海辺のカフカ, 村上春樹
A Murakami classic from Japan's most famous contemporary author. Murakami has a very distinctive writing style and often revisits the same themes and symbols in his book; so much so, in fact, that a "Murakami Bingo" sheet exists [link]. Playing along, I nearly filled up the entire card! I think it's a big part of the reason many people say Kafka on the Shore is their favourite Murakami book, its filled with the spooky and surreal, enigmatic characters in otherworldly situations, and talking cats that people love. How can anyone help but liking a book with a talking cat?
I've read many of his other books and, having lived in Japan, read many other Japanese authors as well. In some ways, Murakami's fanciful metaphysics make him an outlier to other Japanese authors. Nor does he really delve much into Buddhist notions of dharma, reincarnation, or karma, the way many, such as Yukio Mishima, do. That said, there is a common sense of something that cuts across the Japanese literature I've read and, as I was thinking how to describe it, continually returning to words such as "melancholy" and "futility", I had a "Eureka!" moment. I remembered a Japanese term I'd learned living there: wabi-sabi (侘寂). Wabi-sabi is sometimes described as "beauty that is imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete". There are whole books written about wabi-sabi; Japanese people would generally say it is simply unexplainable. Upon reflection, it really is the indefinite element pervasive to Japanese books.
More about wabi-sabi here.
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