🎶 Music in kafka make it more pulchritude than poems

MUSICAL BEAUTY IN KAFKA

  

Analysis of the use of music in Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore

The Use of Music as a Device to Develop Setting, Character Development, and Meaning in Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore.

 

At first glance, the use of music in Kafka on the Shore seems simple. Haruki Murakami, who worked at a record store prior to establishing a career as a writer, uses his niche musical knowledge to establish a setting for the book and as a way to develop characters uniquely from traditional, straightforward descriptive methods. This is seen via characters such as Oshima having philosophical revelations based around different pieces of classical music and the motifs that characters like Nakata and Kafka share with classical musicians such as Beethoven. However, upon further analysis of the book, one may realise that Murakami’s use of music within Kafka on the Shore exemplifies the seamless cyclical cause and effect nature of the book with its repetitive metaphors and continuing motifs on various musical subjects, from the rhythm and chords of Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things” all the way to the very song the book is all about: Miss Saeki’s, “Kafka on the Shore.”

The clearest purpose behind Murakami's use of music in this novel is to provide a way to establish details within the novel’s setting. Near the start of the book, we see Kafka looking at the music selection in a library with works by people including Duke Ellington, The Beatles, and Led Zeppelin (Murakami 34). The use of such simple references allows Murakami to show the audience that Kafka, as a character, is in a state of post-Western resentment. This would match up with the book’s assumed time setting, seeing as, if in 1944 Nakata was a young school child and he is now in his 70s, we can assume the book takes place in the late 90s to early 2000s. Kafka, being born after the events of WWII, would be less opposed to consuming Western culture, including music, than an older Japanese individual. In this fashion, we can observe the use of music as a way to date the setting of the book and identify Kafka with his generation of Japanese youth. Branching outside of music’s simple ability to develop the book's setting, Murakami also uses music to develop characters. We are best able to observe this technique through the characters Oshima and Hoshino. Murakami's novel is unquestionably at ease with its protagonist's identity as a transgender gay man with hemophilia.He assumes the role of a mentor towards Kafka and indulges in conversations about various literary works with him throughout the course of the novel. On a car ride to Oshima’s cabin in Kochi, however, Murakami uses Schubert’s piano sonatas to develop Oshima’s character rather than the various plethora of literary works that he had used prior. Oshima explains to Kafka that Schubert’s Sonata in D major’s four movements played all together always have “something” missing, even when the most famous pianists rise to the challenge. When asked why, Oshima states,

 

“Because the sonata itself is imperfect. Robert Schumann understood Schubert’s sonatas well, and he labelled this one "Heavenly Tedious." A dense, artistic kind of imperfection stimulates your consciousness and keeps you alert. If I listen to some utterly perfect performance of an utterly perfect piece while I’m driving, I might want to close my eyes and die right then and there. But listening to the D major, I can feel the limits of what humans are capable of—that a certain type of perfection can only be realised through a limitless accumulation of imperfection "(Murakami 111–112). Murakami was able to clearly depict Oshima as a character who values life for its imperfection in a way only possible through a deeper understanding of the works of Schubert. This philosophical revelation, communicated to him through his mentor, inherently shapes Kafka’s identity and understanding of the world as well. Murakami also uses references from his knowledge of music to build upon the understanding of Nakata and Kafka as pivotal characters within the metaphysical plot of the book. When Hoshino and Nakata arrive at the Komura library, Hoshino immediately picks up a book called Beethoven and His Generation. He learns the following about Beethoven:

 

Beethoven referred to a proud man who believed absolutely in his own abilities and never bothered to flatter the nobility. Believing that art itself, and the proper expression of emotions, was the most sublime thing in the world... As he aged, his music also became both more expansive and more densely inward-looking "(Murakami 376-377).

 

After Hoshino reads the following information, he ponders that Nakata may become a great person someday. This is a clear hint to the audience that Murakami is connecting Beethoven’s love for art and its expression of emotions and introspective nature to Nakata’s enormous emotional maturity and acceptance of life's inherently nihilistic nature. Through the scope of Murakami, both figures understand their internal purpose and are able to influence the emotions of others, through music in Beethoven’s case, but in a more spiritual and mysterious manner in Nakata’s case. Hoshino then engages in a philosophical conversation with Oshima where they agree that Beethoven’s self-centered and uncooperative nature worked in favour of his ability to express himself through music but against his ability to connect with his family and the people around him. We can attribute this conversation to Murakami, connecting Kafka to Beethoven. In this case, the two figures both attract and allure unwanted people into their lives. People who interfered with the creation of Beethoven's music (often his family), and Kafka's mother and sister, whom he wishes to avoid in order to avoid the Oedipal prophecy placed upon him by his father.Oshima and Hoshino then end the conversation with the conclusion that music has the power to change people. Murakami not only praises music as an artistic outlet but also incorporates it into his literature in such a way that we are able to acquire a deeper understanding of the meaning of the book itself.

 

The depth of Murakami’s writing style within Kafka on the Shore results in many references and metaphors having ambiguous interpretations by a single reader. His use of musical references, which often seem like miniscule details, is no exception. Upon further inspection, these inconspicuous cues can be broken down to reveal the deeper meanings of many existing metaphors within the book. An example of this can be seen in Murakami’s development of the forest around Oshima’s cabin as a symbol of the unknown. Although this location is established upon its introduction, it is Kafka's relating the atmosphere of the forest to Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things” that creates an intimately specific aura that can only be understood by readers who also understand the song. Kafka states

 

I hear the left hand carving out a repetitious rhythm and the right hand layering on thick, forbidding chords. Like some mythic scene... The patient, repeating music ever so slowly breaks apart the reality, rearranging the pieces. It has a hypnotic, menacing smell, just like the forest "(Murakami 385). Even without hearing “My Favorite Things,” the reader is able to understand the monotony the piece gives off through Murakami’s use of two-word pairs in describing it. Phrases like “patient, repeating” and “hypnotic, menacing” reflect the repetitive rhythm of the piano solo that Kafka is referencing. It is only through this niche simile that Murakami can perfectly capture Kafka’s acute feelings towards the forest.

 

Amongst the interesting literary decisions that Murakami makes in the novel, one that stands out is his decision to narrate Kafka’s chapters with a first-person point of view and Nakata’s chapters with a third-person point of view. The primary reason for this is to accentuate Nakata as a character with an internal emptiness through denying us access to reading Nakata’s inner thoughts, as we can for Kafka. This stylistic choice is amplified through his referencing of music. The most important use of music within all of the book, Ms. Saeki’s song “Kafka on the Shore,” is analysed through both a literary and musical lens by the book’s main characters. Kafka, upon hearing the song, realizes:

 

Two unusual chords appear in the refrain... It's not the kind you can figure out by listening just a couple of times. At first, I felt confused. To exaggerate a little, I felt betrayed. The total unexpectedness of the sound shook me, unsettled me, like when a cold wind suddenly blows in through a crack "(Murakami 228).

 

In a later chapter following Nakata, prior to which Ms. Saeki tells Nakata to burn her writings, Murakami uses the third person point of view to his advantage and describes the feelings of Miss Saeki rather than Nakata:

 

Eventually, Miss Saeki closed her eyes, quietly giving herself over to memories... The circle was once again complete. She opens the door of a faraway room and finds two beautiful chords, in the shape of lizards, asleep on the wall. She gently touches them and can feel their peaceful sleep. "A gentle wind is blowing, rustling the old curtain from time to time” (Murakami 393).

 

We can identify these two excerpts from separate parts of the book as fitting into the same overarching metaphor from the use of wind to describe two chords in both excerpts. For Kafka, the chords are confusing and the wind is unsettling. Looking at the two chords as personifications of Miss Saeki and Kafka, it makes sense that the chords were written to be confusing since they were written when Miss Saeki lost her lover (Kafka), thus creating a dissonance between the chords. Miss Saeki interprets the chords as bittersweet, which matches her emotions when the song was written—when she lost her first love. The two chords (as personifications of Kafka and Ms. Saeki) are gentle and beautiful upon realisation that the book has reached the end of its cyclical pattern. The different interpretations of the chords match how the paths of Kafka and Miss Saeki start separate and end convergent.

 

​ In Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on The Shore, the importance of music is not only a recurring theme, but a motif used by Murakami to drive the deeper meaning of the book into its readers. Through serving as a device to elaborate on setting, develop characters and shape preexisting metaphors into more refined meanings, music and musical references provide more depth and dimension to the novel