Kafka on the Shore

by Haruki Murakami

There’s always going to be a connection between you, Mr. Nakata, and the things you deal with.

On the other hand you’ve got your guys who sit on their duffs, not lifting a finger, giving orders to other people and getting a hundred times my salary. Those are your capitalists.”

Capitalist cats! That’s a good one. A very unique opinion you have there.”

“I’m poor and received a sub city every month from the Governor. Was this the wrong thing to do?” “How much do you get every month?” Nakata told him the amount. Hagita shook his head disgustedly. “Pretty damn hard to get by on so little.”

“Things change every day, Mr. Nakata. With each new dawn it’s not the same world as the day before. And you’re not the same person you were, either. You get what I’m saying?” “Yes.” “Connections change too. Who’s the capitalist, who’s the proletarian. Who’s on the right, who’s on the left. The information revolution, stock options, floating assets, occupational restructuring, multinational corporations—what’s good, what’s bad. Boundaries between things are disappearing all the time. Maybe that’s why you can’t speak to cats anymore.”

His hand still remembered what it felt like to plunge a knife into a man’s chest.

Suddenly, unfamiliar greasy objects began to rain down from the sky, striking the ground at their feet with a weird slap.

In the lights of the parking lot it looked like slick black snow falling on the men’s shoulders, arms, and necks and sticking there. They desperately tried to yank the objects off, but couldn’t. “Leeches!” someone yelled.

Leeches and bikers—what a weird combination. Keeps the cops busy, at least.”

SCULPTOR KOICHI TAMURA STABBED TO DEATH Found in Study, Floor a Sea of Blood

Since the house was undisturbed, and valuables and a wallet near the scene were not taken, police view the crime as a personal vendetta.

Mr. Tamura lived with his son (15), but according to the housekeeper the son hasn’t been seen in some ten days. The son has also been absent from his junior high and police are tracing his whereabouts.

I stop reading at this point. There’s a photo of our front gate, and one of my father in younger days, and they give the newspaper an ominous feeling. I fold it twice and put it on top of the table. Still sitting on the bed, I don’t say anything, just press my fingertips against my eyes. A dull sound, at a constant frequency, pounds in my ears.

When I saw it I thought maybe this Koichi Tamura might be your father. A lot of the details fit. I should’ve shown it to you yesterday, but I wanted to wait until you got settled in.”

But I wasn’t so sure. I did the math and figured out he was murdered the same night I woke up with my shirt covered in blood.

“I think you have a right to live however you want. Whether you’re fifteen or fifty-one, what does it matter? But unfortunately society doesn’t agree.

The only thing he’s handed down to me, I think, are my genes.

I do feel sad. He’s my father, after all. But what I really regret is that he didn’t die sooner. I know that’s a terrible thing to say.

“All kinds of things are happening to me,” I begin. “Some I chose, some I didn’t. I don’t know how to tell one from the other anymore. 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. But more than that, it scares me. Just thinking about it makes me flinch.”

Man doesn’t choose fate. Fate chooses man.

And the sense of tragedy—according to Aristotle—comes, ironically enough, not from the protagonist’s weak points but from his good qualities. Do you know what I’m getting at? People are drawn deeper into tragedy not by their defects but by their virtues. Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex being a great example. Oedipus is drawn into tragedy not because of laziness or stupidity, but because of his courage and honesty. So an inevitable irony results.”

irony deepens a person, helps them mature. It’s the entrance to salvation on a higher plane, to a place where you can find a more universal kind of hope.

“The newspaper also says that at the Fujigawa rest area on the Tomei Highway, late at night on the very same day, a mess of leeches fell from the sky in one small spot.

strange, inexplicable events are happening one after the other. Maybe it’s just a series of coincidences, but it still bothers me. There’s something about it I can’t shake.” “Maybe it’s a metaphor?”

A few years back my father had a prophecy about me.” “A prophecy?” “I’ve never told anybody this before. I figured nobody’d believe me.” Oshima doesn’t say a word. His silence, though, encourages me. “More like a curse than a prophecy,

this is what I say: “Someday you will murder your father and be with your mother, he said.”

“The same prophecy made about Oedipus. Though of course you knew that.” I nod. “But that’s not all. There’s an extra ingredient he threw into the mix. I have a sister six years older than me, and my father said I would sleep with her, too.”

“Maybe he wanted revenge on his wife and daughter who left him. Wanted to punish them, perhaps. Through me.”

“To my father I’m probably nothing more than one of his sculptures. Something he could make or break as he sees fit.”

“In our home everything was twisted. And when everything’s twisted, what’s normal ends up looking weird too.

the dregs left over from creating these he spread everywhere, like a poison you can’t escape. My father polluted everything he touched, damaged everyone around him. I don’t know if he did it because he wanted to. Maybe he had to. Maybe it’s just part of his makeup. Anyhow, I get the feeling he was connected to something very unusual.

half my genes are made up of that. Maybe that’s why my mother abandoned me. Maybe she wanted to cut herself off from me because I was born from this terrible source. Since I was polluted.”

maybe I murdered him through a dream,” I say. “Maybe I went through some special dream circuit or something and killed him.” “To you that might feel like the truth, but nobody’s going to grill you about your poetic responsibilities.

A theory is a battlefield in your head—that

I don’t want to do those things. I don’t want to kill my father. Or be with my mother and sister.”

have money with me, so please let me at least pay for breakfast.” Hoshino shook his head. “It’s okay. I owe my grandpa big time. Back then I was kind of wild.” “I see. But I’m not your grandfather.” “That’s my problem, so don’t worry about it. No arguments, okay? Just let me treat you.”

Nakata went back to school in Tokyo. He’d regained consciousness and physically was fine, but his memory had been wiped clean, and he never regained the ability to read and write. He couldn’t read his school textbooks, and couldn’t take any tests. All the knowledge he’d gained up till then had vanished, as had the ability, to a great extent, to think in abstract terms.

People soon forgot that until the accident he’d always gotten straight As. But now the school activities and events took place without him.

He was essentially forgotten about at home, too. Once they learned that their eldest son couldn’t read anymore or follow along with his lessons, Nakata’s parents—totally focused on their children’s education—ignored him and turned their attention to his younger brothers.

almost all the basic knowledge he had about the world and how it worked he learned from his feline friends.

Everybody liked him, though he didn’t make any close friends. Perhaps that was only to be expected. When most people tried talking to Nakata, ten minutes was all it took for them to run out of things to say.

Though no one else noticed this, he thought his shadow on the ground was paler, lighter, than that of other people. The only ones who really understood him were the cats. On days off he’d sit on a park bench and spend the whole day chatting with them. Strangely enough, with cats he never ran out of things to talk about.

When Nakata had an acquaintance go with him to the post office to check on the balance in his account, he found out that only a few hundred dollars were left. His retirement pay, which had been deposited directly into the account, had also vanished.

In the end the older of Nakata’s two younger brothers in Tokyo decided to look after him for the time being. He owned a small apartment building in Nakano that catered to single men—this was part of his inheritance from his parents—and he offered one of the units to his older brother. He also looked after the money his parents had willed to Nakata—not a great amount—and arranged for him to receive a subsidy for the mentally challenged from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. That was the extent of the brother’s “care.”

But this cold treatment by his relatives didn’t faze Nakata. He was used to being alone and actually tensed up if people went out of their way to be nice to him. He wasn’t angry, either, that his cousin had squandered his life savings.

They just told him, “This is how much you have in your account,” and told him an amount, which to him was an abstract concept. So when it all vanished he never had the sense that he’d actually lost something real.

Just like dogs and cats, he marked off his territory, a boundary line beyond which, except in unusual circumstances, he never ventured. As long as he stayed there he felt safe and content. No dissatisfactions, no anger at anything. No feelings of loneliness, anxieties about the future, or worries that his life was difficult or inconvenient. Day after day, for more than ten years, this was his life, leisurely enjoying whatever came along. Until the day that Johnnie Walker showed up.

We’ll cross the bridge. You said you’re going to Shikoku, didn’t you?” “I did. But what about your job?” “Don’t worry about it. It’ll still be there when I get back. I’ve been putting in some long hours and was thinking I should take a few days off. To tell the truth, I’ve never been to Shikoku either. Might as well check it out. Plus you can’t read, right? So it’ll be a whole lot easier if I’m with you to help buy the tickets. Unless you don’t want me along.”

She’s got to be a ghost. First of all, she’s just too beautiful. Her features are gorgeous, but it’s not only that. She’s so perfect I know she can’t be real. She’s like a person who stepped right out of a dream. The purity of her beauty gives me a feeling close to sadness—a very natural feeling, though one that only something extraordinary could produce.

For all I know she might come back, I think. I want her to, I realize. But no matter how long I wait she doesn’t return.