Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami is prolific in the art of intimate narration and a cast of dreamy, almost off-beat characters on the cusp of adulthood. Kafka on the Shore represents Murakmi’s most well-known novels for its ability to transport the reader to an otherwise mundane lifestyle of a bookish 15-year-old boy named Kafka Tamura made metaphysical as he embarks on a journey to escape his cursed fate. Based on the Greek prototype of the myth of Oedipus, Kafka’s journey represents the modern odyssey that questions the influence of predetermination as Kafka’s narrative becomes intertwined with Satoru Nakata, a fading World War II veteran who has the ability to communicate with cats at the expense of his sanity.
Murakami alludes to various literature references from Greek tragedy to Japanese legends in which Kafka is introduced as a reserved, hardened middle school-aged boy who is physically and mentally trained to run away from his estranged father in search of his missing mother and sister. Along his metaphysical journey, mimicking a Greek epic, Kafka grapples with the inner conflict of escaping his oedipal fate in which running away brings him to a magical library in the Japanese city of Takamatsu, resembling the fever-dream quality of a Studio Ghibli movie. Murakami’s prose remains lyrical and contributes to the elusive uncanny nature of Murakami’s world-building, and it’s through magical obstacles and abilities that philosophical elements are weighed.
Kafka begins his journey with inner turmoil in the days leading up to his escape, turning over the concept of fate, “And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.” Kafka on the Shore reads like a jazz composition that begins with two dynamic melodies that become chaotic as layers of harmony and beats create a dipping ensemble. The narrative for both foiling protagonists alternates between each chapter until they collide at the hands of cat whisperers, librarians, a forest of ageless soldiers, and skies that rain down fish.
While Western novels and authors, in general, underutilize the genre of magic realism unless it’s strictly fantasy, Murakami almost exclusively writes in the style of magic realism with the exception of one novel, Norwegian Wood, in which his preference for the surreal is a refreshing journey that challenges the reader to picture the impossible within the mundane. Murakmi’s juxtaposition of the abstract reality—spirits and the subconscious—within existential narration dismantles the Western world of fiction to introduce an absurd nature and serves as the inspiration behind “Kafka” as an homage to the existentialist writer Franz Kafka. Meditating on the notion of “being lost”, as Kafka abandons his identity in an attempt to escape his fate, Murakami introduces a psychological application of the soul in which a broken soul is a wandering body leading to what it takes to restore oneself.
Gaining huge popularity in Western audiences, catering to the edgier coming-of-age, Murakmi’s work faces the conflict of translation while preserving the rhythmic prose and simple poeticism that casts a distinct riddle-like quality over every piece of dialogue. Murakami even urges the readers to indulge and reread Kafka on the Shore to mine for easter eggs and various allusions, as the entire book is structured like a whimsical puzzle with a circular ending. While Kafka on the Shore was whimsical, it remained rooted within philosophy and motif that introduces the reader to unconventional understandings of psychology and predetermination.
