Why should you read “Kafka on the Shore”? - Iseult Gillespie
“Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm
that keeps changing directions.
You change direction
but the sandstorm chases you.
You turn again, but the storm adjusts.
Over and over you play this out,
like some ominous dance
with death just before dawn.
Why?
Because this storm isn't something
that blew in from far away…
This storm is you.
Something inside of you.”
This quote,
from the first chapter
of Haruki Murakami’s "Kafka on the Shore,"
captures the teenage protagonist's
turmoil.
Desperate to escape his tyrannical father
and the family curse
he feels doomed to repeat,
he renames himself Kafka
after his favorite author
and runs away from home.
But memories of a missing mother,
along with dreams
that haunt his waking life,
prove more difficult to outrun.
Published in Japanese in 2002
and translated into English
three years later,
"Kafka on the Shore"
is an epic literary puzzle
filled with time travel, hidden histories,
and magical underworlds.
Readers delight in discovering
how the mind-bending imagery,
whimsical characters
and eerie coincidences fit together.
Kafka narrates every second chapter,
with the rest centering on an old man
named Satoru Nakata.
After awakening from a coma
he went into during the Second World War,
Nakata loses
the ability to read and write–
but gains a mysterious knack
for talking to cats.
When he’s asked to tail a missing pet,
he’s thrown onto a dangerous path
that runs parallel to Kafka’s.
Soon prophecies come true,
portals to different dimensions open up–
and fish and leeches
begin raining from the sky.
But what ties these two characters
together–
and is it a force
either one of them can control?
The collision of different worlds
is a common thread
in Haruki Murakami’s work.
His novels and short stories
often forge fantastic connections
between personal experience,
supernatural possibilities,
and Japanese history.
Born in Kyoto in 1949,
Murakami grew up
during the post-World War II
American occupation of Japan.
The shadow of war
hung over his life as it does his fiction;
"Kafka on the Shore"
features biological attacks,
military ghosts and shady conspiracies.
Murakami’s work blurs historical periods
and draws
from multiple cultural traditions.
References to Western society
and Japanese customs
tumble over each other,
from literature and fashion
to food and ghost stories.
He has a penchant
for musical references, too,
especially in "Kafka on the Shore."
As the runaway Kafka
wanders the streets of a strange city,
Led Zeppelin and Prince keep him company.
Soon, he takes refuge
in an exquisite private library.
While he spends his days
poring over old books
and contemplating a strange painting
and the library’s mysterious owner,
he also befriends the librarian–
who introduces him
to classical music like Schubert.
This musical sensibility
makes Murakami’s work
all the more hypnotic.
He frequently bends the line
between reality and a world of dreams,
and is considered a master
of magic lurking in the mundane.
This is a key feature of magical realism.
In contrast to fantasy,
magic in this sort of writing
rarely offers a way out of a problem.
Instead, it becomes just one more thing
that complicates life.
In "Kafka on the Shore,"
characters are faced with
endless otherworldly distractions,
from a love sick ghost
to a flute made from cat souls.
These challenges offer no easy answers.
Instead, they leave us
marveling at the resourcefulness
of the human spirit
to deal with the unexpected.
While Kafka
often seems suspended in strangeness,
there’s a tenderness and integrity
at the heart of his mission
that keeps him moving forward.
Gradually he comes
to accept his inner confusion.
In the end,
his experience echoes the reader’s:
the deeper you go, the more you find.
