Title: Kafka On The Shore
Author: Haruki Murakami
English Translation: Philip Gabriel
Pages: 656
Publisher: Kodansha
A young 15-year old runaway, Kafka Tamura, is in for a journey he hardly expects when he sets out of his home, where his father makes a prophecy that he would be a son who would kill his father and sleep with his mother and sister, who abandoned him as a child. On an equally exciting journey is an old man, Satoru Nakata, who has a mysterious ability to talk to cats and stones.
With a curiosity to understand the connection between these two characters that alternate between chapters in this Japanese book by Haruki Murakami, the reader finds himself caught in a journey through minds, worlds and realities.
Despite there being a number of characters that journey with Kafka and Nakata, they are all well defined and stay in memory. Oshima, for one, brings out a feministic dilemma, with an interesting twist on her sexuality.
Murakami's western references come out through a character he calls Johnnie Walker. Some characters such as Colonel Sanders, who says that he is but an abstract identity, still seem vague, though.
Layers of meaning
The journeys themselves are bizarre. Kafka falls in love with Ms Saeki and Nakata travels in search of things which he knows only when he sees them.
Leeches and sardines fall from the sky and woods lead to foreign lands where life has stopped since World War II. Reality seems so far away from this work of fiction. The overarching message of the book is ‘metaphors are everything’. The author also seems to convey that every entity interprets others in a way that suits him or her best. For instance, to Kafka, Sakura is his sister, a relationship he interprets for himself and one that he violates in his dream so as to let fate do as it had deemed through his father’s curse.
The book works in layers. At one level, while it traces the journey of a 15 year old runaway through cities and woods, on another level it also traces the journey he takes through his mind, into his consciousness.
Does Kafka kill his father through Nakata in a dream which leaves him bloody in his hands? Or is it really only Nakata who killed him because of his atrocities towards cats that he strangled to make his flute?
This is just one of the many questions that remain a mystery. But, Murakami assures, having no conclusion is not a crime. The reader is left wondering, was that really Kafka by the shore?
