Book Review:
Kafka on the Shore

Author: Haruki Murakami
Publisher: Vintage Books 2006
Page Count: 467

By Lynne Bevan DeMichele

(UMC.org)—Before you finish reading the earliest pages of Murakami’s novel, you’ll know you’re in for a “violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm.” The world you enter is a labyrinth where time bends and twists, where cats talk and fish fall from the sky. Its protagonist, Kafka Tamura, is a solitary, bookish boy with “zero friends” who assures himself he’s “the toughest 15-year-old on the planet.” Much like the great Czech writer whose name he assumes, Kafka feels betrayed by life and hollow inside. On the day of his 15th birthday he runs away from his Tokyo home. He also leaves behind his troubled artist father who has made a horrifying oedipal prediction. When he was just four, Kafka’s mother left forever, taking his older sister with her. He has no memories or photos of his mother, yet he thinks of her all the time. In his solitary flight he is drawn inexplicably to the island of Shikoku and a small, private library there.

A parallel narrative traces the story of Nakata, an old cabinetmaker, who lost his memory and the ability to read many years earlier during the war. The highly classified incident happened in the forest when he and his entire elementary class suddenly fell unconscious while picking mushrooms. Nakata lives alone and makes a little money finding lost cats in the neighborhood. He also converses with them. A gentle and simple man, Nakata has always felt “like a container with nothing inside”—so empty he doesn’t even cast a proper shadow. One afternoon he follows the command of a mysterious black dog who leads him to the studio of a frightening and diabolic artist. Their encounter ends in death.

Chapter by chapter these two eerie chronicles weave together. As they do, the mysteries surrounding both men deepen and become more compelling. Even as Kafka and Nakato move through their respective dream-like sequences, each one is joined by a new friend, a practical sidekick: pretty Sakura, Kafka’s worldly ‘big sister,’ and Hoshino, the randy truck driver who befriends old Nakata and takes him to the island of Shikoku. Here the narratives intersect and the pieces begin to fall into place. From the depths of a dark, threatening forest, Kafka ultimately finds his path to the future.

Some of the book’s explicit sex scenes and one especially bloody encounter may be uncomfortable for some readers. Murakami’s prose sometimes evokes distaste; however, there is a stunning beauty and depth to its moral vision. Themes of loss and longing, good and evil are explored through an artful blurring of the line between the real and the metaphysical. At one point a spectral guide who calls himself Colonel Sanders explains to Kafka that everything’s in flux, “The Earth, time, concepts, love, life, faith, justice, evil….”

Haruki Murakami has won three prestigious Japanese literary awards and his novels have been translated into 30 languages. He is a highly skilled writer, and one you can trust. However, you have to be willing to go where he takes you. The end of this story is abstract though satisfying; its wisdom will likely haunt you just as Beethoven’s “Archduke” Trio haunts one of its characters.

As Kafka discovers, our dreams sometimes are conduits to waking reality.

Lynne Bevan DeMichele, a former communications director for the United Methodist Church in Indiana, is a freelance writer living in Gig Harbor, Wash.

This feature was developed by UMC.org, the official online ministry of the United Methodist Church.

Study Questions

• What does Miss Saeki mean when she tells Kafka she believes she’s cursed because she “had something too complete, too perfect, once, and afterward all I could do was despise myself”? (p. 295) How does this statement relate to the painting in his room at the Komura library?
• What do you believe Oshima means when he says, “Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves”? (p. 297) Do you agree?
• Kafka’s alter ego, “Crow,” insists that “The main thing is this: You have to forgive her….That’s the only way you can be saved” (p. 399). What do you think he means by "saved"? Do you see any correlation with the Christian concept of "saved"?
• In the forest valley where the two mysterious soldiers take Kafka, he has a conversation with a lovely girl who tells him he must accept what’s inside him (p. 437). She goes on to say, “The most important thing about life here is that people let themselves be absorbed into things….” That is, to be a seamless, natural part of whomever or whatever you’re with. What do you think this means?
• As the story concludes, Kafka is at peace with himself at last—“part of a brand-new world.” What is there about his recent experiences that makes this possible?

Group Activities

• Oshima suggests that, “…most people in the world aren’t trying to be free, Kafka. They just think they are. It’s all an illusion” (p. 315). Examine your own lives and discuss the relative degree of “freedom” you feel now and whether it has changed from when you were 15. Next, discuss how Jesus’ concept of freedom might be the same as or different from that of Oshima.
• Listen to a recording of Beethoven’s “Archduke Trio” or Hayden’s “First Cello Concerto” and try to hear the ”persistent, inward-moving spirit” as described by the owner of the coffee shop where Hoshino decides to follow Nakata (p. 329). Miss Saeki’s song has a similarly mystical effect on Kafka. Do you see a correlation?

Resources
Haruki Murakami Web site
Publisher's Web site