IngentaConnect Girls and the unconscious in Murakami Haruki's Kafka on the Shore

Author: Flutsch, Maria¹

Source: Japanese Studies, Volume 26, Number 1, May 2006 , pp. 69-79(11)

Publisher: Routledge, part of the Taylor & Francis Group

Abstract:

Murakami's 2002 novel, Umibe no Kafka (translated by Philip Gabriel and published as Kafka on the Shore , 2005), is a psychoanalytical interrogation of the mind of a young, deeply disturbed patricide whose Oedipal crisis culminates in a descent to the pre-Oedipal, Kristevan `semiotic' level of the unconscious in order to begin the healing process. This paper draws on psychoanalytic literary criticism along Kristevan lines in its focus on the young women in Kafka on the Shore , who, as in many of Murakami's novels, play important roles in the male protagonist's progress. Sakura comfortably belongs to the outside world ruled by the symbolic order, and her presence, along with the other strongly heterosexual character, Sada, provide the outer frame for Kafka's inner journey. The androgynous, uncannily insightful Ōshima, on the other hand, plays a central role in shaping Kafka's progress in his liminal journey towards psycho-sexual health, and is well served by a Kristevan analysis. However, both the liminal stage and the mainstream, `real' space are dominated by a rather old-fashioned, Lacanian view of heterosexuality as the normal subjectivity, focusing on the male, homogeneous body as the ideal, limiting the applicability of the Kristevan approach.

Document Type: Research article

DOI: 10.1080/10371390600636240

Affiliations: 1: University of Tasmania

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