Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore

Within the context of Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore, several different stories are told within each other in a nail-biting sequence of events. Murakami uses a link between the plots of two very puzzling stories to convey the ultimate outcomes. By constructing a novel where every other chapter switches back and forth between two stories, Murakami creates an alternative way for readers to arrive at the ending of the story. The story of the boy named crow and the story of an old man named Nakata are two stories linked together by a commonality between the two main characters- they are each searching for each other, amongst finding themselves along the way.

Murakami begins his novel with a prologue from the boy named Crow, Kafka’s subconscious. As fifteen-year-old Kafka is preparing to run away from home, the boy named Crow gives Kafka several pieces of advice for his journey. One piece of advice that Crow gives Kafka is,

“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, in fact, 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.” (6)

The ironic thing about this piece of advice in the prologue of the novel is that it can actually apply to both Kafka and Nakata’s stories. It is as if Murakami inserts this piece of advice into the prologue to foreshadow things to come in the latter part of the novel, such as Kafka’s batter with finding somewhere to live, or Nakata’s involvement with the death of Kafka’s father. Immediately following the prologue, Murakami begins the first chapter with a continuation of the prologue. Kafka is still leaving his family and home behind to venture out on his own. His conscious, the boy named Crow, is still talking to him, but Kafka’s character takes more of a lead with the narration of his own story in chapter one.

The advice that the boy named Crow gives Kafka is ironic because this piece of advice could also be applicable towards Nakata’s story. At the beginning of Chapter 2, and continuing throughout the rest of the even-numbered chapters, Nakata’s story unveils. The puzzling thing is, Kafka’s story begins when he is fifteen years old. Nakata’s story begins when he is a little boy, but the majority of his story is occurring when he is an old man. Murakami’s choice to begin one story at the actual beginning and begin the other story where it remains for the duration of the novel is essential in the evaluation of the relationship of the two stories. Each story shows how the two characters grow to become different people than they started out as, but one story uses a different age timeline.

For the first few chapters of Nakata’s story, the paragraph begins with something along the lines of, “The following document, classified Top Secret by the U.S. Department of Defense…”, or, “The following is a taped interview with…” (25). The interesting thing about beginning Nakata’s chapters with these types of things is that they imply a sense of mystery and suspense to the storyline. Nakata is not the only character in the novel that is, in a sense, running from something. Although the police reports at the beginning of the novel deal with Nakata’s childhood, these reports somewhat foreshadow how Kafka is, in a sense, is trying to escape reality by running away from home. Naturally, when a person runs away from their home the police are going to be contacted right away. Oddly enough, Kafka’s father never sends the police to look for him, or at least not to the reader’s knowledge. It is not until Kafka’s father dies that the police begin their search for him. Soon thereafter, the reader discovers that the police are also searching for Nakata for possible murder charges. Each character has no idea that they are being searched for, nor do either characters know that they are really “guilty” of anything. The police think that Nakata is guilty of Kafka’s father’s murder. The role that the police play throughout the novel is a minuscule, yet vital one. The police are involved in Nakata’s life as a young boy as they are trying to determine what happened the day that Nakata’s teacher had an accident with their class. Later, the police are in search of Nakata in hopes of finding a murderer. The police are searching for Nakata, yet he does not know and is not trying to escape. On the other hand, Kafka is running, but is not sure what he is running from.

The essence of Kafka on the Shore is the world that Murakami unfolds filled with fairytale fantasies, such as the talking cats and fish falling from the sky. When the reader first encounters Nakata’s initial run-in with a cat, the cats asks, “Hmm…so you’re able to speak.” Nakata replies to the cat, saying,

“That’s right. Not that I can speak to every cat I meet, but if things go well I can. Like right now….It’s easy to forget things you don’t need anymore. Nakata’s exactly the same way.” (46-47).

Both Nakata and Kafka’s stories are bizarre in that there is no real explanation of some of things that happen. The reader is not sure of why Nakata has the power to converse with cats or to know that fish and leeches are going to fall from the sky. The reader also does not know why Kafka is able to speak to the fifteen-year-old spirit of Miss Saeki.

Women also play an important role in the process of each character’s struggle to find themselves. In the beginning of the novel, Nakata’s teacher confesses that the accident with her students was her fault. Because of her reaction to Kafka seeing her cleaning the blood off of herself, Nakata is permanently changed for the rest of his life. Nakata’s teacher says,

“I stood there for a while, holding Nakata tight in my arms, feeling like I wanted to disappear. Just over the horizon the violence of war went on, with countless people dying. I no longer had any idea what was right and what was wrong. Was I really seeing the real world? Was the sound of birds I was hearing real? I found myself along in the woods, totally confused, blood flowing freely from my womb…I cried quietly, without making a sound.” (101)

The teacher’s confession sums up all of the essential points of the novel. Both Nakata and Kafka are running from something, whether they realize it or not. A sense of loneliness and confusion consumes each character throughout the duration of each of their journeys. Nakata is in search of something that only he knows where to find. He continually drags his confidante, Hoshino, along with him in order to find this thing that he is looking for. Nakata only had one female counterpart in the novel, whereas Kafka had two- Sakura and Miss Saeki. It is as if each character is trying to figure out if they really are living in the real world and trying to differentiate between right and wrong. One example of differentiating between right and wrong is when Johnnie Walkers tells Nakata that,

“We don’t have a lot of time, so let me jump to the conclusion, if you don’t mind. What you can do for me is kill me. Take my life, in other words.” (142)

Perhaps Nakata did not think it was wrong to kill Johnnie Walker since Walker asked him to do so. Perhaps Kafka did not think it was wrong to sleep with his mother, or sleep with his sister, or run away from home and leave his father behind. Sex is often involved in many of the instances where women are mentioned throughout the novel, also. Particularly with Kafka, his sexual encounters with Sakura and Miss Saeki seem to be a sort of crutch for Kafka to use because of his uncertainty of who his mother and sister actually are. Whereas Nakata uses his magical powers to speak with cats and predict if there are going to be abnormal rainfalls to find a sense of placement in the real world, Kafka uses his penis to do the same.

Memories and signs are two very important elements in the role of each character. Nakata has a hard time remembering anything, because he thinks he is slow, and Kafka says, “No, I don’t have anything, just memories.” (402) The only thing that each character actually has are signs and memories of where they have been, where they must go, and what they have done along the way. Perhaps memories, such as Kafka’s remembrances of sex with Miss Saeki, or Nakata’s prediction that it will rain fish and leeches are signs that each character actually does have a role in society. They are not just a couple of “no body’s”. The bizarre and unpredictable events and outcomes that happen to Kafka and Nakata complete the Kafkaesque writings of Franz Kafka. Strange things happen with no sort of explanation.