“Those are life-and-death-type experiences he goes through in the mines. Eventually, he gets out and goes back to his old life. But nothing in the novel shows that he learned anything from these experiences, that his life changed, that he thought deeply now about the meaning of life or started questioning society or anything else. You don’t get any sense, either, that he’s matured. You have a strange feeling after you finish the book. It’s as if you wonder: what was Soseki trying to say? It’s as if not really knowing what he’s getting at is the part that stays with you. I can’t explain it very well.”
The excerpt above is from Haruki Murakami’s famous bestseller, Kafka on the Shore. In this quote, Kafka is trying to explain his take on a book he’s just read called The Miner by Natsume Soseki. This scene really stuck in my head as I real Kafka on the Shore, because it really described how I felt about Murakami’s novel.
The main character of this book is young, but rather grown up for his age. He leaves home and sets out on a rather strange and confusing journey through love, hidden worlds, and unseen connections to people he’s never met. The thing which really struck me is that Kafka seemed to be apart from the world when he started and remained strangely apart during the whole novel. He had little direction, but maintained strong opinions. He was sort of an intellectual child in the process of gaining manhood yet somehow the core of his being wasn’t changed by his experiences. He may have gained some hidden insight we don’t see as the reader or perhaps he gained some new direction, but we are rather uninformed about this direction other than observing a few small decisions he’s made at the end of the story. It’s as if he’s passive to the events of his life, but perhaps we’re to understand that this is how reality is. Maybe Murakami is trying to tell us that to some extent, all of us are passive in our own lives and that maybe fighting doesn’t really change the outcome.
I found it interesting that cats played an important role in this book, as they did in The Wind-up Bird Chronicle. They must have some importance to Murakami, and I can understand that, having cats of my own. I often wonder if their world is anything like Murakami suggests. I found myself much more drawn to Nakata, the elderly character who tracks lost cats. To me, he lived a simple and quite pleasant life despite his lack of intelligence. It contrasted quite sharply against the backdrop of Kafka’s complicated and strange life, but perhaps this is to remind us of the sort of strange alien life Kafka lives. It certainly felt that way to me. While reading about Nakata I felt reassured and comfortable, despite some of the strange powers he seemed to possess. While reading about Kafka, I felt nervous and uneasy, as if something wasn’t right.
I can honestly say I really enjoyed this book, but it didn’t have the same emotional impact for me that Norwegian Wood did. It was gripping, interesting and otherworldly and it definitely made me think of my own life and how I may have reacted if in Kafka’s place in the story. This isn’t a relaxing mindless book. My mind was crawling through the pages, attempting to puzzle through the various mysteries encountered. Heavy on symbolism and metaphor, with an urgent sinister feel to it, there is a reason why this novel has done so well – it is very good.