‘The
world is a metaphor,’ Oshima
tells Kafka; Kafka Tamura is the fifteen year
old hero of Kafka on the Shore , Oshima a librarian and his transsexual mentor; and Murakami’s novel is a work half-metaphor, half fairy-tale, an enthralling coming-of-age story about a young man and his search for his
mother.
Kafka leaves his home and his father on his fifteenth birthday, a day he has been preparing for all his life by working out at the local gym, mentally preparing himself to be ‘the toughest fifteen year old in the world’, and absorbing all the information he can at school in case it proves useful. He moves to Takamatsu where he spends his time reading books in the Komura Memorial Library. Whilst at the library he befriends Oshima whom he tells that he has run away. Oshima likes the fact that Kafka has an enquiring mind and enjoys reading books and offers him a job as his assistant; a position which comes with a room in the library, which he accepts.
Another strand of narrative runs parallel to this story: a plot-line involving an old man who is a simpleton but has the amazing gift of being able to talk to cats. Nakata, who always refers to himself in third person, finds himself in a strange situation whilst on the trail of a cat called Goma: while he is waiting in an abandoned lot where local cats congregate a dog approaches him and tells him to follow. He is surprised because he cannot usually talk to dogs. The dog leads him to a house where he meets Johnnie Walker, a man dressed in a silk waistcoat and top hat who kills cats for their souls, which he uses to build a flute capable of catching even more souls, and who is holding Goma captive. He tells Nakata that he will only save Goma’s life if he agrees to kill him. After much confusion and deliberation Nakata stabs Johnny Walker and then returns the cat Goma to its family. Nakata is a good man, simple but good, and he is overcome with guilt because of his crime. He tells a district police-officer but the officer doesn’t believe him, so he decides to leave Tokyo and goes on a trip to an unknown destination, but one which he feels called to. Before he leaves he tells the officer that fish will rain down from the sky the very next day, which they do.
During this time Kafka meets Miss Saeki, the head librarian, and he thinks that she might be his mother. Kafka is cursed, his father has told him, similarly to Oedipus, to sleep with his mother and sister, and kill his father. He falls in love with Miss Saeki and finds out that she is the writer of a pop song called 'Kafka on the Shore', which was popular when she performed it as a teenager. The song was written about a boy who she fell in love but was killed by political activists when mistaken for the rival leader of another party. Oshima tells Kafka that she lives in the past, still in love with her dead boyfriend, and has only come to Takamatsu to die. Kafka is visited at night by the spirit of the fifteen-year-old Miss Saeki. He tells Miss Saeki how he feels, his theory that she is his mother, and asks that he can sleep with her. She agrees and comes to his room in the evening where they make love.
Nakata is travelling to Takamatsu but he doesn’t yet know it. To do this he enlists the help of a lorry driver called Hoshino, who has a soft spot for him partially because he reminds him of his beloved dead grandfather. When they arrive in Takamatsu they find an entrance stone, which opens a portal to another world. Once this portal is opened, a portal that is far away from Hoshino and Nakata but near to Kafka, Kafka travels through it. He finds himself in a forest where he meets two soldiers from World War II who are un-aged and act as guardians between the world he enters and the real world. He also meets the fifteen-year-old Miss Saeki, in the flesh, who cooks and cares for him. One day Miss Saeki comes to him in her real adult form and tells him that he must go back to the real world. It is understood bween them that she is his mother and he forgives her for abandoning him.
When he returns to the real world he finds that Miss Saeki has died of a heart attack. He is brought home by Oshima, who offers him work at the library for life if he chooses. He agrees, but first decides to go back to high school and tell the police of his whereabouts. The police are searching for him because his father has been murdered, they think by Nakata, whom they trace to Takamatsu but do not find. Nakata dies and Hoshino closes the entrance stone.
Murakami’s novel tackles dark and difficult issues: murder, incest, betrayal, love, with an imagination that is child-like and yet also profoundly suggestive. Reading Kafka on the Shore is like being taken into a dream world one is very much reluctant to leave.
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