Kafka on the Shore

Kafka on the Shore

Written by Haruki Murakami

Reviewed by Sean Tourtellotte

Murakami, Haruki. Kafka on the Shore. New York: Vintage Books, 2005. Print. ISBN 978-1-4000-7927-8

Set in modern day Japan, Kafka on the Shore, is the surreal story of a 15 year old runaway who calls himself Kafka and an elderly man named Nakata who, due to a strange accident as a boy, has lost much of his early memory including his ability to read and write.  Haruki Murakami tells the story of these two characters using alternating chapters, slowly weaving their two fates together.

Kafka’s story begins just as he decides to run away from his father in Tokyo to seek out his long lost mother and sister, and hoping to avoid an oedipal prophecy that seems to be taking shape as his journey develops. After leaving home, Kafka finds a friend in a librarian who takes Kafka under his wing and allows him to live and work in the library as long as he needs to. While in the library he develops a strange relationship with Miss Saeki, the library owner, and her 15 year old spirit.

Nakata’s story is no less bizarre. As a child growing up in the midst of WWII he has an inexplicable accident in which he and his grade school classmates suddenly lose consciousness while on a field trip in a nearby woods. While his classmates regain their consciousness in a matter of hours, Nakata remains in a coma for several weeks. When he comes out of it, he has lost his memory and his ability to read and write, but he has gained the ability to talk with cats and to cause strange things to fall from the sky. After a gruesome run in with a local cat thief in which he loses his ability to speak with cats, Nakata sets out on a mission to find a mysterious entrance stone.

Somehow, Murakami turns these strange events and characters, which might seem haphazard and random at first glance, into an utterly entrancing story that plays with the mind and dissolves the boundaries between the real and the unreal. While the writing style is simple and straightforward—bordering plain—this novel still manages to deliver a psychological and emotional punch that will not be easily forgotten.

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