All subsequently recovered, except for one boy, Nakata, who remained in a coma for some weeks before waking up, as he says, 'not very bright', but with the power to talk to cats.įive decades later, in the course of his job as a finder of strayed household felines, Nakata is coerced by Kafka's father (posing as 'Jack Daniels') into stabbing him to death in a 'kill me or the cats get it' scene. The second strand begins as an X-File recorded by American Occupation forces, and narrates how a group of wartime evacuees foraging for food in the Shikoku mountains glimpsed a possible UFO before losing consciousness for several hours. Here the cross-gender librarian of a private library, Oshima, and its enigmatic owner, Mrs Saeki, provide the mature-beyond-his-years runaway with employment and a roof.

Kafka winds up in the provincial city of Takamatsu on the smallest of Japan's main islands, Shikoku. In the first strand, 15-year-old Kafka Tamura (we never learn his real name) runs away from Tokyo and his sculptor-father who kills cats to make flutes from their souls. The Oedipus myth is often cited as an example of self-fulfilling prophecy, and became associated with Freudian psychology after Freud developed the theory of the “Oedipus complex.” Characters in Kafka on the Shore discuss the Oedipus myth often because Kafka believes himself to be the subject of an Oedipal prophecy.The plot is a slow-ravelling two-strander. When he finds out what has happened, Oedipus blinds himself in anguish. Unwittingly, Oedipus fulfills the prophecy. In the myth, Oedipus receives a prophecy from the oracle at Delphi that he will kill his father and marry his mother. Kafka on the Shore also draws heavily on the ancient Greek tragic myth of Oedipus, immortalized in dramatic form by Sophocles in his play, Oedipus Rex. Kafka on the Shore has also drawn much comparison to Murakami’s other long surrealist works, including The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. Like Murakami, much of Kafka’s work, such as his short story “The Metamorphosis,” blends unsettling fantastical elements with realism to portray isolated characters dealing with the absurdity of modern life. At the same time, Murakami has also been criticized within Japan for his unconventional style, which draws inspiration from European writers including Kurt Vonnegut and the Czech novelist Franz Kafka. I-Novels typically use a first-person, confessional style, often to take on extremely dark and personal subject matter. Kafka on the Shore is one of many works by Murakami written in the style of the traditional Japanese “I-Novel,” which emerged in the early twentieth century. Murakami employs a distinct form of magical realism that blends elements of the Japanese literary tradition with foreign influences.

Kafka and the shore