Virginia Review of Asian Studies: 20 (2018): 152-165

Virginia Review of Asian Studies: 20 (2018): 152-165

ISSN: 2169-6306

LEE: Murakami-Kafka

REIMAGINING THE KAFKAESQUE: THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE COLLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS IN MURAKAMI’S “KAFKA ON THE SHORE”

KENNETH K. LEE[1] UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL

No stranger to referencing literary, film, and musical works, Haruki Murakami invokes the name of Franz Kafka in his famous Kafka on the Shore: in its title, in its protagonist, Kafka Tamura, and in its motifs, the titular song and painting that both carry the name “Kafka on the Shore.” In this, Murakami follows the Kafkian tradition of cryptographic naming; Kafka constantly projected into his oeuvre the Kafka name and his own identity, spawning Amerika’s Karl Rossman, The Castle’s K., and The Trial’s Josef K., names that are more or less reimaginations of his own. As Murakami and Kafka would agree, names are powerful symbols, not simply denotative but connotative, and in this case, the name “Kafka” in Kafka on the Shore brings with it a slew of pre-established, if somewhat contested, notions of the Kafkaesque. But names are unique in their reflexive ambiguity; Kafka recognized that the Kafka name did not belong to him alone, and to Franz Kafka, “Kafka” represented a creature unlike himbut akin to his father, Hermann:

Compare the two of us: I, to put it in a very much abbreviated form, a Lowy with a certain basis of Kafka, which, however, is not set in motion by the Kafka will to life, business, and conquest, but by a Lowyish spur that impels more secretly, more diffidently, and in another direction, and which often fails to work entirely. (Letter to His Father 7)

In Kafka’s interpretation, a name is an insufficient determination of identity, and “Kafka” defined him as little as “Lowy” would have described Hermann Kafka. Not only did Kafka shy from the connotations of the Kafka labeling, he actively disavowed his identity as a “Kafka.” By casting doubt on the efficacy of his name, Kafka raises the epistemological question of the relationship between name and identity. “Kafka” can mean the popular ideas of the Kafkaesque—loneliness, alienation, absurdity—or the “Kafka” that Franz Kafka envisioned as characteristic of his father and family—business, conquest, law—or even something wholly different.

Murakami purposefully utilizes the Kafka name not only for its typical Kafkaesque connotations but also its contextual ambiguity to frame the search for identity that forms the core of his novel. In Kafka on the Shore, identity is a central theme shared by two distinct but interrelated plotlines. Kafka Tamura’s journey is a bildungsroman, during which Tamura, having shed his birth name to take on the mantle of Kafka, leaves his father to search for his mother and sister and rediscovers his identity at the Komura Memorial Library managed by Miss Saeki. In the novel’s second strand, Nakata, an approximately seventy-year-old man who possesses the mental faculties of a child due to a childhood incident, embarks upon his own journey to find the “entrance stone” to a spiritual world following a spontaneous spiritual calling.

Murakami draws heavily from the Kafkaesque in both subject matter and plot structure. Kafka Tamura’s quest begins much like that of Karl Rossman in Amerika, and his journey takes him to the Komura Memorial Library, which resembles the impenetrable authority symbolized by The Castle. Likewise, Nakata is propelled on a trajectory that brings him closer and closer to a spiritual world whose manifestation eerily resembles the High Court of The Trial. This essay seeks to address the question: What is the significance of Murakami’s reference to Kafka? I propose to answer this question by analyzing how the Kafka name and oeuvre is incorporated into Kafka on the Shore and how it fits into Murakami’s intended thematic message. Such an analysis requires critical examination of Kafka’s life and literature, and I analyzeKafka on the Shore vis-à-vis the wealth of Franz Kafka’s literature, including his letters and diaries.

In this paper I argue that, despite their similarities, Murakami does not simply mimic Kafka. Instead, utilizing the amorphous nature of the Kafka name, Murakami reimagines the Kafkaesque to his own purposes. Though both Kafka and Murakami depict absurdity and the failings of society and communication, even advocating the reality of the collective consciousness, Murakami diverges from Kafka in his resolution of the absurd. Where Kafka advocates submission to authority and the relegation of individualism, Murakami suggests the importance of individual identity even while existing within the collective. To analyze how Murakami utilizes Kafka, I will first consider the purpose of Murakami’s usage of the name “Kafka” before delving into his portrayal of and eventual differentiation from the Kafkaesque; I conclude that Murakami evokes the Kafkaesque to explore the truthfulness of identity, ultimatelyreimagining the Kafkaesque to celebrate individual identity within a collective consciousness.

THE KAFKA NAME AND IDENTITY

Whether to create new connections or to dissociate from his family, Franz Kafka characteristically deidentified his Kafka name by transforming it within his literary material; K. of The Castle and Josef K. of The Trial both sharethe initial of Kafka’s surname, and Josef K. further possesses a given name with the same number of letters as “Franz.” By transforming his name, Kafka separates it from properties that belong to his family, the “will to life, business, and conquest” denoted in his letter to Hermann. Despite their varying iterations, Kafka’s characters are almost assuredly his avatars, and they are typically treated as such for the sake of literary analysis.

Similarly, Murakami transposes Franz Kafka’s identity to multiple characters in his novel: Nakata may be the eponymous “Kafka” of Kafka on the Shore, being depicted lost in contemplation by the seaside; Miss Saeki, echoing the last wishes of Franz Kafka, asks that her writing be burned following her death; Kafka Tamura directly carries Franz Kafka’s name, and his alter ego, “The Boy named Crow,” references Kafka’s transformation of his name to “Krähe” (“crow”). Interestingly, by bestowing to his characters the Kafkian identity, Murakami simultaneously follows and strays from Franz Kafka’s tradition. On one hand, Murakami uses “Kafka” as a common term, interspersing it throughout his novelin a way that suggests Franz Kafka’s tendency to dissolve the familial meaning of his name. Murakami evokes the idea of Kafka, and nowhere is this more evident than the painting and song titled “Kafka on the Shore.”However, Murakami also gives “Kafka” as a proper name to Kafka Tamura, transforming the idea of Kafka back into a name, which gives his protagonist a referential affinity to Kafka that goes against Franz Kafka’s predilection for anonymity.

When he alludes to Franz Kafka and his literary work in the fictional world of Kafka on the Shore, Murakami links his own novel to the real world. When Kafka Tamura introduces himself to Oshima, the assistant at the Komura Memorial Library, they briefly discuss Franz Kafka’s literature, including his “In the Penal Colony”:

“Kafka Tamura?.... I assume you’ve read some of Kafka’s stories?”

I nod. “The Castle, and The Trial, ‘The Metamorphosis,’ plus that weird story about an execution device.”

“In the Penal Colony,” Oshima says. “I love that story. Only Kafka could have written that.”

“That’s my favorite of his short stories.”

“No kidding?”

I nod.

“Why’s that?”

It takes me a while to gather my thoughts. “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. What I mean is…” I have to give it some more thought. “What I mean is, 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.” ….I wasn’t just giving some general theory of Kafka’s fiction, I was talking about something very real. Kafka’s complex, mysterious execution device wasn’t some metaphor or allegory—it’s actually here, all around me. (Murakami 58)

Literary allusion typically creates associations, but Murakami goes further to suggest that there is “something very real” about the Kafkaesque, something “all around.” There is a self-referential quality here; Murakami attributes reality to Kafka, but in his novel, “Kafka” denotes not only Franz Kafka but Murakami’s character Kafka Tamura, as well as the multiple characters that embody the Kafkian identity, all of whom share by proxy the “real” quality of the Kafkaesque.

While he deems it “very real,” Murakami also considers Franz Kafka’s execution device an abstractionthat is “here, all around,” and therefore intangible—but nonetheless real. Thus, Murakami proposes the tentative reality of the abstract. Some abstractions, including the Kafkaesque, are “real” and non-fiction, while others, such as metaphors and allegories, are less real and therefore fiction. Murakami suggests that non-fiction is differentiated from fiction not by historical fact butby its trueness to the mechanisms of reality and “the kind of lives we lead.”History is made up of bias and subjective approaches. Even simple descriptions and observations are subjective idiosyncrasies, but by nature of being abstract, concepts avoid subjectivity. What constitutes non-fiction, no matter how outlandish the medium, is trueness to “real” abstractions that portray “real lives.”

Kafka on the Shore can thus be interpreted as metacommentary on the merit of literature. If the fiction of Franz Kafka is to be treated as non-fiction within Murakami’s fictional world, then Murakami’s fiction can likewise be transposed as non-fiction within our real world. His many characters, abstract iterations of Kafka, are imbued with the same “real” quality of Franz Kafka’s literature. Like Kafka’s execution device, Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore isn’t “some metaphor or allegory.” Instead, Murakami’s work exceeds the frame of a novel and becomes an explanation for “the kind of lives we lead.”

This transformative process of fiction to non-fiction, which utilizes the name “Kafka” and all of its referential qualities, relies on imbuing characters with Kafkian qualities. Kafka is the bridge between reality and Murakami’s literary medium. In its opening chapters, Kafka on the Shore introduces Kafka Tamura and “the boy named Crow” with an undeniable connection to Franz Kafka. Just before Kafka Tamura leaves home, he and Crow have a conversation “on the old sofa in [Kafka’s] father’s study” (Murakami 4). Murakami repeatedly emphasizes the setting and its ownership by Kafka’s father, evoking a similar feeling of encroachment as that in Franz Kafka’s “The Judgment,” when Georg Bendemann invades his father’s room. Georg describes his father as a “giant of a man,” and despite Georg’s attempts at rebellion, his father’s presence and authority overwhelms him, even compels him to take his own life (Complete Stories 81). Likewise, despite Crow playing leisurely with a paperweight in the office, Kafka notes: “If my father was at home, you can bet Crow would never go anywhere near it” (Murakami 4).

Both Crow and Georg overstep their boundaries as subordinates to fathers whose authority exceeds their own; Kafka Tamura chooses to escape his father and search for a mother and sister who left him, all the while haunted by his father’s oedipal prophecy that Kafka would kill his father and sleep with his mother and sister. Kafka Tamura echoes Franz Kafka’s desire to escape his familial ties and conflict with Hermann. If Kafka Tamura, the carrier of Franz Kafka’s name, is his closest representative, then Crow, who carries Franz Kafka’s transformed, literary name, may be considered a metaphor for Kafka’s authorial persona—the persona that sought to sever family ties and be freed of Hermann.

Of course, Franz Kafka never escaped Hermann. Tied by an undeniable father-son relationship and seemingly unwilling to break with Hermann through a marriage and family of his own, Kafka remained a son for his entire life. Kafka Tamura also recognizes the absurdity of this situation, noting the impossibility of a true escape from his father: “I could probably kill him if I wanted to – I’m sure I’m strong enough – and I can erase my mother from my memory. But there’s no way to erase the DNA they passed down to me. If I wanted to drive that away I’d have to get rid of me” (11). Kafka recognizes that an inescapable part of his identity is strongly bound in his parentage. Though he can change his name, an identification that both he and Franz Kafka recognize as malleable, his parentage, like “In the Penal Colony”and the execution device that he describes, is “something very real.” Kafka Tamura describes this inescapable, absurd bondage to his parents as a “mechanism buried inside of [him]” (11). “Mechanism” seems to once again reference Franz Kafka’s execution device, a “purely mechanical explanation” that describes an abstract truth.

Lineage is the unseen mechanism that binds Kafka Tamura to his parents, and despite the recognized absurdity of his bondage, he cannot escape. Even when he runs away, he takes his father’s cell phone, and after finding shelter in a hotel, his first instinct is to dial his home (45). In Amerika, Karl Rossman, banished by his father and finding shelter in an inn, gazes attentively at a picture of his father and “tried to catch his father’s eye” (Amerika 104). Both Kafka Tamura and Karl, separate incarnations of the same, real person—Franz Kafka—are pulled to their fathers, but their manner seems submissive, as though recognizing their fathers’ impenetrable authority. Crow—the alter ego of Kafka Tamura and the metaphorical authorial persona of Franz Kafka—chooses to confront and attack his father in the final chapters of the novel, but his attacks are ineffectual against a father who can “transform into a kind of system” (Murakami 432). This “system” of fatherhood, like the “mechanism” of DNA or the “mechanical explanation” of an execution device, is too powerfully real to be affected bythe simple desire to escape, symbolized by the failure of Crow, an alter ego—a metaphorical persona who, within the context of Murakami’s fictional world, is himself fictional. Kafka Tamura and Karl Rossman are real, and their subordination to their fathers is indicative of reality, while Crow, fictional, fails in his attack because of its fictionality.

Analysis of Kafka on the Shore in its original language further illustrates Kafka Tamura and Crow’s differing natures. In Japanese, “The Boy named Crow” is written as “karasu to yobareru shonen,” which translates literally to “The Boy calledCrow.” One point of interest is that “karasu” (“crow”) is written in katakana, an alphabet reserved almost exclusively for foreign loanwords, while most native names are written in kanji, adopted Chinese characters. Usage of katakana indicates that “Crow” is fictionally out of place in a real world. Of course, Kafka Tamura’s “Kafka” is also written in katakana as “kafuka,” but this results from translating a foreign name into the Japanese language; Crow’s “karasu” is a native Japanese word that possesses a kanji writing but forgoes it. Most importantly, “to yobareru” translates as “to be called,” making Crow “The Boy called Crow.” Therefore, “Crow” is not a true identity; Crow, unidentifiable by name, is only called Crow. Meanwhile, Hayao Kawai interprets the name Kafka, written as “kafuka,” as an attempt to combine “ka” (“possible, good”) and “fuka” (not possible, not good”), opposite etymons thereby merged into one boundary-less sign (Kawai 234). Matthew Chozick adds that “Ka-fuka superimposes consciousness and unconsciousness, success and failure, the possible and the impossible” (Chozick 65). Murakami’s play on language also illustrates the conflict of non-fiction and fiction, with Kafka Tamura torn between the “possible” reality and an escape that is “not possible.”

By using Franz Kafka to illustrate what both Kafka and he seem to consider intractable truths—that identity is not denoted by name but rather composed by certain inescapable mechanisms—Murakami portrays, through a fictional medium, what Kafka Tamura would consider a non-fictional reality. Kafka Tamura and Crow’s respective struggle against their father demonstrates the conflict between real and unreal, non-fiction and fiction. Kafka, recognizing the reality of the mechanism that ties his identity to his parentage, does not attack his father and simply flees, to indeterminate success; Crow, who exists as a fictional, metaphorical character, cannot affect a non-fictional system. Thus, Murakami explores the reality of identity through a Kafkian father-son relationship. But the system of identity encapsulates more than just parentage. As Kafka Tamura leaves his father and Nakata begins his spiritual journey, they both encounter a broader world and its mechanisms. What must be considered next is the interplay between individual identity and the collective consciousness, a theme heavily featured by both Kafka and Murakami.