This is not my first Murakami rodeo. I've read 1Q84, Wind-Up Bird, and several short story anthologies before Kafka on the Shore. And from my first few encounters, I too was blown away by the worlds the he creates, the stories unlike any that I’d read before - captivating, metaphorical, surreal, the whole gamut. But Kafka on the Shore is the Murakami that finally triggered my utter disillusionment with Murakami. The straw that broke the camel's (cat's?) proverbial back.
Of course, the book has many good points - like its companions, it's famous because of its compelling magical realism, flowing descriptions/details, delicate narrative, etc., etc. His vivid writing is what propelled me to finish all five-hundred or so pages, and not regret doing so. I won't spend any time discussing this because other readers have done so at great lengths.
The reason for my disillusionment: I am sick and tired of the strange, sexual trends that crop up in Murakami books that lead me to believe that we are actually reading - not some deep metaphor - but sick fantasies of his that he dresses up in literary tulle to justify, well, their sickness. Let me explain the trend I see:
In every work of Murakami's that I have read, we have our Typical Murakami Lead: a precocious "gentle giant"-type young man who, according to the narrator, lacks any sort of agency and just sort of “floats along” in life. Here, it is Kafka Tamura, a jacked 15 year old boy who runs away from home.
In addition to the Murakami Lead, we have the supporting cast of Murakami Women who are all beautiful, slim, small, eat very little if at all, and seem to know more about things than the Lead. There are two main women who play this role in this book: Sakura and Miss Saeki.
And in every work that I have read, there is inevitably at least one scene where one of the Murakami Women engage in strange sexual activity with the Lead for reasons he can’t understand. Now, here’s the subtle point: because Murakami writes these leads in the position of “I don’t know what’s going on” and “I can’t control my body or this situation” in a fantastical setting where even we don’t understand all the rules, and because these Murakami Women seem to know more about the strange situation than the Leads, any sexual gratification that happens for the Leads is written up as something that’s out of their control, no matter how problematic the actual acts are.
I can swallow this (and I have! In other works) if it happens infrequently, and the sexual activity actually means something in the broader scheme of the narrative. But with Murakami, these scenes are such a staple in his work that, when I found them again in this book, I finally listened to that uncomfortable angry feeling inside.
And it’s particularly bad in Kafka on the Shore, partly because Miss Saeki (a fifty year old woman) and Sakura are heavily hinted to be Kafka’s mother and sister, respectively. In one memorable scene, Miss Saeki sleepwalks to Kafka’s room and initiates sex with him. “I figure I’d better wake her up. She’s making a big mistake, and I have to let her know… But everything’s happening so fast, and I don’t have the strength to resist,” Kafka thinks, as this little sleepwalking lady essentially “forces” him to have sex. “There’s nothing you can do to stop it,” we read when he penetrates her.
Sure, you can chalk this up to narrative demand and say something like, “but Kafka actually didn’t have the strength to resist, it’s magical realism!” But narrative demand or not, this is rape, and it’s rape that has been written to absolve the male characters of any culpability.
Something similar happens between Kafka and Sakura. While she is sleeping he undresses her and penetrates her, and thinks to himself, “No, actually I haven’t made up my mind about anything. Making up your mind means you have a choice, and I don’t.” Meanwhile, Sakura verbally tells him not to do it. “Stop already. Get out of me.” She says. Yes, this is a dream and technically not “real,” but in a book where “reality” doesn’t really mean anything, it’s a significant action that Murakami chose to write into the book. And he chose to write a scene where the Lead, again, absolves himself from any culpability because of the situation he’s in (it’s just a dream!) and proceeds with violating a woman who cries, and herself calls it rape.
Why were these sex/rape scenes necessary? The book tells us to fit into some Oedipal trope, a “prophesy” that Kafka receives but is never fully fleshed out. An explanation that is not only unsatisfying, but also downright inexplicable. Oedipus continuously fought against his prophesy. He struggled his entire life against it, and at the end fulfilled it because of that very struggle. That’s why he’s sympathetic. Kafka on the other hand, I don’t sympathize with. Where is the struggle? Where is the grappling with the truth of his actions? There are no repercussions, no reckoning.
It’s fine to write about rape, or sexual deviance. But Murakami protects his characters (who are aware of their actions) from facing any sort of moral quandary using the very medium of magic realism itself. And this happens so consistently, across multiple books, that I’ve reached my breaking point. I’m done with it.
Just to give a third example, there’s the scene between Hoshino (not Kafka, but the example is illustrative nevertheless) and an unnamed female college philosophy major. Hoshino is told that he must have sex with the philosophy major in order to get the information he needs. So he shrugs his shoulders and proceeds to have mind-blowingly good sex with a crazy hot philosophy major, all while ignoring her philosophical commentary. And we have no idea at the end of this why it was necessary. It just was. Again, same tropes: a Murakami Man, written to have no agency or culpability, having strange sex with a Murakami Woman for no good reason.
It gets to the point where I wonder whether these situations were written as an outlet for some kind of rape/sexual fantasy - because this theme of a man saying, “oh no, but I have no control, you have all the control,” happens so frequently across all of his works.
All I want are female characters in Murakami’s books to have real agency and emotions, not to be instruments in fulfilling male sexual fantasies. Aomame in 1Q84 is probably the closest example of a satisfying Murakami Woman that I can think of, and even she was implicated in all sorts of weirdness. And in Kafka on the Shore, God forbid, that strange scene with the caricatured “feminists” entering the library, well, doesn’t cut it.
There’s a lot to love in Murakami’s work, but at this point, all of it is overshadowed by my constant fear that I will stumble across a strange sexual encounter that will leave me uncomfortable and angry. This book marks the peak of my disillusionment, and it will take a lot to get me to read another Murakami.
Of course, the book has many good points - like its companions, it's famous because of its compelling magical realism, flowing descriptions/details, delicate narrative, etc., etc. His vivid writing is what propelled me to finish all five-hundred or so pages, and not regret doing so. I won't spend any time discussing this because other readers have done so at great lengths.
The reason for my disillusionment: I am sick and tired of the strange, sexual trends that crop up in Murakami books that lead me to believe that we are actually reading - not some deep metaphor - but sick fantasies of his that he dresses up in literary tulle to justify, well, their sickness. Let me explain the trend I see:
In every work of Murakami's that I have read, we have our Typical Murakami Lead: a precocious "gentle giant"-type young man who, according to the narrator, lacks any sort of agency and just sort of “floats along” in life. Here, it is Kafka Tamura, a jacked 15 year old boy who runs away from home.
In addition to the Murakami Lead, we have the supporting cast of Murakami Women who are all beautiful, slim, small, eat very little if at all, and seem to know more about things than the Lead. There are two main women who play this role in this book: Sakura and Miss Saeki.
And in every work that I have read, there is inevitably at least one scene where one of the Murakami Women engage in strange sexual activity with the Lead for reasons he can’t understand. Now, here’s the subtle point: because Murakami writes these leads in the position of “I don’t know what’s going on” and “I can’t control my body or this situation” in a fantastical setting where even we don’t understand all the rules, and because these Murakami Women seem to know more about the strange situation than the Leads, any sexual gratification that happens for the Leads is written up as something that’s out of their control, no matter how problematic the actual acts are.
I can swallow this (and I have! In other works) if it happens infrequently, and the sexual activity actually means something in the broader scheme of the narrative. But with Murakami, these scenes are such a staple in his work that, when I found them again in this book, I finally listened to that uncomfortable angry feeling inside.
And it’s particularly bad in Kafka on the Shore, partly because Miss Saeki (a fifty year old woman) and Sakura are heavily hinted to be Kafka’s mother and sister, respectively. In one memorable scene, Miss Saeki sleepwalks to Kafka’s room and initiates sex with him. “I figure I’d better wake her up. She’s making a big mistake, and I have to let her know… But everything’s happening so fast, and I don’t have the strength to resist,” Kafka thinks, as this little sleepwalking lady essentially “forces” him to have sex. “There’s nothing you can do to stop it,” we read when he penetrates her.
Sure, you can chalk this up to narrative demand and say something like, “but Kafka actually didn’t have the strength to resist, it’s magical realism!” But narrative demand or not, this is rape, and it’s rape that has been written to absolve the male characters of any culpability.
Something similar happens between Kafka and Sakura. While she is sleeping he undresses her and penetrates her, and thinks to himself, “No, actually I haven’t made up my mind about anything. Making up your mind means you have a choice, and I don’t.” Meanwhile, Sakura verbally tells him not to do it. “Stop already. Get out of me.” She says. Yes, this is a dream and technically not “real,” but in a book where “reality” doesn’t really mean anything, it’s a significant action that Murakami chose to write into the book. And he chose to write a scene where the Lead, again, absolves himself from any culpability because of the situation he’s in (it’s just a dream!) and proceeds with violating a woman who cries, and herself calls it rape.
Why were these sex/rape scenes necessary? The book tells us to fit into some Oedipal trope, a “prophesy” that Kafka receives but is never fully fleshed out. An explanation that is not only unsatisfying, but also downright inexplicable. Oedipus continuously fought against his prophesy. He struggled his entire life against it, and at the end fulfilled it because of that very struggle. That’s why he’s sympathetic. Kafka on the other hand, I don’t sympathize with. Where is the struggle? Where is the grappling with the truth of his actions? There are no repercussions, no reckoning.
It’s fine to write about rape, or sexual deviance. But Murakami protects his characters (who are aware of their actions) from facing any sort of moral quandary using the very medium of magic realism itself. And this happens so consistently, across multiple books, that I’ve reached my breaking point. I’m done with it.
Just to give a third example, there’s the scene between Hoshino (not Kafka, but the example is illustrative nevertheless) and an unnamed female college philosophy major. Hoshino is told that he must have sex with the philosophy major in order to get the information he needs. So he shrugs his shoulders and proceeds to have mind-blowingly good sex with a crazy hot philosophy major, all while ignoring her philosophical commentary. And we have no idea at the end of this why it was necessary. It just was. Again, same tropes: a Murakami Man, written to have no agency or culpability, having strange sex with a Murakami Woman for no good reason.
It gets to the point where I wonder whether these situations were written as an outlet for some kind of rape/sexual fantasy - because this theme of a man saying, “oh no, but I have no control, you have all the control,” happens so frequently across all of his works.
All I want are female characters in Murakami’s books to have real agency and emotions, not to be instruments in fulfilling male sexual fantasies. Aomame in 1Q84 is probably the closest example of a satisfying Murakami Woman that I can think of, and even she was implicated in all sorts of weirdness. And in Kafka on the Shore, God forbid, that strange scene with the caricatured “feminists” entering the library, well, doesn’t cut it.
There’s a lot to love in Murakami’s work, but at this point, all of it is overshadowed by my constant fear that I will stumble across a strange sexual encounter that will leave me uncomfortable and angry. This book marks the peak of my disillusionment, and it will take a lot to get me to read another Murakami.
