Kafka on the Shore

by Haruki Murakami

people don’t work that way. We need dates and names to remember all kinds of things.”

Nakata’s not very bright, you see. I wasn’t always this way, but when I was little I was in an accident and I’ve been dumb ever since. Nakata can’t write. Or read a book or a newspaper.” “Not to boast or anything, but I can’t write either,” the cat said, licking the pads of his right paw. “I’d say my mind is average, though, so I’ve never found it inconvenient.”

I search for lost cats. I can speak with cats a little, so I go all over tracking down ones that have gone missing. People hear that Nakata’s good at this, so they come and ask me to look for their lost cats. These days I spend more days than not out searching for cats. I don’t like to go too far away, so I just look for them inside Nakano Ward. Otherwise I’ll be the one lost and they’ll be out looking for me.”

cats are creatures of habit. Usually they live very ordered lives, and unless something extraordinary happens they generally try to keep to their routine. What might disrupt this is either sex or an accident—one of the two.”

“Once you’re lost, you panic. You’re in total despair, not knowing what to do. I hate it when that happens. Sex can be a real pain that way, course when you get in the mood all you can think about is what’s right under your nose—that’s sex, all right.

There are all kinds of people in the world, and all kinds of cats.”

They don’t know why, but I had a high fever for about three weeks. I was unconscious the whole time. I was asleep in a bed in a hospital, they told me, with an intra venus in me. And when I finally woke up, I couldn’t remember a thing. I’d forgotten my father’s face, my mother’s face, how to read, how to add, what my house looked like inside. Even my own name. My head was completely empty, like a bathtub after you pull the plug. They tell me before the accident Nakata always got good grades. But once I collapsed and woke up I was dumb. My mother died a long time ago, but she used to cry about this a lot. Because I got stupid. My father never cried, but he was always angry.”

Once I got past sixty I was quite used to being dumb, and people not having anything to do with me. You can survive without riding trains. Father’s dead, so nobody hits me anymore. Mother’s dead too, so she doesn’t cry. So actually, if you say I’m pretty smart, it’s a bit upsetting. You see, if I’m not dumb then the Governor won’t give me a sub city anymore, and no more special bus pass. If the Governor says, You’re not dumb after all, then Nakata doesn’t know what to say. So this is fine, being dumb.”

“Your problem is that your shadow is a bit—how should I put it? Faint. I thought this the first time I laid eyes on you, that the shadow you cast on the ground is only half as dark as that of ordinary people.”

You should give up looking for lost cats and start searching for the other half of your shadow.” Nakata tugged a few times at the bill of his hat in his hands. “To tell the truth, Nakata’s had that feeling before. That my shadow is weak. Other people might not notice, but I do.”

I’m already old, and may not live much longer. Mother’s already dead. Father’s already dead. Whether you’re smart or dumb, can read or can’t, whether you’ve got a shadow or not, once the time comes, everybody passes on. You die and they cremate you. You turn into ashes and they bury you at a place called Karasuyama. Karasuyama’s in Setagaya Ward. Once they bury you there, though, you probably can’t think about anything anymore. And if you can’t think, then you can’t get confused. So isn’t the way I am now just fine? What I can do, while I’m alive, is never go out of Nakano Ward. But when I die, I’ll have to go to Karasuyama. That can’t be helped.”

you should consider how your shadow feels about it. It might have a bit of an inferiority complex—as a shadow, that is. If I were a shadow, I know I wouldn’t like to be half of what I should be.”

As my muscles relax, so do I. I’m safe inside this container called me. With a little click, the outlines of this being—me—fit right inside and are locked neatly away. Just the way I like it. I’m where I belong.

The station’s packed with people streaming in and out, all of them dressed in their favorite clothes, bags or briefcases in hand, each one dashing off to take care of some pressing business. I stare at this ceaseless, rushing crowd and imagine a time a hundred years from now. In a hundred years everybody here—me included—will have disappeared from the face of the earth and turned into ashes or dust. A weird thought, but everything in front of me starts to seem unreal, like a gust of wind could blow it all away.

“That’s the ticket,” Crow tells me. “Remember, you’re supposed to be the toughest fifteen-year-old on the planet.”

“Still not going back to school, I see.” “I’m never going back,” I confess. “A library’s a pretty good alternative, then,” he says.

The Burton edition has all the stories I remember reading as a child, but they’re longer, with more episodes and plot twists, and so much more absorbing that it’s hard to believe they’re the same. They’re full of obscene, violent, sexual, basically outrageous scenes. Like the genie in the bottle they have this sort of vital, living sense of play, of freedom, that common sense can’t keep bottled up.

I breathe a sigh of relief and thank her. I feel a little bad about lying, but there’s not much I can do about it. I’ve got to bend some rules myself if I want to survive.

“I think what Kafka does is give a purely mechanical explanation of that complex machine in the story, as sort of a substitute for explaining the situation we’re in.

that’s his own device for explaining the kind of lives we lead. Not by talking about our situation, but by talking about the details of the machine.”

Kafka’s complex, mysterious execution device wasn’t some metaphor or allegory—it’s actually here, all around me. But I don’t think anybody would get that. Not Oshima. Not anybody.

!!!!!

Maybe I should tell Oshima everything. I’m pretty sure he won’t put me down, give me a lecture, or try to force some common sense on me.

Could she be my sister? The thought does cross my mind.

But on the evening of the eighth day—as had to happen sooner or later—this simple, centripetal life is blown to bits.

he avoids vague statements, drawing a sharp distinction between facts and conjecture.

The military, of course, had its own extensive medical branch, and being a self-contained entity that put a high priority on secrecy, they usually preferred to handle matters internally. Apart from the rare times when they needed the special knowledge and techniques that only outside researchers or physicians had, they seldom appealed to civilian doctors or researchers.

Frankly, I didn’t like to work under military directions. In most cases their goals were strictly utilitarian, with no interest in pursuing truth in an academic sense, only arriving at conclusions that accorded with their preconceptions.

Rather than a memory loss, it was more a memory lack.

a poison gas had been dropped on the spot, any gas that makes children fall unconscious for two hours with no other lasting effects would be worthless as military arsenal.

After conducting these interviews we concluded that this was a case of mass hypnosis. From the symptoms the homeroom teacher and school doctor observed at the scene, this hypothesis made the most sense.

We even brought in his cat from home, one he was particularly fond of.

Soon, though, we realized he’d lost his entire memory. He couldn’t even remember his own name. The place he lived in, his school, his parents’ faces—it was all gone. He couldn’t read, and wasn’t even aware this was Japan or the Earth. He couldn’t even fathom the concept of Japan or the Earth. He’d returned to this world with his mind wiped clean. The proverbial blank slate.

Nakata stored this information away in his head, carefully folding it all away in a front drawer so he wouldn’t forget it.

that man is trouble. A lot of trouble. He’s more dangerous than you can ever imagine. If it were me I’d never go near that lot. But you’re a human, and it’s your job, after all, but I hope you’ll take every precaution.”

this world is a terribly violent place. And nobody can escape the violence. Please keep that in mind. You can’t be too cautious. The same holds true for cats and human beings.”

But he had no idea where and how the world could be violent. The world was full of things Nakata couldn’t comprehend, and most things connected with violence fell into that category.

Everything is there, but there are no parts.

“So you didn’t get along with your dad?” she asks after a while. Didn’t get along? How am I supposed to answer that? I don’t say anything, just shake my head.

Imagining something’s very important, so I thought I’d better tell you. It has nothing to do with whether you know or not.”

as individuals each of us is extremely isolated, while at the same time we are all linked by a prototypical memory.

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.

can still see the look on his face as I was beating him. The tremendous fear and resignation he felt at that instant.

I’d accepted my husband’s death as inevitable, as something fated to be. So news of his death merely confirmed what I already knew.

It’s like not really knowing what he’s getting at is the part that stays with you.

All he does is watch things happen and accept it all. I mean, occasionally he gives his own opinions, but nothing very deep. Instead, he just broods over his love affair. He comes out of the mine about the same as when he went in. He has no sense that it was something he decided to do himself, or that he had a choice. He’s like totally passive. But I think in real life people are like that. It’s not so easy to make choices on your own.”

She just isn’t bound by conventional ways of doing things.”

Once I start bleeding I have to go to the hospital. Besides, these days there’re problems with the blood supply in hospitals. Dying a slow death from AIDS isn’t an option for me.

Whenever I drive I try to go as fast as I can. If I’m in an accident driving fast I won’t just wind up getting a cut finger. If you lose a lot of blood, there’s no difference between a hemophiliac and anybody else.

Besides, when I die I want to die quietly, all by myself.” “Taking someone else with you, then, isn’t an option either.”

playing Schubert’s piano sonatas well is one of the hardest things in the world. Especially this, the Sonata in D Major. It’s a tough piece to master. Some pianists can play one or maybe two of the movements perfectly, but if you listen to all four movements as a unified whole, no one has ever nailed it.