Kafka On The Shore Review- The World Is A Concept
It’s been some time since I read a glossy cover, rough pages flipped over by my fingers kind of book.
Ebooks have become the norm for me, occasionally replaced by audiobooks. My paperback copy of Haruki Murakami’s Kafka On The Shore is at least three years old. The pages had turned yellow without my ever reaching a quarter of the story.
It’s not that I haven’t tried reading the book before. Yet, I never seemed to go past the third chapter. The sound of the god-awful Twitter notification always worn that fight.
This isn’t a slight on the author. It’s my own brain that refused to let me look at paper for more than ten minutes.
In fact, if anyone could’ve brought me back from that non-reading physical book slump, it’s right that it would be Murakami.
(The trick here was to continue from the point I was unable to last time- past those 3 chapters. So, what if I read it a year ago? I just had to put faith in my memory.)
Once I got to the interesting part, I couldn’t put the copy down until I was staring at the last blank page.
Of course, I immediately felt the need to summarize all my emotions about the book in words. Since I haven’t published anything on Substack yet and heard so much about how it’s the perfect platform for having an opinion, this is going to be my first post and review.
Kafka On The Shore Review
Be warned, this review isn’t going to be spoiler-free. I’m going to try my best at it but I might end up letting some things slip. I’m of the belief that a truly good piece of media is never spoiled by spoilers anyway.
The Plot
What is the plot? The book somehow manages to have one and not at the same time. The basic premise is as follows:
A 15-year-old boy named Kafka Tamura runs away from home. Nakata, a sixty-year-old man who is able to talk to cats has his own journey.
We’re treated to Kafka and Nakata’s adventures parallel to each other. This is the structure the book establishes, where one chapter is dedicated to Kafka and the next is to Nakata. The book never deviates away from this structure.
This makes for a thrilling, toppling over from the edge of your seat experience. A hard-to-earn achievement for a story where nothing actually happens.
Or it’s fairer to say a bunch of things happen, but none of it amounts to anything. The book doesn’t follow the traditional rules of a prologue, climax, and epilogue. It goes through all these motions, reaches an end that satisfies you, and yet, leaves everything to interpretation.
There’s no debating that’s exactly what Murakami intended. There’s a part where the characters converse about a book with a similar feeling of the plot. It’s clever foreshadowing that you catch on immediately and still read on to see if the book is a deviation.
As you read, you get the impression Haruki Murakami had the entire plot planned out while writing. Yet, the author appears to be trying to make sense of the world through this work of fiction.
The story never veers off, but there are lots of day-to-day images of the characters going through mundane motions of life that add nothing to it. The genius here is that I can’t imagine the books without those boring routines either. Those are integral to the makeup of the characters even if they have nothing to do with the main plot.
There’s a lot of philosophical debate in the book. Characters frequently ponder the meaning of life, adages, and history. Meanwhile, we have metaphors taking physical forms.
I imagine if you aren’t a fan of philosophical discussions, you might find the book a bit pretentious. Maybe it is. Maybe all form of deep dialogue on life is pretentiousness. Depending on your personality, it might even bore you. Not everyone likes to see a character go on about why a particular Schubert piece is hard to recreate.
However, to me, this is where Kafka On The Shore excels. The story manages to set up the world of conscious and unconscious, of people living between dreams and reality in a neat, nostalgic package. Concepts that would have been hard to follow are explained to characters who take on the reader’s role.
Most of all, I have always been a fan of the Magical realism genre. I imagine if you aren’t acquainted with anime or fiction from Japan in general, the happenings might be bizarre to you.
This isn’t a fantasy book by any means. Magical realism is exactly what it suggests. The setting is the real world where things that shouldn’t be possible happen but never entirely defies the law of sciences. If you kill someone, blood comes out. Only, the blood might not end up sticking to you.
Speaking of murder, there are lots of uncomfortable scenes in the book. There’s animal cruelty, which affected me the most.
Incest, both metaphorical and literal is portrayed. Oedipus and his complex makes pretty prominent appearances.
There are moments of dubious consent and rape. It’s kind of hard to say who is being raped at some point even.
A quick google search will tell you the age of consent in Japan is 13. What’s particularly horrifying is that there is no law as to how big the age gap can be after that. I’m assuming it would still be frowned upon in modern Japanese society for adults to engage with minors in a sexual manner, but none of that appears to be present in the book.
The book has a detached tonality to how characters deal with all of it. So, it never really affects you. Yet, I can’t say the niggling feeling ever leaves you, that you’re reading something so wrong.
Summed up, for a book with no clear-cut plot, Kafka On The Shore makes you think a lot. It’s a book meant to give a voice to the wondering, curious, and somewhat restless side of your mind.
The Characters
When a book has a shaky, tumultuous plot, you need strong characters. Kafka On The Shore has no shortage of such. There are six recurring characters and I would like to sort through my feelings for each one of them one by one.
Kafka Tamura - Suffice it to say, Kafka isn’t our fifteen-year-old protagonist’s government name. It’s his chosen name and that’s all that matters.
Now, I won’t claim to be much of a fan of Kafka himself. This probably has more to do with my inability to relate with teenagers - now and back when I was one- than a flaw with the character construction itself.
In some ways, Kafka felt empty to me. Which is well and all, since at some point he calls himself empty too.
Except he shouldn’t feel that way. He’s smart, has a sense of self-preservation, is capable of deep thoughts, and has a prophecy he’s trying to outrun. All the formula for what should’ve been an interesting character. For some reason, Kafka falls short. Something about him just doesn’t feel worth getting to know or being curious about.
Oshima - You mainly see Oshima through Kafka’s eyes. He’s one of the highlights of the book for me. Intelligent, charming, and described to be grumpy, Oshima takes a liking to Kafka. He’s often the one initiating the philosophical discussions and is awfully competent for an ambiguous twenty-something.
I think what I truly loved about Oshima is his accepting nature. Kafka often asks him questions most people would easily dismiss as absurd. Oshima, despite never being touched by the magical tones of the book or understanding it, tries his best to answer Kafka in the logical but contemplative way he knows.
Oh, he’s also a trans man in the book.
Miss Saeki - She’s a character I don’t have many thoughts about. Saeki is this elegant, mysterious, and mentally untouchable lady in the book. She’s also more Kafka’s fantasies than a character that’s fleshed out on their own.
Sakura - Again, a character whose main purpose is to feed into Kafka’s fantasies. However, she’s pretty cool. Sakura is someone I would’ve liked to know better but she didn’t have enough role to play.
Hoshino - Probably the only one in the book that has clear character development. He has a journey from a skeptical, albeit helpful guy to someone who's chopping down fantasy creatures.
Hoshino finds a new appreciation for life at the end and why wouldn’t he? He had the best companion to give his life a new meaning.
Nakata - Everything about Kafka On The Shore, beyond the musing on life, beyond the life lessons, is worth it because Nakata exists. Nakata, the man who talks to cats and has the ability to forecast sardines and mackerels falling from the sky.
Nakata describes himself as stupid. An inaccurate description, as his conditions are completely different from others. When you get to talk to cats, it’s inevitable you have to give up other normal human experiences.
In general, he’s portrayed as an upstanding guy. For someone whose entire destiny is to be a blank page, unconcerned with finding his true self until the very end, he’s just sweet. If everyone had half of the manners Nakata did, the world would immediately be a better place.
There’s another character I’m not mentioning in this review. He’s a pretty important part of the book, with his inspiration being a morally ambiguous pied piper. Except, he’s the flute-playing artist.
Final Thoughts
Kafka On The Shore isn’t my first brush with Haruki Murakami. I read Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman before. His writing style is certainly addictive and I suspect I would be reading a new book of his soon. A lot of the opinions in the book felt like a reflection of my own thoughts on life, barring some parts.
And while I sat down to review this book soon after reading it, I suspect I would think about the meaning of this book for a long time. Or mostly, about how there is supposed to be no conclusive meaning to it.