Approaching Haruki Murakami’s “Kafka on the Shore” the Jungian Way

“The world of gods and spirits is truly nothing but the collective unconscious inside me.” – Carl Jung, On the Tibetan Book of the Dead

What appears to be supernatural and surrealistic in Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore does not have to remain that way once we accept that in Murakami’s fictional world, the natural and the supernatural often cross paths and become one single unity. In the previous three entries on the novel, I have extensively discussed its relation to Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex. But here I intend to explain why the supernatural should in fact be deemed natural, and how this reasoning is a direct reference to the theories of Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung and German philosopher G.W. F. Hegel, both of whom are mentioned in the novel.

Carl Jung’s psychological theory on the “collective unconscious” (the notion positing that all humans – regardless of race and culture – share a psyche containing “latent predispositions towards identical reactions” [10]) can be detected throughout Kafka on the Shore. The fact that the protagonist Kafka and Nakata, strangers to each other, influence and determine each other’s course of action is a form of the “collective unconscious.” When Kafka dreams of killing his father, and the latter is murdered in reality (in the shape of Johnnie Walker by Nakata), we are again served the same theory. Later on, when Kafka ponders on the meaning of “responsibility” (see one of the previous Kafka on the Shore entries on this subject), he comes to the inevitable conclusion that even in the realm of the unconscious, one is responsible for one’s actions.

Another example of the “collective unconscious” is the way Nakata unwittingly changes Hoshino’s life and alters his perception of himself. Having travelled with the idiosyncratic Nakata for a while, Hoshino comes to realise that the old man is having a very singular effect on him. He says:

I feel I’m exactly where I belong. When I’m with Mr Nakata I can’t be bothered with all this who-am-I? stuff … I bet Buddha’s followers and Jesus’ apostles felt the same way. When I’m with the Buddha, I always feel I’m where I belong – something like that. Forget about culture, truth, all that junk… (425)

The change Nakata is causing in Hoshino can be seen a process of “de-materialisation.” Hoshino, though unable to verbalise it himself, is leaving behind the conventional and entering a sphere of heightened consciousness. It may be of interest to music fans that it is music (the “Archduke Trio”) that helps Hoshino to do so. (Incidentally, the inspiration for Miss Saeki's song "Kafka on the Shore" also functions along the same lines.)

Jungian psychology is heavily influenced by Eastern mysticism. Jung is of the opinion that the reason why Western culture is plagued by mental demons (angst, insecurity, alienation), is because the West, valuing intellect above emotion, has never properly reconciled the “paradoxicality and polarity of all life” (9). The subconscious and the irrationality it inherently carries within it have never been given their due consideration, causing the Westerner to live a one-sided, reality-based existence.

Murakami’s fictional world must therefore appear “mystical” or incomprehensible to the Western mind. However, if you are a Jungian, you will see that there is nothing mystical about what Murakami is presenting. This is because Jung emphasises the necessity of an “all-inclusive consciousness,” one where “the yea and the nay [the conscious and the subconscious – my addition] have remained in their original proximity” (13). Jung claims that it is utmost difficult – and even dangerous – for the Western mind to adopt this idea, since it is a completely alien concept to it. The way to fuse the two is through what the Chinese call “Tao” (道, the Way), or “the art of letting things happen, action through non-action, letting go of oneself” (16). (The idea of “non-action” is introduced to us in the passage about Soseki’s The Miner in Kafka on the Shore.) Simply put, “Tao” is a way to intensify one’s consciousness to the point where the conscious and the subconscious can co-exist. When that happens, writes Jung, “a new attitude is created, an attitude that accepts the irrational and the incomprehensible simply because it is happening” (17). To put all this in the novel’s perspective, when one lives “consciously,” the supernatural (the talking cats, the raining of mackerel and leeches, the manifestation of Miss Saeki’s ghost, the appearances of Johnnie Walker and Colonel Sanders, the WWII soldiers in the woods) ceases to be irrational and begins to take on meaning.

Hegel’s theory on existence in “Dialectics” states that existence must first be understood as Pure Being, but upon scrutiny, Pure Being can be seen to have come from Nothing. It thus follows that Being (Sein) and Nothing (Nichts) together are in fact Becoming. This theory, too, can be applied to Kafka’s journey towards himself. The moment Kafka (or the reader) adopts a consciousness that does not distinguish between subject and object, what Jung calls an “unconscious identity” is born:

The unconscious is then projected into the object, and the object is introjected into the subject, becoming part of his psychology. Then plants and animals behave like human beings, human beings are at the same time animals, and everything is alive with ghosts and gods (47).

Once Kafka learns that the unconscious can co-exist with the conscious, his “centre of gravity” (Jung’s term) will shift. There will be a new centre, and it is called the “self.” Kafka can only truly understand his self when there is harmony between his consciousness and the unconscious. This will not come easily, says Jung: “No one strives for selfhood is spared this dangerous passage, for that which is feared also belongs to the wholeness of the self…” (74). The liberation of the self is a risky business as it requires the assimilation of the unconscious – the letting in of the dark and the inexplicable. In Kafka’s case, blood must first be shed and danger must be braved before enlightenment can be achieved. 

 

Jung, Carl. Psychology and the East. Routledge Classics, 2008 ed.

Murakami, Haruki. Kafka on the Shore. London: Vintage, 2005 ed.