Found in Translation: Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore
Finished Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore today. Man, what a book. Blown away, I was. Now I begin to understand why this cat is considered one of the coolest, hippest literary novelists around, and one of the biggest sellers.
The first thing I did was look for his other novel, also considered one of his best, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, and it’s on my shelf, mewling and miaowing in anticipation. (I tried all the Mumbai bookstores without luck, then happened to be at Inorbit Mall, Malad (W), after a trip to my C.A. to finalize accounts for last f.y., and there it was, perched on a bottom shelf, flicking its tail and squinting its eyes at me in that lazy, sun-dazed way that cats have at high noon. I picked it up and carried it to the counter, stroking it lovingly, ignoring the stares of the baffled salespersons.)
In case I haven’t drowned you in the cat metaphors yet (an important part of Murakami’s writing, just as white dogs are an integral obsession in the novels of Jonathon Carroll, another brilliant fabulist who boldly straddles the train-tracks that separate Literary Awardland from Genre Fantasyland) here’s one more catty comment: This is a novel that leaves you feeling like a siamese with a belly full of fish and fresh cream.
Murakami’s prose, even in translation from the original Japanese, is perfect for the kind of story he tells. Simple, spare, yet unafraid to launch into flights of fantasy at a moment’s notice. The story unfolds in parallel tracks. One, the main storyline, is about a 15-year old boy who leaves home, and his negligent self-obsessed father, and embarks on a long journey, presumably to find his longlost mother and elder sister, but also just to get away from his father, his life, himself. As anyone who has read enough fantasy – and this is a fantasy, whatever you choose to classify it as – knows that a new identity must begin with a new name. And the name our protagonist chooses for himself is Kafka. Not without significance, he keeps his father’s surname, Tamura. Becoming Kafka Tamura.
The other parallel track is about an old feeble-minded man named Nakata who ekes out a living on his government sub city (subsidy but the mispronounciation is also not without significance, for Nakata will descend eventually into a sub city) and makes some extra yen on the side as a cat detective. Yes, you read that right. Cat detective. Because, you see, a long time ago, when he was very young, he suffered an incident which left him severely mentally impaired, and with a new mental faculty he hadn’t possessed earlier: the ability to speak cat. He puts his ability to good use, seeking out lost domestic cats for a small fee and some of his favourite foods – “Nakata loves eel,” he tells everyone he meets, several times over, usually until they feed him some eel. He’s pretty good at it, too, and some of the most enchanting scenes in the book deal with him interviewing cats and the remarkable conversations he has with them.
The novel follows these two characters’ points of view in a simple, alternate-chapter structure. Now, I’m not going to tell you the whole story. But you should know this: If you’ve ever read and loved a Stephen King novel, you can’t not go crazy with happiness reading this novel. Seriously. I don’t give a ass’ hoot whether the bigtime literary critics consider mentioning Stephen King and Murakami in the same breath to be some kind of literary blasphemy – they probably do. I can hear Harold Bloom turning over in his grave, and he isn’t even dead! :~)
But without trying to elevate Stephen King to Nobel Prize stature, or to denigrate Murakami in any fashion, the resemblance is startlingly obvious. There’s a recurring character-type in Stephen King’s novels: the simple-minded country bumpkin or mentally challenged boy who speaks of himself in the third person and has some favourite catch-phrase he throws at everyone he meets (“Wolf! Wolf! Right here and now!” in The Talisman; “Moon! That spells Tom Cullen, it does.” in The Stand and so on) and that’s what Nakata resembles so eeirily.
It’s hard to think that Murakami might never have read Stephen King but I guess it’s possible. But then how do you explain the other motifs that resemble King’s work – the runaway boy backpacking it (a la The Stand) and the Bad Guy with long boots, black cloak and hat and sentient black dog and all (a la The Stand, and other books) and a hundred other small but significant similarities? Nah. I’d wager money on it. Murakami loves his Stephen King. He’s just lucky enough to be packaged and marketed as a literary master instead of a Japanese fantasy novelist.
Either way, the point is that this is a novel that’s as easy to read and as enjoyable as a Stephen King novel. And it’s a great novel.I know that Murakami is looked down on by a lot of Japanese readers and critics who consider him a “sell-out” who doesn’t capture the real Japan or portray Japanese life and culture accurately. I respect that point of view. In India, we often have the same kind of bitching about our own authors. Last I checked, there was a movement to add a new section to the IPC (Indian Penal Code, another marvellous legacy we inherited from our British forebores – “Thank you, old chum, whatever would we do without all your antiquated laws?” “Oh, pshaw. Don’t mention it. It’s our way of telling you to go to independent hell in a handbasket, you brown buggers!”), the new section being specifically targetted at Indian authors who find success selling their novels overseas; the new section is to be numbered 421.
Anyway, so I understand that Murakami may not be seen in the same light as, say, Kenzuburo Oe or Soseki Natsume or Yukio Mishima, and I won’t claim to have read enough Japanese literature to draw a final conclusion, but I’ll say this, I know a great novel when I read one, and Kafka on the Shore is one of the best. Read it, and keep your Stephen King close at hand. And tell me if you don’t see the similarities. But most of all, enjoy this novel, for that’s what it’ s meant for, not to be analyzed to death, or debated over by anal-retentive academics in dusty committee halls; simply read, reread, and enjoyed, down to the last delicious lick of the last savoury page. Purrrr.
This entry was posted on Saturday, February 26th, 2005 at 7:35 am. It is filed under Ashok.
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