Wrapping up Haruki Murakami’s “Kafka on the Shore”

Murakami’s characters are nearly always animated by intensely personal searches for their own versions of truth. This is what makes them so striking and so odd to follow as a reader. They move in straight-lines, fatalistically drawn towards strange climaxes which delight and occasionally, to be honest, befuddle even sophisticated readers. “Kafka on the Shore” is vintage Murakami. While I would not place it on the same high pedestal I have for the ambitious “The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle” or the taut “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World,” this is a book well worth reading if you are fan of his other speculative works.

In a very broad sense, “Kafka on the Shore” is structured similarly to “Hard-Boiled Wonderland” in that there are two main characters and plots converging throughout. The main character is a teenage runaway who has re-named himself Kafka Tamura. The reader is never told what Kafka’s original name might have been, but we initially meet him as he has an internal dialogue with a split personality named “Crow.” Crow says the following about Kafka’s plans to run away on his fifteenth birthday:

And you really will have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it: it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed too. Hot, red blood. You’ll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood and the blood of others.

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 is all about.

The other character driving the plot is an older man named Nakata, whose job is to find lost cats for people. We find that Nakata suffered a strange accident during World War II. After collapsing on a school field trip and reawakening weeks later, Nakata had lost much of his mental faculties but gained the ability to speak with cats. Nakata is on a bit of a quest to rediscover that part of him which was lost on that odd day. He becomes thrust into the main plot by an action he is forced to take when the life of a cat he has been searching for is threatened. This action becomes a driving force for self re-discovery.

As in other Murakami works, these two plots require the outside assistance of a panoply of strange and bizarre characters and forces. The interactions are grossly entertaining, absorbing and heaped in quirky symbolism and metaphor. I’d strongly recommend this book to people who are already fans of Murakami - you’ll get what you’re looking for. If you’re just getting your first taste, however, I’d instead recommend “Hard-Boiled Wonderland” as an appetizer. It’s a bit more accessible and has a less strained resolution.