Kafka on the Shore

by Haruki Murakami

When I open them, most of the books have the smell of an earlier time leaking out between the pages—a special odor of the knowledge and emotions that for ages have been calmly resting between the covers.

Nakata let his body relax, switched off his mind, allowing things to flow through him. This was natural for him, something he’d done ever since he was a child, without a second thought. Before long the borders of his consciousness fluttered around, just like the butterflies. Beyond these borders lay a dark abyss. Occasionally his consciousness would fly over the border and hover over that dizzying, black crevass. But Nakata wasn’t afraid of the darkness or how deep it was. And why should he be? That bottomless world of darkness, that weighty silence and chaos, was an old friend, a part of him already. Nakata understood this well.

Most things are forgotten over time. Even the war itself, the life-and-death struggle people went through, is now like something from the distant past. We’re so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past, like ancient stars that have burned out, are no longer in orbit around our minds. There are just too many things we have to think about every day, too many new things we have to learn. New styles, new information, new technology, new terminology . . . But still, no matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away. They remain with us forever, like a touchstone.

“If I had to say anything it’d be this: Whatever it is you’re seeking won’t come in the form you’re expecting.”

“Only people who’ve been discriminated against can really know how much it hurts. Each person feels the pain in his own way, each has his own scars. So I think I’m as concerned about fairness and justice as anybody. But what disgusts me even more are people who have no imagination. The kind T. S. Eliot calls hollow men. People who fill up that lack of imagination with heartless bits of straw, not even aware of what they’re doing. Callous people who throw a lot of empty words at you, trying to force you to do what you don’t want to.

Narrow minds devoid of imagination. Intolerance, theories cut off from reality, empty terminology, usurped ideals, inflexible systems. Those are the things that really frighten me. What I absolutely fear and loathe. Of course it’s important to know what’s right and what’s wrong. Individual errors in judgment can usually be corrected. As long as you have the courage to admit mistakes, things can be turned around. But intolerant, narrow minds with no imagination are like parasites that transform the host, change form, and continue to thrive.

What I mean is, it feels like everything’s been decided in advance—that I’m following a path somebody else has already mapped out for me. It doesn’t matter how much I think things over, how much effort I put into it. In fact, the harder I try, the more I lose my sense of who I am. It’s like my identity’s an orbit that I’ve strayed far away from, and that really hurts.

“The world of the grotesque is the darkness within us. Well before Freud and Jung shined a light on the workings of the subconscious, this correlation between darkness and our subconscious, these two forms of darkness, was obvious to people. It wasn’t a metaphor, even. If you trace it back further, it wasn’t even a correlation. Until Edison invented the electric light, most of the world was totally covered in darkness. The physical darkness outside and the inner darkness of the soul were mixed together, with no boundary separating the two. They were directly linked. Like this.” Oshima brings his two hands together tightly.

“My grandpa always said asking a question is embarrassing for a moment, but not asking is embarrassing for a lifetime.”

“Kafka, what can you see outside?” I look out the window behind her. “I see trees, the sky, and some clouds. Some birds on tree branches.” “Nothing out of the ordinary. Right?” “That’s right.” “But if you knew you might not be able to see it again tomorrow, everything would suddenly become special and precious, wouldn’t it?”

“The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.”

A life without revelation is no life at all.

“What I mean is, did you come back to this town to die?” Like a silvery moon at dawn, a smile rises to her lips. “Perhaps I did. But it doesn’t seem to matter. Whether you come to a place to live or to die, the things you do every day are about the same.”

“There really are a lot of cats in the world, that’s for sure,” he said as he cleaned out his ears with a Q-tip. His first-ever visit to a library had made him painfully aware of how little he knew. The amount of things he didn’t know about the world was infinite.

I feel like I’m exactly where I belong. When I’m with Mr. Nakata I can’t be bothered with all this Who am I? stuff. Maybe this is going overboard, but I bet Buddha’s followers and Jesus’ apostles felt the same way.

“There are a lot of things that aren’t your fault. Or mine, either. Not the fault of prophecies, or curses, or DNA, or absurdity. Not the fault of Structuralism or the Third Industrial Revolution. We all die and disappear, but that’s because the mechanism of the world itself is built on destruction and loss. Our lives are just shadows of that guiding principle. Say the wind blows. It can be a strong, violent wind or a gentle breeze. But eventually every kind of wind dies out and disappears. Wind doesn’t have form. It’s just a movement of air. You should listen carefully, and then you’ll understand the metaphor.”

I’m walking by the shores of consciousness. Waves of consciousness roll in, roll out, leave some writing, and just as quickly new waves roll in and erase it. I try to quickly read what’s written there, between one wave and the next, but it’s hard. Before I can read it the next wave’s washed it away. All that’s left are puzzling fragments.

“Even though she loved you, she had to abandon you. You need to understand how she felt then, and learn to accept it. Understand the overpowering fear and anger she experienced, and feel it as your own—so you won’t inherit it and repeat it. The main thing is this: You have to forgive her. That’s not going to be easy, I know, but you have to do it. That’s the only way you can be saved. There’s no other way!”

There’s almost no difference at all between now and a long, long time ago.”

“It’s not something you can get across in words. The real response is something words can’t express.” “There you go,” Sada replies. “Exactly. If you can’t get it across in words then it’s better not to try.” “Even to yourself?” I ask. “Yeah, even to yourself,” Sada says. “Better not to try to explain it, even to yourself.”