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Kafka on the Shore(Haruki Murakami)

May 24th, 2009 by heimeai

The complete review’s Review:

Kafka on the Shore is many things: the title of a song, for one, a painting for another. And the novel’s central character is Kafka Tamura — though he doesn’t actually spend much time on any shore. Not any real one, anyway. But this is a Murakami novel and, as in all Murakami novels, as one of the characters observes: “The world is a metaphor, Kafka Tamura”. No doubt: the kid is practically drowning in that metaphor — but then aren’t we all ?
The novel is presented in alternating chapters, plot-lines that inevitably converge and cross (but without completely merging). The odd-numbered chapters are narrated by disaffected youth Kafka Tamura, who decides that his fifteenth birthday “is the ideal time to run away from home”. He doesn’t get along with his father, a famous artist, and there’s a deep emptiness left by the absence of his mother and sister, whom he has not seen since he was a small child. Dad doesn’t help matters by burdening him with one hell of a prophecy — “More like a curse than a prophecy” — foreseeing an Oedipal fate for Kafka, patricide and all. It’s understandable, then, that Kafka wants to get out of there — though, as one of the characters reminds him, running away may not be the ideal solution: “Distance might not solve anything.” It didn’t work for Oedipus, after all, and it will come as no surprise that Murakami doesn’t allow (physical) distance to be much of an issue here either.
The other story-line begins with earlier events, a mysterious occurrence from World War II. A class expedition into the woods ended with all the schoolchildren (but not the teacher) falling into coma-like states. Except for one, they snap out of it quickly, and seem to have suffered no ill effects (though they also have no memory of what happened to them). The exception is Nakata, who only comes out of this state weeks later and has been changed: he is completely empty. Whatever happened to him appears also to have affected his mind: he used to be a bright boy, but now seems a bit slow, and he never learns to read, for example. In the present day Nakata is retired, living pretty much without friends (and ignored by his family) but getting along well and happily enough.
Destiny has something in mind for both Kafka and Nakata. They’re not clear about it, almost drifting along, but they always seem to know which way to turn, compelled to act in a certain way. They can’t express it in words (a common problem in Murakami books, and certainly afflicting many of the characters in this one), but they just seem to know what to do. This device is by far the most annoying aspect of the book, and never adequately explained: absolutely everything seems predestined in the book and the characters seem unable to do anything wrong (in the sense of what they’re not supposed to), and, while that is the way novels work (the ending is printed and fixed before you start, and nothing is going to change it, or anything that happens along the way) it takes away some of the suspense. The fact that Murakami also resorts to occurrences that make the ancient Greek device of deus ex machina look tame by comparison doesn’t help either.
Kafka heads south, for Shikoku. Typically:

That’s where I’ll go. There’s no particular reason it has to be Shikoku, only that studying the map I got the feeling that’s where I should head. Feeling — of this sort (and Murakami-characters have them all the time) — always trumps reason. Needless, to say, Shikoku is the place he has to be. For a fifteen year-old runaway, things also work out remarkably well for him. Indeed: things constantly seem to work out — but then since he seems to be guided by the Fates and nothing else, it’s not that surprising (though it does get a bit boring, since Murakami allows for almost no suspense whatsoever).
Eventually, Kafka is drawn to a library, the Komura Memorial Library, which turns out to be just the place for him. He finds a helpful friend in one of the workers, Oshima, and is also drawn to the head of the library, old Miss Saeki — both if not quite outcasts at least very much on the periphery of society. There are a few problems — Kafka wakes up in the middle of nowhere one night, his T-shirt all bloody, with no memory of what happened the past few hours — but no matter, things just seem to work out.
Nakata’s adventures run parallel to Kafka’s. Among his talents is his ability to talk to cats, which he has parlayed into a small business, helping locals find their lost cats. This, however, now leads him to an unsavoury character who also has a project involving cats — one which Nakata puts an end to. And once that is done he too feels compelled to head south. Towards Shikoku, as it will turn out — not that he understands much about geography or the like (but that’s the way things work in Murakami novels: you don’t have to know anything about geography — in fact, it almost seems better not to concern yourself with it: you’ll still be guided on your way).
Like Kafka, Nakata pretty much always finds what he needs. No one takes advantage of him (except, in a way, the cat-man that sets this in motion), and somehow or other he manages to make his way south, eventually in the company of Hoshino, who doesn’t know why he’s going along with all this crazy stuff this old man leads him into but understands that it’s the right thing to do. Needless to say, they’ll eventually make their way to the Komura Memorial Library …..
Besides the talking cats there are other touches of the unusual: from the semi-plausible (a Bergson-quoting prostitute) to the far-fetched (leeches and fish raining down from the skies) to the outrageous (an all-powerful being — though it claims: “I’m neither God nor Buddha” — dressed up as Colonel Sanders working as a pimp). There’s also that boy called Crow that Kafka occasionally converses with (and there’s also the matter of his name — not his real one, and taken not so much because of what the Czech writer wrote …), an unwieldy but important stone, the one-time hit-single, &quotKafka on the Shore”, considerable sexual confusion (with the Oedipus-story overshadowing much), and even some soldiers that got lost in the woods decades earlier. And then there’s the whole other-worldly aspect of the novel. Much of it feels otherworldy anyway, what with the almost dreamlike state of these many characters, largely cut off from what might be considered normal life. Needless to say, dreams and visions also figure prominently — and several of the characters literally aren’t all there: memory-less Nakata understands only the present, Miss Saeki has only the past.
In the novel the characters are allowed to become, in some way, whole. Murakami isn’t entirely predictable in how he goes about this — ‘whole’ may not be what the reader always expected — but again, there is a lack of suspense in how this unfolds. Only Kafka appears to have a choice between worlds and futures, and he explores the alternative more deeply than most Murakami characters have. But in the end it doesn’t really feel like he had much of a choice: the brief glimpse of free will more like a flash in the pan, barely convincing.

Chapter by chapter Kafka on the Shore is an entertaining read: Murakami tells his stories well, and what happens is, at the very least, unusual. (It also bubbles over — as Kafka occasionally threatens to — into some strong violence, gruesome but effective stuff.) The characters’ uncertainty can be a bit trying, especially since there is no cost to the uncertainty — just sitting around, doing whatever they feel like is enough to eventually find them going the right way again — but there’s enough here to hold one’s interest.
The novel is meant to be a modern Greek tragedy — not just because of the curse on Kafka, but in its whole world-view. But Murakami fails on this count in large part because he’s not fully committed to tragedy: his characters are all properly tied to their inescapable fates, but Murakami is just too nice about these. The world is an uglier place than he is willing to describe.
The failing of the novel can also be summed up in the fact that no one in it really gets lost. There is simply no doubt that everything will work out for these characters, as Murakami makes it much too easy for them. He starts out promisingly enough: some cats do get lost, and there’s a strong fear that the one Nakata has been hired to find won’t be found; as it turns out some of the cats do, in a way, remain lost, but after that it’s all … well, if not sunshine-endings, so at least very predictable. The book would have been much stronger if the reader might have been at least led to believe that one of these characters might not wind up as they should.
Kafka is also not an entirely satisfying protagonist; surprisingly the empty Nakata is in many ways the more interesting character. Kafka has a lot on his shoulders, but perhaps he’s the wrong age (just fifteen), and certainly his family difficulties should have been developed more fully. Dad’s curse may be horrific, but by itself isn’t compelling enough in this setting (and, after all, even Oedipus had more of a backstory).
A lot happens in Kafka on the Shore but it is a disturbingly passive book. The world it describes — be it metaphor or real — is one in which fate rules all and free will seems non-existent. As such, Kafka on the Shore reads much like a religious fiction, willing an artificial world that works according to a simple (if peculiar) design, the end always the same (and like a religious fiction, the ending is not necessarily something one would describe as ‘happy’, but rather the way things ought to be). The characters are essentially robotic, going through the motions without appearing to be able to influence them. Murakami does quite a bit with them, but ultimately not enough: a wolf in sheep’s clothing here could have done wonders for the story.
Odd and philosophically certainly unsatisfying, Kafka on the Shore is still fairly enjoyable; Murakami-fans likely won’t be disappointed. As far as the episodes and the quirky details go, Murakami offers as much as usual, and does it as well. However, unlike his best novels, it is too far (and, more significantly: too unconvincingly far) from the world we know to be a true success.

Note: there’s one aesthetically inelegant slip in the book: crows play a significant role, and Tamura even ‘explains’: “That’s what Kafka means in Czech, you know — crow.” Unfortunately, that is not what ‘Kafka’ means in Czech. ‘Kafka’ mean ‘jackdaw’ — an admittedly crow-like bird, but, as the very different English names suggest, not what is commonly considered a crow. Possibly Japanese does not differentiate between the two, explaining the mistake — but it’s awkward in the English translation. (The German translation makes the same mistake.)

from:http://www.complete-review.com/reviews/murakamih/kafkaots.htm

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