Kafka on the Shore

by Haruki Murakami

Most people look at cats and think what a life—all we do is lie around in the sun, never having to lift a finger. But cats’ lives aren’t that idyllic. Cats are powerless, weak little creatures that injure easily. We don’t have shells like turtles, nor wings like birds. We can’t burrow into the ground like moles or change colors like a chameleon. The world has no idea how many cats are injured every day, how many of us meet a miserable end. I happen to be lucky enough to live with the Tanabes in a warm and friendly family, the children treat me well, and I’ve got everything I need. But even my life isn’t always easy. When it comes to strays, though, they have a very tough time of it.”

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.”

Works that have a certain imperfection to them have an appeal for that very reason—or at least they appeal to certain types of people. Just like you’re attracted to Soseki’s The Miner. There’s something in it that draws you in, more than more fully realized novels like Kokoro or Sanshiro. You discover something about that work that tugs at your heart—or maybe we should say the work discovers you.

But listening to the D major, I can feel the limits of what humans are capable of—that a certain type of perfection can only be realized through a limitless accumulation of the imperfect. And personally, I find that encouraging.

People soon get tired of things that aren’t boring, but not of what is boring.

Our responsibility begins with the power to imagine. It’s just like Yeats said: In dreams begin responsibilities. Flip this around and you could say that where there’s no power to imagine, no responsibility can arise. Just like we see with Eichmann.

“It doesn’t matter whose dream it started out as, you have the same dream. So you’re responsible for whatever happens in the dream. That dream crept inside you, right down the dark corridor of your soul.”

As I sit there under the shining night sky, again a violent fear takes hold of me. My heart’s pounding a mile a minute, and I can barely breathe. All these millions of stars looking down on me, and I’ve never given them more than a passing thought before. Not just stars—how many other things haven’t I noticed in the world, things I know nothing about? I suddenly feel helpless, completely powerless.

He grew incensed at these uncertain elements that threw his elegant solution into disarray. Trains ran late. Bureaucratic red tape held things up. People in charge were replaced, and relations with their successors didn’t go well. After the collapse of the Russian front, concentration camp guards were sent there to fight. There were heavy snowfalls. Power outages. Not enough poison gas to go around. Rail lines were bombed. Eichmann hated the war itself—that element of uncertainty that screwed up his plans.

Realizing all over again how important sunlight is to human beings, I appreciate each second of that precious light. The intense loneliness and helplessness I felt under those millions of stars has vanished. But as time passes, the sun’s angle shifts and the light disappears.

You’re afraid of imagination. And even more afraid of dreams. Afraid of the responsibility that begins in dreams. But you have to sleep, and dreams are a part of sleep. When you’re awake you can suppress imagination. But you can’t suppress dreams.

“When a war starts people are forced to become soldiers. They carry guns and go to the front lines and have to kill soldiers on the other side. As many as they possibly can. Nobody cares whether you like killing other people or not. It’s just something you have to do. Otherwise you’re the one who gets killed.”

“You’ve got to look at it this way: this is war. You’re a soldier, and you have to make a decision. Either I kill the cats or you kill me. One or the other. You need to make a choice right here and now. This might seem an outrageous choice, but consider this: most choices we make in life are equally outrageous.”

That’s the kind of world we live in, Mr. Nakata. Keep your eyes wide open. Only a coward closes his eyes. Closing your eyes and plugging up your ears won’t make time stand still.”

“From my own experience, when someone is trying very hard to get something, they don’t. And when they’re running away from something as hard as they can, it usually catches up with them.

Greek gods are more mythological than religious figures. By that I mean they have the same character flaws humans do. They fly off the handle, get horny, jealous, forgetful. You name it.”

Because reality’s just the accumulation of ominous prophecies come to life. All you have to do is open a newspaper on any given day and weigh the good news versus the bad news, and you’ll see what I mean.”

There’s only one kind of happiness, but misfortune comes in all shapes and sizes. It’s like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.

“Kafka, in everybody’s life there’s a point of no return. And in a very few cases, a point where you can’t go forward anymore. And when we reach that point, all we can do is quietly accept the fact. That’s how we survive.”

“I know I’m a little different from everyone else, but I’m still a human being. That’s what I’d like you to realize. I’m just a regular person, not some monster. I feel the same things everyone else does, act the same way. Sometimes, though, that small difference feels like an abyss. But I guess there’s not much I can do about it.”

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.

Cause if you take every single person who lacks much imagination seriously, there’s no end to it,”

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.

no matter who or what you’re dealing with, people build up meaning between themselves and the things around them. The important thing is whether this comes about naturally or not. Being bright has nothing to do with it. What matters is that you see things with your own eyes.”

There’s always going to be a connection between you, Mr. Nakata, and the things you deal with. Just like there’s a connection between eel and rice bowls. And as the web of these connections spreads out, a relationship between you, Mr. Nakata, and capitalists and the proletariat naturally develops.”

“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?”

“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.”

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.”

What you’re experiencing now is the motif of many Greek tragedies. Man doesn’t choose fate. Fate chooses man. That’s the basic worldview of Greek drama. 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.” “But it’s a hopeless situation.” “That depends,” Oshima says. “Sometimes it is. But 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. That’s why people enjoy reading Greek tragedies even now, why they’re considered prototypical classics. I’m repeating myself, but everything in life is metaphor. People don’t usually kill their father and sleep with their mother, right? In other words, we accept irony through a device called metaphor. And through that we grow and become deeper human beings.”

“To you that might feel like the truth, but nobody’s going to grill you about your poetic responsibilities. Certainly not the police. Nobody can be in two places at once. It’s a scientific fact—Einstein and all that—and the law accepts that principle.”

But my father always used to say that without counterevidence to refute a theory, science would never progress. A theory is a battlefield in your head—that was his pet phrase.

“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.

“Exactly. Which is why I’m living here, in this world where things are continually damaged, where the heart is fickle, where time flows past without a break.”

“Listen, every object’s in flux. The Earth, time, concepts, love, life, faith, justice, evil—they’re all fluid and in transition. They don’t stay in one form or in one place forever. The whole universe is like some big FedEx box.”

necessity is an independent concept. It has a different structure from logic, morals, or meaning. Its function lies entirely in the role it plays. What doesn’t play a role shouldn’t exist. What necessity requires does need to exist. That’s what you call dramaturgy. Logic, morals, or meaning don’t have anything to do with it. It’s all a question of relationality. Chekhov understood dramaturgy very well.”

“Yeah, but if you look at it like that we’re all pretty much empty, don’t you think? You eat, take a dump, do your crummy job for your lousy pay, and get laid occasionally, if you’re lucky. What else is there? Still, you know, interesting things do happen in life—like with us now. I’m not sure why. My grandpa used to say that things never work out like you think they will, but that’s what makes life interesting, and that makes sense. If the Chunichi Dragons won every single game, who’d ever watch baseball?”

Life’s crappy, no matter how you cut it. He just hadn’t understood that when he was little.

Weird . . . People are born in order to live, right? But the longer I’ve lived, the more I’ve lost what’s inside me—and ended up empty. And I bet the longer I live, the emptier, the more worthless, I’ll become. Something’s wrong with this picture. Life isn’t supposed to turn out like this! Isn’t it possible to shift direction, to change where I’m headed?

“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.”

“The sea is a really nice thing, isn’t it?” “Yeah, it is. Makes you feel calm.” “Why is that?” “Probably ’cause it’s so big, with nothing on it,” Hoshino said, pointing. “You wouldn’t feel so calm if there was a 7-Eleven over there, or a Seiyu department store, would you? Or a pachinko place over there, or a Yoshikawa pawnshop? But as far as the eye can see there’s nothing—which is pretty darn nice.”

“But this is something you have to figure out on your own. Nobody can help you. That’s what love’s all about, Kafka. You’re the one having those wonderful feelings, but you have to go it alone as you wander through the dark. Your mind and body have to bear it all. All by yourself.”

Things outside you are projections of what’s inside you, and what’s inside you is a projection of what’s outside. So when you step into the labyrinth outside you, at the same time you’re stepping into the labyrinth inside. Most definitely a risky business.”

What I’m trying to say is, it must be tough on you not being able to read, but it’s not the end of the world. You might not be able to read, but there are things only you can do. That’s what you gotta focus on—your strengths. Like being able to talk with the stone.”

“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!”

“But I still don’t get it. You’re telling me my mother loved me very much. I want to believe you, but if that’s true, I just don’t get it. Why does loving somebody mean you have to hurt them just as much? I mean, if that’s the way it goes, what’s the point of loving someone? Why the hell does it have to be like that?”

What’s really important for people, what really has dignity, is how they die. Compared to that, he thought, how you lived doesn’t amount to much. Still, how you live determines how you die. These thoughts ran through his head as he stared at the face of the dead old man.

“Every one of us is losing something precious to us,” he says after the phone stops ringing. “Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back again. That’s part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads—at least that’s where I imagine it—there’s a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in a while, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you’ll live forever in your own private library.”