.K.) pointed to Murakami's suggestion for making sense of the book and added a helpful hint of his own:

Murakami has suggested it is a book that needs more than one reading to comprehend fully, and it may also be true that some scenes that will seem baffling to a Western audience make more sense to Japanese readers. If you return to the beginning of the book after completing it, the prologue actually works best as an epilogue.

Some critics, like Janet Maslin of the New York Times forgave the novel's shortcomings and focued on the work as a whole: "However vague its allusions and overbearing its pretensions … this book makes for a beguiling and enveloping experience." Laura Miller, also of the New York Times, agreeed: "So great is the force of the author's imagination, and of his conviction in the archaic power of the story he is telling, that all this junk is made genuine."

The consensus seems to be that Kafka on the Shore, though flawed, is a work of tremendous originality offering something for ardent fans and newcomers alike. Whether Murakami will top his wildly popular and critically acclaimed The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle remains to be seen.

CRITICISM

Ann Guidry

Ann Guidry is a freelance writer and editor. In this essay, Guidry examines the literary, cultural, and historical influences that helped shape the structure and content of Kafka on the Shore.

With a novel as hauntingly convoluted as Kafka on the Shore, it seems appropriate to look to the author for clues to the meaning of the book, if not, at least, clues to help answer the many riddles the book puts forth. The fact that Haruki Murakami is Japanese is both important and purely incidental. The novel, like Murakami, is steeped in Western cultural and literary references, but it has a particular quality that reveals its true nationality. An examination of Japanese history, society, and culture and of Murakami's own life reveal much about the mysteries of Kafka on the Shore. To begin to understand the complexities of the novel, it is helpful to study the complexities of the author's relationship with his homeland and its literature. Murakami's bold independence in a culture that reveres the group informs many aspects of Kafka on the Shore. For this reason, he and Japan's culture and history will form the foundation of this inquiry into the novel.

Isolation

The isolation felt by the characters in Kafka on the Shore mirrors the general isolationism of Japanese society. Kafka isolates himself from everyone, choosing solitary pursuits such as working out, reading, and listening to music. He has no mother, no sister, and, for all intents and purposes, no father. His only real friend, the boy named Crow, is his alter ego. Oshima is mysteriously private about his personal life. He converses freely with Kafka on a number of philosophical and literary topics, but he falls silent when questioned about private matters. Miss Saeki's twenty-five year disappearance is an extreme sort of isolationism, one that lessens only slightly after her return home.

The isolationism apparent in Japanese society can be traced to the homogeneity of the culture as well as the fact that it is an island country. Having been isolated for thousands of years, the Japanese live in something of a cultural bubble. The Japanese attitude toward their language serves as a perfect example of this exclusionary outlook. Murakami explains in the New York Times in a discussion with novelist Jay McInerney:

Many Japanese think their language is so unique that foreigners cannot grip its essence, its beauty or its subtlety. And if some foreigner claims that he has grasped that essence, nobody believes him. One reason they think that way is because Japan … has not been occupied by other countries except for a brief period after World War II. Its culture was not threatened by other cultures. So the Japanese language has been isolated…. That's why the Japanese are so certain about its uniqueness, its nature, its structure, its functions.

Individualism

The characters in Kafka on the Shore are as introverted, individualistic, and dreamy as the man who created them. Naturally independent, Murakami has always been something of an anomaly in a culture that reveres the group, the family, and the corporation. From an early age, he was drawn to the music, literature, and films of the West, where independent thinking is encouraged. In high school, he favored the paperback novels of Raymond Chandler, Truman Capote, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Kurt Vonnegut. Later, he discovered Richard Brautigan, Manuel Puig, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, John Irving, and Raymond Carver. Classic Japanese literature never captured his interest. The sheer volume of Western thought Murakami consumed likely influenced his personality. It helps to understand that members of Japanese society don't simply support the group ethos but are downright distrustful of independents. Murakami explains to McInerney:

Japan is such a group-conscious society that to be independent is very hard. For instance, when I looked for an apartment in Tokyo, the real-estate people didn't trust me because as a writer I was self-employed and didn't belong to any company.

This cultural attitude toward independence is especially illuminating when one considers the character of Satoru Nakata. Existing on the fringes of society, Nakata lives an utterly solitary existence, contributes little to society, collects money from the government, and talks to cats. What made Murakami decide to give this old man such a strange gift? Could it be to emphasize his marginality? Maybe Nakata's ability to talk to cats is a metaphor for the way society views him. But his scarlet letter is not so hard to bear. Because he is a lovable person and a victim—possibly of the government—Murakami grants him inclusion to one society (cat society) after being ousted from another (human society).

Looking through the same lens, the circumstances that lead to Mr. Hoshino being given the same gift (the ability to talk to cats) are particularly striking. Hoshino at least holds a steady job that he is dedicated to—until he meets Nakata, that is. After becoming Nakata's "disciple," he decides to quit his job and dedicate himself to the old man ("Maybe this is going overboard, but I bet Buddha's followers and Jesus' disciples felt the same way," he says). When Nakata dies, it is up to Hoshino to fulfill the old man's destiny. It is at this point that Hoshino is able to talk to cats. In Kafka on the Shore, a novel full of metaphors, characters with the ability to speak to cats are obviously unwanted by society, but loved by Murakami. They are given the ability to find meaning where ordinary people cannot.

Postmodernism

It could be said that Franz Kafka was postmodern before postmodernism existed. One need only look to his body of work to see that he shares much with the post-World War II writers that came after him. It is clear Murakami had the Czech writer on his mind when naming the protagonist in Kafka on the Shore. On his website at RandomHouse.com, Murakami has this to say about why he named his protagonist Kafka:

It goes without saying that Kafka is one of my very favorite writers. But I don't think my novels or characters are directly influenced by him…. What I see myself doing … is writing novels where, in my own way, I dismantle the fictional world of Kafka that itself dismantled the existing novelistic system. One could view this as a kind of homage to Kafka, I suppose. To tell the truth, I don't really have a firm grasp of what's meant by postmodernism, but I do have the sense that what I'm trying to do is slightly different.

Murakami is not alone in his confusion over the definition of postmodernism. Critics apply the term to certain kinds of literature, art, architecture, history, technology, and philosophy, but few agree exactly on what the term means. In a broad sense, postmodernists seem to posit that reality cannot be determined and truth is constantly evolving. If modernism was a reaction against the condition of modern civilization, postmodernism is a reaction against the linear nature of modernism.

While Murakami does not consider himself a postmodern writer, elements of his work are undeniably postmodern. Kafka, for one, drifts in and out of time, takes on and sloughs off a second personality, and enters and leaves reality as easily as the wind blows. And he is one of the "normal" guys. Johnnie Walker and Colonel Sanders are "concepts." They take on the names and appearances of corporate icons just so that they will have substance. Murkami's decision to make two powerful characters look like American corporate icons is another postmodern flourish: a blending of the eternal and mythic with the commercial and material.

Murakami employs postmodern structural elements, too. On several occasions, the first-person narrative shifts to second person. These shifts mark tremendous changes in the storyline and cause the reader to question what he or she has come to know about the characters, whether the words on the page represent a dream or reality, or whether the moment in time being described is really the present. These sudden narrative shifts are literary earthquakes, upsetting the balance of an already bizarre universe. Second-person narration is used to similar effect by other prominent postmodern writers, including Italo Calvino (see If on a Winter's Night a Traveler) and Carlos Fuentes (see The Death of Artemio Cruz).

The most postmodern moment in the novel takes place during a discussion between Colonel Sanders and Hoshino. Hoshino is terrified to take the entrance stone from the temple, fearing God's wrath. Colonel Sanders explains why nothing could possibly happen:

God only exists in people's minds. Especially in Japan, God's always been kind of a flexible concept. Look at what happened after the war. Douglas MacArthur ordered the divine emperor to quit being God, and he did, making a speech saying he was just an ordinary person. So after 1946 he wasn't God anymore. That's what Japanese gods are like—they can be tweaked and adjusted. Some American chomping on a cheap pipe gives the order and presto change-o—God's no longer God. A very postmodern kind of thing. If you think God's there, He is. If you don't, He isn't. And if that's what God's like, I wouldn't worry about it.

Murakami may claim to not fully grasp the concept of postmodernism, but the previous paragraph is more than a witty metaphysical rant. It is an accessible and engaging definition of the nebulous school of thought being addressed.

Haruki Murakami has said that Kafka on the Shore needs to be read more than once to be understood. Even he admits to learning more and more about the world he created after reading and rereading his own manuscript. But readers, be warned: Do not expect every question to be answered, every loose end to be neatly tied up. No matter how many times one reads Kafka on the Shore, elusive elements will remain. Understanding the author's historical, cultural, and literary background provides something of a map to help readers navigate the complex world Murakami creates. Once those connections are made, it is not difficult to see that the mysteries and complexities in Murakmi's fictional world are not so different from those in Murakami's "real" world.

Source: Ann Guidry, Critical Essay on Kafka on the Shore, in Literary Newsmakers for Students, Thomson Gale, 2007.

Philip Hensher

In the following excerpt, Hensher discusses Murakami's accomplishment of creating fiction that feels realistic and has universal appeal despite its fantastical elements and Japanese settings.

Haruki Murakami must be one of the most successful novelists in the world, from the point of view of readership; he has a very substantial following in this country, but it is still much smaller than the enormous readership he has in much of Europe. He is not one of those writers who appeals most to foreign readers; his status in Japan, after the publication of Norwegian Wood, rose to such a level that he was forced to leave the country to flee his own celebrity.

At first sight, he seems to have attained this global status with a kind of global style. The manner of his writing is simple, clear and direct; the trappings of his novels are strikingly international. Though they are mostly set in Japan, his novels talk principally of McDonalds, café au lait, Rossini overtures, Lennon and McCartney, Jack Kerouac and Dostoevsky; their political concerns, if any, are deliberately international ones. The settings are hotels, universities, unspecific houses and flats, airports. The experiences they deal in are either so universal, like love affairs, or so totally fantastic that they rarely evoke or require any particular culture. Only rarely does a novel turn to a specific Japanese experience which the reader in London or Athens might not know about: the private militarised university in Norwegian Wood or the Manchurian war memories in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle are very unusual in Murakami's work. This new novel, too, deals with episodes in the Japanese past; but like all such episodes in Murakami's work they remain purely decorative, the political implications deliberately unexplored. The question of poison gas arises at one point; Murakami has written extensively about the gas attacks on the Tokyo underground, but whether his conclusions there bear any relationship to the apparent gas attack in this novel is a question producing answer so speculative as to make one wonder whether there is any substantive connection, or if Murakami is, in any useful sense, writing about the real world in his novels at all.

WHAT DO I READ NEXT?

The Tale of Genji, written soon after the year 1000 a.d., is widely regarded as the world's first novel and one of Japan's greatest literary achievements. Penned by Murasaki Shikibu as entertainment for aristocratic ladies, Genji describes the customs of eleventh-century high society while recounting the romantic life of Genji, son of an emperor.

A Wild Sheep Chase, published in the United States in 1989, is Haruki Murakami's story about a young advertising executive forced to find a mutant sheep he used in an insurance company ad campaign.

Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World was published in the United States in 1991. Alternating chapters follow an unnamed science experiment victim through an imagined Tokyo of the future to an ancient walled city. The novel features an insane scientist, unicorn skulls, Bob Dylan, and subterranean monsters.

Murakami's short story collection, The Elephant Vanishes, was published in the United States in 1993. The stories tackle universal themes of love, death, and life in the modern world in Murakami's trademark postmodern style.

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, published in the United States in 1997, is widely considered Murakami's finest work. It marks a change in the writer's usually cool, detached stance to one of true commitment. For the first time, Murakami focuses on the intricacies of human relationships.

Murakami's Norwegian Wood, published in the United States in 2000, focuses on how the relationship between Toru and Naoko is affected by the death of their mutual friend.

Underground is Murakami's first foray into nonfiction. Published in the United States in 2000, Underground is a collection of interviews between Murakami and victims of the Aum Shinrikyo sarin gas attack of the Tokyo subway system in 1995. Interviews with members and former members of the Japanese cult are also included.

Murakami's Sputnik Sweetheart was published in the United States in 2001. The novel features "K" and his search for Sumire, the writer and classmate he loves.

After the Quake is Murakami's second short story collection. Published in 2002, its six stories all revolve around the aftereffects of the 1995 Kobe-Osaka earthquake.

And yet Murakami is the opposite of a bland, flattened novelist. He has a unique and pungent flavour, and his own extraordinary world. There is a marvellous sense, in all of his books, that anything at all may happen. Sometimes that means something totally extraordinary; a giant frog start living in someone's apartment (After the Quake), or an unknown 16th floor materialises in an ordinary provincial hotel (Dance Dance Dance). That kind of extravagant swerve we readers have got used to in the last 30 years, from writers from all parts of the world, under the not very useful tag of 'magic realism'. What I like about Murakami's unexpectedness is that it may just as readily manifest itself in ways much more realistic but equally alarming; and it will all make sense in the end.

Nevertheless, Kafka on the Shore works a powerful spell, its extremes of violence and sexual encounter drifting across its surface like a painless dream. Although there is a recurrent sense of unreality, what keeps the reader firmly attached to the demented flood of events is the certainty that there is a solid reality, however oddly expressed, at its heart. It seems to be telling us something immensely important, perhaps about unspoken family relationships, perhaps about love, given the undeniable warmth and simple tenderness at the centre of the book. What it is about I would not confidently venture to say, except that it is not all about Kafka, and not very much about beaches either. But I will say that it was one of the books which, arriving through the post, caused me to stop doing everything else and devote and energies to reading another of these wonderful, inexplicable romances.

Source: Philip Hensher, "Curiouser and Curiouser," in the Spectator, Vol. 297, No. 9204, January 2005, pp. 23-24.

David Myers

In the following essay, Myers reviews Kafka on the Shore, tantalizing would-be readers with glimpses of plots, characters, and elements of the magically realistic story.

Haruki Murakami became an international cult hero with his evocation of a sinister parallel universe in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. He also sold over four million copies of Norwegian Wood, his lugubrious love story which starts out depressingly and very slowly gets worse. So many tears fell from female readers that the pages became wet and warped and stuck together and Murakami became rich.

Murakami is a magic realist. This is of course just another humdrum lit crit label, but Murakami does manage to breathe some pop culture spoofiness into the genre with Kafka on the Shore. He happily gives surreal cameo roles to Colonel Kentucky and red label Johnnie Walker in top hat. But there is not much danger of you confusing Murakami with a childish comic strip. Before you know it, he has suddenly dropped you into a black hole filled with the sacred junk of 2000 years of Western philosophy and art. Audaciously he brings the Oedipus complex back to life, mixes in a super-sexy callgirl who quotes Bergson and Hegel while she does hand jobs, reactivates the age-old quest for the Absolute, has live fishes and then giant leeches raining out of blue skies, and features a strange old man with a soul of pure gold who can converse with cats.

Is this enough to give you a severe case of indigestion? Well, with another author, perhaps. But Murakami's narration moves along calmly and without clutter or artifice. The most peculiar things happen quite naturally. Mysticism and the supernatural so infuse the characters' souls that the bizarre becomes everyday, indeed almost Kafkaesque.

In Kafka on the Shore Murakami is very interested in fate or fatedness in the sense of Greek classical tragedy. This is quite distinct from the Shakespearean sense of fate which grows out of a fatal flaw in the hero's character. But in Greek tragedy it is often the protagonist's heroic excess which calls forth the wrath of the gods or the inexorability of some external and fearful fate. Murakami mixes in a touch of Buddhist reincarnation as a soother, or perhaps it comes from Pythagoras and the transmigration of souls.

Kafka on the Shore takes its name from two sources. First, Franz Kafka is the spiritual inspiration of the alienated fifteen-year-old boy runaway, who virtually lives in libraries in order to escape the attention of his hated and neglectful father. The boy believes that Kafka's strange torture- and learning-machine in the story "In the Penal Colony" is an existential symbol for enlightenment through suffering and out of reverence he resolves to re-christen himself Kafka, or in full Kafka Tamura. Second, Kafka is the eponymous hero of a love song composed by the Oedipal mother-figure, Miss Saeki, when she lost the great and only love of her life when she was fifteen. The song became top of the pops at the time, though I found this difficult to believe, as it is fairly obscure and elusive.

Are you confused? Excellent. Murakami wouldn't want it any other way. A certain confusion at the outset is needed to give you the jolt to start you on your pilgrimage, in which you will tag along at the heels of Kafka Tamura. Once you suspend your disbelief and identify with the yearnings and the sacred missions of the twin protagonists, namely the fifteen-year-old Kafka and the eighty-five-year-old sacred simpleton Nakano, you will never have another dull moment. You will never be bored. Things are fated to happen to you, meaningful things. Your fellow characters will never ignore you or even maintain the usual formal barriers of distant courtesy and indifference. Your intense field of gravity will irresistibly sweep them into your orbit and intimate encounters will be the order of the day.

Teenage Kafka undergoes a compulsive quest to fulfil his father's curse of an Oedipal reunion with his long-lost mother and sister. Kafka (the word means crow in Czech) is also the boy's alter ego as a shiny black crow who urges him on to claim spiritual and sexual recompense for his lost childhood and his lost mother.

At the same time elderly Nakano is like an elderly sunnyasi seeking for the lost stone that is the magical entrance to the spirit world of the alternative universe. This alternative universe can provide spiritual healing and release from the agony of meaninglessness and loneliness in this world, but it can only be given after Nakano has completed his sacred task. Or rather, Nakano is striving to return to this parallel universe into which he involuntarily stumbled as a child during the Second World War. He was zapped into a simpleton in this encounter and lost half of his shadow. He wants to reclaim his lost mind.

As for the subsidiary characters, Colonel Kentucky is an irascible spirit-guide, a gifted pimp, and a minor fate-functionary who has to ensure that the sibylline prophecies all stay on the rails and get fulfilled punctually. Mr Johnnie Walker, on the other hand, is a villainous incorporation of bloodthirsty evil as he murders cats, devours their hearts live and deep freezes their heads. He also doubles as the Oedipal tyrant-father who longs for release from his own hell of lovelessness by encouraging his own violent murder.

Nakano's quest is sexless and hilarious. He talks to cats and enlists strange helpers as he seeks the missing entrance stone to the parallel universe. Kafka's quest, by contrast, involves a great deal of matter-of-fact talk about sex and menstrual bleeding and also some explicit sexual ecstasy and love tragedy. His pilgrimage is quite eventful. Most events seem to be caused by his penis, which has a life of its own. Considering that most of the females it seeks out are introspective loners and misfits, the sex is wonderful. For them, anyway. He has ecstatic sex with his fifty-one-year-old ersatz-mother and also with her fifteen-year-old girlish ghost and commits dream-rape on his substitute-sister, in the nicest possible way of course. After all, he is driven. The curse is fulfilled and now he must seek absolution, love and forgiveness.

In the final analysis the novel lacks the tense, menacing quality of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, where evil oozes out of the parallel universe and creates lots of narrative suspense as the hero quests for his stolen wife in Dr Caligari-like corridors and strange brothel-like rooms. But in Kafka on the Shore, when the hero finally journeys through the magic forest and penetrates into the other universe, it turns out, disappointingly, to be a rather bloodless limbo of zombies engaged in a gradual losing of their human memories as they transit slowly to the joyless afterworld. It's all a bit like crossing the Styx and entering Hades. It is a release from suffering but it is not a fulfilment.

I suppose readers will just have to ask themselves whether Murakami has created a meaningful re-evocation of the Oedipus myth or whether it's all just an excuse for some pretty kinky sex combined with philosophical dialogue. Perhaps this is a novel for new age, pot-smoking crystal-gazers. Personally I prefer the psychological complexity and tragic characterisation of the great late-nineteenth-century novelists in what was surely the golden age of the novel.

Source: David Myers, "The Crow in the Back Hole," in Quadrant, Vol. 49, No. 6, June 2005, pp. 91-92.

SOURCES

"A Conversation Between Haruki Murakami and His Random House Editor," in RandomHouse.com 2004, www.randomhouse.com/features/murakami/site.php (July 27, 2006).

Kattoulas, Velisarios, "Pop Master," in Time, November 17, 2002, www.time.com/time/asia/magazine/article/0,13673,501021125-391572,00.html (July 27, 2006).

Maslin, Janet, "Adrift in a Universe in Flux Like Some Big FedEx Box," in the New York Times, January 31, 2005, www.nytimes.com (July 27, 2006).

McInerney, Jay, "Roll Over Basho: Who Japan is Reading, and Why," in the New York Times September 27, 1992, www.nytimes.com (July 27, 2006).

Miller, Laura, "Kafka on the Shore: Reality's Cul-de-Sacs," in the New York Times February 6, 2005, www.nytimes.com (July 27, 2006).

Miller, Laura, "The Outsider—The Salon Interview with Haruki Murakami," in Salon.com 1997, www.salon.com/books/int/1997/12/cov_si_16int.html (July 27, 2006).

Mitchell, David, "Kill Me or the Cat Gets It," in The Guardian (U.K.), January 8, 2005, books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1384788,00.html (July 27, 2006).

Moore, Steven, "As the Crow Flies," in the Washington Post, January 30, 2005, p. BW06.

"Murakami Haruki at The Complete Review," in www.complete-review.com/authors/murakamh.htm (July 27, 2006).

Murakami, Haruki, Kafka on the Shore, Vintage International, 2005.

Rubin, Jay, Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words, The Harvill Press, 2002.

Thorne, Matt, "Japan's Divided Souls: Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami," in the Independent (U.K.), January 7, 2005, p. 22.

"What Is the Definition of Postmodernism?" in Essortment, www.oh.essortment.com/postmodernphilo_rorp.htm (July 27, 2006).

FURTHER READING

Akinari, Ueda, Tales of Moonlight and Rain, Columbia University Press, 2006.

As timeless and canonical as The Tale of Genji, this collection of Japanese occult stories blends realism with the grotesque.

Rubin, Jay, Haruki Murakami and the Music of Words, The Harvill Press, 2002.

Rubin is both a translator and fan of Murakami's work. In this book, he traces Murakami's career using interviews he conducted with the author between 1993 and 2001.

Soseki, Natsume, I Am a Cat, Tuttle Publishing, 2002, originally published in 1905.

This 1905 satire by eminent Japanese author Natsume chronicles the lives of a middle-class Japanese family from the point of view of their cat, Mr. Sneeze.

Zimmerman, Bernhard and Thomas Marier, Greek Tragedy: An Introduction, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991.

Zimmerman and Marier analyze the most famous plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripedes.