February 1, 2021
Review of Kafka on the Shore, by Haruki Murakami
As you might have noticed from previous reviews, I’m a great fan of Japanese literature. I’m also a great fan of Haruki Murakami as well as Kafka (one of Murakami’s inspirations). And so, Kafka on the Shore felt like a great fit. Alas, it’s probably the most disappointing Murakami story I’ve read.
Why that is will be interesting to analyze, as there are important lessons to learn about how to write symbolism, among other things.
In a nutshell, it takes quite some… skill to alienate your readers from the perspective of symbolism in a context of magical realism.
Review of Kafka on the Shore: Genre, Plot, Narrative
Haruki Murakami’s style is often non-realist. I did use the term “magical realism” above, so let’s take a quick look at a definition.
What Is Magical Realism in Murakami’s Fiction
Generally, we can define magical realism as “what happens when a highly detailed, realistic setting is invaded by something too strange to believe” (Strecher 1999, 267)Strecher, Matthew C. “Magical Realism and the Search for Identity in the Fiction of Murakami Haruki”. Journal of Japanese Studies. 25.2 (1999): 263–298..
Wendy Faris adds that space-time and preconceptions of identity are typically undermined in such fictions, as magical realism entails “the closeness or near-merging of two realms, two worlds … The magical realist vision exists at the intersection of two worlds, at an imaginary point inside a double-sided mirror that reflects in both directions” (Faris 1995, 173)Faris, Wendy B. “Scheherazade’s Children: Magical Realism and Postmodern Fiction”. Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community. Durham: Duke University Press, 1995..
In simpler terms, Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore occurs in our world, our reality, and yet it contains elements that simply cannot take place. More importantly, perhaps, there isn’t any supernatural weight in these events. That is, they aren’t really treated as supernatural.
Raining Fish and Talking Cats
And so, with this in mind, Kafka on the Shore involves a man talking with cats. It also involves fish and leeches falling from the sky. “Entrance stones”, Colonel Sanders (sort of), Johnnie Walker (ditto), ghosts of living people, and the list goes on.
The plot is fairly simple to begin with: Kafka Tamura, 15, decides to run away from home. He takes a bus away from Tokyo, meeting Sakura – a few years older than him. He ends up in a new place, spending time in a small library, where he becomes impossibly infatuated with the 50+ year-old Miss Saeki.
There are basically two parallel storylines going on, with some additional, thinner narrative strands: Kafka in the library, and Mr. Nakata, a mentally impaired senior citizen who can’t read. Still, he has some peculiar abilities, talking to cats being one of the most intriguing. Talking, thinking cats, we all love that, right?
The plots do converge, eventually, but the process is forced and not particularly sense-making. Meanwhile, a multitude of narrative details and journeys remain unexploited.
Review of Kafka on the Shore: Characters
Characters in Kafka on the Shore are not particularly well written, I’m afraid.
Suffice to say this: I had no problem accepting fish falling from the sky and cats that talk, Johnnie Walker wanting to steal feline souls to make magic flutes, Colonel Sanders as a pimp, a prostitute who talks about consciousness, Hegel, and Bergson while offering oral sex to her client, but I could not accept a 15-year old who likes Coltrane, McCoy Tyner, and François Truffaut films.
This might sound ludicrous. I mean, there surely are some 15-year-olds who like jazz. However, I offer this as a marker of how oddly (in a bad way; there’s also a good way) constructed the characters in Kafka on the Shore really are.
Tangled Symbolism
The worst part of it all is that, in Kafka on the Shore, Murakami seems to have lost control of his symbolism. To put it bluntly, there are too many things going on, symbolically, and there is nothing to unite them.
Take a deep breath:
- Kafka (intertextually speaking, it creates a whole universe of connotations).
- The act of reading.
- Oedipus.
- Music.
- Portals, entrances, alternate realities.
- Yeats and the responsibility in dreams.
- Morality of thought.
- Death.
- Relationship with one’s parents (possibly hinting at abuse)
- Duty.
- Love.
- …
The list could continue for quite a while, and one reason is that the reader can’t really group any of these elements together under a conceptual umbrella term.
Indeed, I would claim the whole novel is a giant, meandering mixed metaphor. It contains symbolism that, while complex and overlapping, does little to bring everything together – and whenever it attempts to, the result is forced.
At best, the only concept one can come up with is how difficult feelings are for a teenager. Yawn…
Review of Kafka on the Shore: General Impression
Enjoying Murakami and Kafka, I really wanted to like this. Indeed, I liked it until about a third of the way, maybe halfway. But it quickly disintegrates, as its symbolism can’t come together in a proper, all-encompassing way.
There is too much allusion going on, without the proper weight required to hold it accountable.
In dreams begin responsibilities, the novel emphatically alludes to Yeats, but forgets about its promise. Actually, it does so within its own plot: There is a scene where Kafka, in a sort-of-a-dream, basically rapes Sakura (whom, on top of everything, he thinks of as a sister). She explicitly tells him that there will be no turning back after this, but he ignores her. Still, there are no repercussions.
More importantly, on a narrative level, Kafka on the Shore offers all these dreams without any serious thought of how they come together. It feels as if Murakami became too absorbed by his own fantasies – of all sorts – and forgot his authorial responsibility to create a symbolically coherent narrative.
All in all, there are things to enjoy in Kafka on the Shore, but I would call it a missed opportunity for something phenomenal.
In dreams begin responsibilities, Mr Murakami.
6 Comments
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I swear this is one of your best reviews ever. The organic unity of the artwork, a reflection sparked by the romantics, remains a necessary criterion for work. An author’s self-absorption is the end of all literature, simply for language posits the other when it happens, if it fails this minimal criterion, it fails completely. Also, because art itself is a truth(-making) process. If no truth comes out of it, no art has happened.
Thanks! I guess the best texts are born when your emotions are accentuated, and this was the case with this review as well. I really felt disappointed – almost upset at Murakami – that, in my opinion, he wasted this opportunity.
What remains unresolved (perhaps a text for another day, one which perhaps you could write!) is the threshold between “your emotions [being] accentuated” and “author’s self-absorption”.
I mean, one piece of advice I often give is that authors need to write from their heart (their fucking heart, as Bill Hicks would’ve put it), focusing on expressing what’s burning inside. But where do we cross into self-absorption? Is there, even, a way to tell? Perhaps this fault line is to be found precisely in the (lack of) organic unity, as you described. This is an intriguing topic.
Art for art’s sake, I say. Truth can be found in any art, each truth according to the viewer. I also wonder if a lack of organic unity is a sign of self-absorption – it may simply be honest art. I loved this Murakami novel, and found the unresolved symbolism intriguing, for it allowed me to draw my own conclusions, as such is the process of life. This is indeed a great topic, guys.
One thing most of us would agree, I believe, is that true art should inspire multiple interpretations. Thanks for your comment, Glenn.
I don’t want to be devil’s advocate, but defining the unity proposed by the romantics is beyond difficult. Yet, it is of critical necessity (in both senses: necessary and necessary for criticism). One must not, may I insist, fall for the artist’s side, as that concerns the artist, but not the critic. Of course the critic must be minimally acquainted with artistic procedures, but as the name implies, they are impersonal, just as style is. If it is not concerned with the artist, neither will it be with the viewer. The critic is not merely a commentator, that is, a privileged viewer. The critic is a reader, which is to say, a truth-extractor whose endeavour consists precisely in linking and excavating the truth-making processes at play in the work. One could say the critic is a philosopher specialized in not claiming a bunch of bullshit about art, unlike most philosophers. Also concerned with thinking properly and not subordinating art to any other truth-making procedure (science, politics, love…). Viewing itself is both a passive reception and a volitional act, but because interpretation (reading) is not a volitional act, that is, it does not depend on will, interpretation cannot happen at will (unlike vision). Interpretation concerns thinking at the same intensity that thinking concerns itself (with itself) and both concern linking, which is a gesture, that is, a volitional action. The critic posits, not himself, but criticism opposite to the work. Neither the artist nor the viewer.
This is, to put it mildly, a spectacularly eloquent way of describing it. Of course, we must also admit that it speaks about ideal conditions that are despairingly absent in real-world scenarios – where critics not only bring their own ideologies into interpretations, but, more damagingly, do so subconsciously Alas, we must still have something to aspire to.