Japan

Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami

jadetheobscure Light reading , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“People think dreams aren’t real just because they aren’t made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes.”
― Neil Gaiman

Kafka on the Shore – Haruki Murakami

Some time ago, after reading After Dark, I said I wanted to explore more of Haruki Murakami’s work, well I finally got around to it, and I’m very happy I did.

Earlier this year I read Norwegian Wood as a book club selection (review to come, our club has yet to meet due to a few members taking their sweet time to read the book!) and I loved it. I loved it almost as much as The Elegance of the Hedgehog, and you know how much I love that book! I don’t know what it is about certain translations (that they are beautiful maybe?) but I just can’t get enough of them. I was so taken by Norwegian Wood that I began to think that Murakami might actually be one of my favourite authors, but I couldn’t make such a decision based on two books, to find out for sure I needed to read more.

So, I set myself the task of actively reading more Murakami (to begin with I decided I’d read one book a month, but what with all my other commitments that is starting to seem like wishful thinking) and first on the list was Kafka on the Shore. Now, Norwegian Wood is said to be somewhat of an anomaly in Murakami’s portfolio, but Kafka on the Shore is quintessentially Murakami-esque – so I thought this could be the decision maker.

Where Norwegian Wood is a unique take on a classic tale of love, Kafka on the Shore is weird, wonderful and unashamedly unique!

It’s as if when you’re in the forest, you become a seamless part of it. When you’re in the rain, you’re a part of the rain. When you’re in the morning, you’re a seamless part of the morning. When you’re with me, you become a part of me.

kotsIn Kafka on the Shore storylines combine to trace the extraordinary journeys of two seemingly unrelated characters. Kafka Tamura runs away from home on the eve of his fifteenth birthday, haunted by the words of his father’s dark prophecy. Ever since the mysterious departure of his mother and elder sister Kafka’s life has been full of questions. Now his aim is simple, to travel to a far off place and live in the corner of a library. The journey, it seems, may hold the answers.

Elsewhere in Nakano ward, the dim-witted but amiable Nakata tracks lost cats and enjoys the simple things in life, like eels, and pickled vegetables with rice. But this is all set to change with the arrival of a tall man in a top hat and boots, whose interest in the neighbourhood cats is far from innocent. With his simple life turned upside down Nakata is forced to leave Nakano ward, and embarks on journey unlike anything he has ever experienced before, or his simple mind can even comprehend.

As Nakata and Kafka’s stories unwind and intertwine the remarkable interlaces with the ordinary and the world takes on a wholly unusual shape – fish and leeches fall from the sky, and cats converse with people, while WWII soldiers live, unageing, in the depths of unnavigable forest, and living ghosts lurk in the perimeters of consciousness.

Kafka on the Shore is a classic tale of quest and enlightenment, with a wholly unusual twist, which goes beyond the boundaries of classic literature. Murakami’s characters embark on a journey of stunning proportions, a voyage of self-discovery through inexperience. Neither Kafka nor Nakata know what it is they are looking for, but the answer is out there, and the journey introduces them to many strange and wonderful characters, with whom brief encounters prove to be life-affirming.

Anyone who falls in love is searching for missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who’s in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It’s like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven’t seen in a long time. It’s just a natural feeling. You’re not the person who discovered that feeling, so don’t go trying to patent it, okay?

Kafka on the Shore is strange – there is no getting around it. Weird and wonderful things occur and the reasons behind these occurrences are not immediately, if at all, clear. Each chapter harbours events which, however deep and profound an impact they may have, lack any logical explanation. Try and apply a logical filter to Murakami’s and you will no doubt find yourself disappointed and frustrated.

I found it useful, in having read Kafka on the Shore to try and get some insight into  Murakami’s own thoughts on his writing. Murakami has explained his writing process as similar to dreaming, rather than delving into the fantastical: “Writing a novel lets me intentionally dream while I’m still awake. I can continue yesterday’s dream today, something you can’t normally do in everyday life. It’s also a way of descending deep into my own consciousness. So while I see it as dreamlike, it’s not fantasy. For me the dreamlike is very real.”

Kafka on the Shore, then, can be seen as the amalgamation of two different worlds, the combination of the conscious and the unconscious. Think of the book as you would a dream, and suddenly things become much clearer. I was reminded, in reading this, of the talk I went to by Nigerian author Ben Okri last summer in which he spoke of exploring a new way of thinking in his writing, to show that text does not have to follow strict criteria. The world that you create, he said, can be sequential and logical, or circular and dancing. Kafka on the Shore falls firmly into the latter category.

Despite everything, it’s not a difficult book to read. The obscure and the philosophical, which may at times feel somewhat overwhelming, for me were lightened by Murakami’s abstract humour. Here I could give examples of the pimp dressed like Colonel Sanders, or Nakata’s continued reference to going for a ‘dump’ – but for me, the most hilarious part of the book, was Oshima’s fantastic shutting down of two women who refer to him as a ‘typical sexist, patriarchal male’.

My verdict – I liked it. But nowhere near as much as Norwegian Wood. I definitely need to read some more before I make a decision on just how much of a Murakami fangirl I am. The book won’t be for everyone – fans of the logical and sequential and those of you unsettled by violence against animals should steer clear of this one – but I’m certainly not done with my Murakami journey just yet.

The Guest Cat – Takashi Hiraide

jadetheobscure Light reading , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“What greater gift than the love of a cat.” ― Charles Dickens
One shining, sunny afternoon, slipping through a crack in the open door, four bright white feet stepped softly onto the room’s insulated drain board, and with a well-honed curiosity rushing through her entire body, Chibi quietly surveyed its meagre interior.

Guest-Cat-2

A married couple in their mid-thirties live a solitary life in urban Tokyo, in a small rented guesthouse on the border of an estate owned by an elderly woman and her ageing husband. Both husband and wife work from home, freelance copy-editing, writing, and proofreading from their solitary desks – it has been a long time since either one has had very much to say to the other.

Late in the autumn of 1988 a small cat, tamed by a young boy who lives next door, invites itself into their humble kitchen and begins to explore its surroundings. The cat becomes a regular feature in the couple’s home, and brings warmth and love into their lives. As the cat comes and goes, seemingly set in her routine, the couple begin to talk about her, to anticipate her arrival and share stories about her. The arrival of the guest cat opens a door which had seemed closed forever.

In his New York Times Bestseller, Japanese poet Takashi Hiraide eloquently explores the remarkable bond between man and cat. When the guest cat enters the couple’s house, she brings with her a feeling of hope; suddenly life seems to hold more promise for the husband and wife, and their days are filled with a new kind of meaning.

It is not out of preference that I use the word fate – or should say, Fortuna – but as the young cat’s visits became more frequent, I came to feel that there were some things only this word could express.

I have been told that cats emit a certain type of pheromone which makes them more attractive to the people they are around. This, some say, is why so many people do not realise how much they love cats until they have one of their own. The husband, whose voice the novella is written in, describes himself and his wife as neither having a particular liking for cats. But this all changes when the guest cat first sets foot into their kitchen.

There’s a photographer who says cat lovers always believe their own cat is better looking than anyone else’s. According to her, they’ve all got blinders on. She also says that, though she too is a major cat lover, having noticed this fact means that she is now hated by all cat lovers, and so these days only takes pictures of scruffy-looking strays.

cat-in-a-tree

It is almost as though the cat fills the empty space between the man and his wife, a space perhaps reserved for a child. I imagine that the cat’s name, Chibi, which we are told means ‘little one’, alludes to her importance to the man and his wife. She is so much more than just a cat to the couple; she is a friend, a companion, something which gives their life meaning. With Chibi in their lives, the house, the garden, the zolkova tree and even the dark ‘lightening alley’ all have more light and colour. Everything brims with a new beauty created by the smallest of pleasures – watching the cat play with a ball, or hearing the gentle tinkling of her collar.

I was bought the guest cat by my father-in-law this past Christmas; he has clearly noticed that my two favourite things in life are books and cats. There was no doubt in my mind that I would enjoy the book –  my father-in-law is an excellent judge of reading material – but I didn’t anticipate just how much pleasure I would take from such a short piece of writing. The book is gentle, and beautiful, simply brimming with imagery and poetics. In just 140 pages Hiraide manages to speak volumes about the complexities of life and the existence of joy in the most unlikely places.

The writing has a stunning eloquence that fans of Japanese literature will admire. There is something I find so appealing about Japanese translations; the words seem to possess a unique flow, a beauty completely their own. The translated words stream effortlessly across the page, swirling into stunning imagery and deeply profound passages of thought, the result of which is a rare and wonderful treasure of a novella.

Needless to say, I would recommend this book. It is gentle and poetic, yet captivating enough to read in a single setting. This one is not just for cat lovers.

“We went down into the silent garden. Dawn is the time when nothing breathes, the hour of silence. Everything is transfixed, only the light moves.” ― Leonora Carrington

jadetheobscure Light reading , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Short and obscure

After Dark ― Haruki Murakami

Image

Set in the witching hours between midnight and sunrise, Murakami explores encounters throughout Tokyo during this silent time. At the centre of the story lies Mari Asai, a young college student sat quietly reading and smoking in a 24 hour Denny’s, her sister Eri Asai a fashion model has been mysteriously sleeping for two months. Mari is troubled by the distance between herself and her sister, physically and emotionally, and is choosing to stay away from home. Mari is drawn out of her night time sanctuary and into the lives of the people who frequent Tokyo at night, Takahashi a jazz trombonist who takes an interest in Mari, insisting that they’ve met before, Kaoru the rugged female manager of a japanese “love hotel”, and a Chinese prostitute savagely beaten by a night-shift businessman.

Murakumi follows Mari and her counterparts, drifting through the city like ghosts. Mari learns about the lives of all whom she encounters, Takahashi, Kaoru, the love hotel staff, and the prostitute.

Marukumi also traces the evening of the mysterious businessman who attacked the Chinese prostitute – Shirakawa. Working late in the office of his company ‘veritech’,  Sharakawa seems plagued by what he has done, what he ‘had to do’, and the thought of returning home to his family. On occasions he comes dangerously close to the furious ‘owners’ of the prostitute, literally within an inch of his life.

On several occasions the reader enters the room of the sleeping Eri Asai, who is sleeping ‘so very’ deeply, in the room ‘we’ adopt the view of what seems like a security camera, and are given strict rules to adhere to, ‘we can only watch’, although it is not apparent where exactly these rules come from. Slowly it becomes apparent that the TV in the room is on, and a man in a silicone mask inside the screen is watching Eri, Eri is transported in her sleeping state, awakening inside the TV. On the floor she finds a pencil with the word ‘veritech’ inscribed on the side, we are made to believe that Eri’s sleeping state is somehow, mysteriously linked to the businessman. By the end of the novel Eri has left the TV and is inside her room, sleeping once again.

The story is obscure, and extraordinary, on two occasions character stand and look in the mirror, only to leave their reflections behind when they walk away.

I can’t pretend to have fully understood what Marukumi was trying to express when he wrote this book, I imagine Marukumi to be the type of author who is never fully understood by anyone. His style of writing seems very abstract. I am tempted to have a look at more of his work in the hope of understanding it better.

The writing style is difficult to get on board with at first [partly, I assume, due to having been translated from Japanese], but once I got past the first chapter or so I found I had happily adjusted. The detail more than makes up for any difficulties with style. The reader often takes the position of some kind of security camera, and everything is taken in, Eri’s eyelashes as she sleeps, the glass of beer in the love hotel, Shirakawa’s pencil, the reader sees them all. For me the description seemed to go beyond the level you would normally see with your eyes. The best way I can find to describe it is like audio descriptions for the visually impaired on a DVD.

Overall while I don’t proclaim to have discovered Marukumi’s message behind this book, I definitely think it is worth a read, and I will seriously consider looking further into his work.