The Name “Kafka”: Evocation and Resistance in Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore

Who—or what—is “Kafka”?

Haruki Murakami’s Kafka on the Shore unfolds to reveal an obsession with Franz Kafka’s oeuvre. The novel’s process of naming corresponds to one of Kafka’s own obsessions: the manifold translations of his name, the family name “Kafka.” Kafka’s polyglotism—his intersecting worlds of German, Czech, and Yiddish—created a problem of translation (Hamacher 310). The spacious platform of possibilities for what “Kafka” could be spread with this multilingualism. Again and again Kafka carried over his proper name into his writing in all possible permutations—as if he were looking for the “right” translation of himself (Benjamin über Kafka 121). It was the elusiveness of the “volle Wahrheit” (“whole truth”; “Das Urteil” 52) of himself as Franz Kafka—and his fictional characters—that propelled a constant act of carrying-over his name into K., Josef K., Georg Bendemann or Karl Rossmann—only to list some of Kafka’s encrypted names that more or less transparently relate to the author’s given or family name. Names in Kafka’s texts are often cryptograms alluding to other names. It is only in their reflexivity that they become meaningful as they generate semantic configurations. Famously, the last initial of Josef K. in Der Process or The Trial appears as a trace of Kafka, while his first name “Josef” has the same number of letters as “Franz” and “Kafka” (Binder 2: 123). Although the name of a character is an arbitrary choice, with no clear, previous meaning beyond the sense it develops in the fictional world, Kafka’s names obviously also serve as imprints of “Franz Kafka.” They are thus endowed with meaning that is nonetheless elusive.

Who or what is “Kafka?” Without concretely answering this question, contemporary Japanese author Haruki Murakami, following Franz Kafka, interweaves the name “Kafka” throughout his work—with indeterminate significance. Murakami already introduces one version of “Kafka” in the title, then there are “The Boy named Crow” (the alter ego of Kafka Tamura, who is the protagonist of the novel’s first strand), Kafka Tamura himself, and finally Nakata (the protagonist of the novel’s second strand). Interestingly, Nakata (though he is not explicitly referred to as “Kafka” or “Crow”) suggests the eponymous “Kafka” “on the Shore,” for at one point, he is depicted as someone who sits upon the beach and contemplates (Murakami 215–217). The novel’s strongest leitmotifs are also important to note: a song and a painting that both carry the title “Kafka on the Shore.” Throughout Murakami’s novel we keep asking ourselves: Who is this “Kafka,” “on the Shore”? Within Murakami’s fictional framework, the name “Kafka” seems to be applicable to various characters and objects in the novel, which, in turn, all connote Franz Kafka and his oeuvre. When Murakami draws upon a gesture that we can recognize in terms of Kafka’s own writing praxis, this does not solve the original question or problem: What is the significance of this gesture? There is a tendency to assume that any “kafka” is Franz Kafka, but there are also Jakob Kafka, Hermann Kafka, Anna Kafka, Ludwig Kafka, Leopold Kafka, Julie Kafka, Ottilie Kafka, Gabriele Kafka, Valerie Kafka, etc.—there is a whole Kafka family (Binder 1: 110–124).

Testimonies confirm Franz Kafka’s reluctance towards his father’s family name and its bearers—above all, towards Hermann Kafka, of course. In his Brief an den Vater or Letter to His Father, Franz Kafka reveals that more than anything else he considered himself to be a “Löwy”—his mother’s family name:

Vergleiche uns beide: ich, um es sehr abgekürzt auszudrücken, ein Löwy mit einem gewissen Kafka’schen Fond, der aber nicht durch den Kafka’schen Lebens-, Geschäfts-, Eroberungswillen in Bewegung gesetzt wird, sondern durch einen Löwy’schen Stachel, der geheimer, scheuer, in anderer Rich-tung wirkt und oft überhaupt aussetzt. Du dagegen ein wirklicher Kafka an Stärke, Gesundheit, Appetit, Stimmkraft, Redebegabung, Selbstzufriedenheit, Weltüberlegenheit, Ausdauer, Geistesgegenwart, Menschenkenntnis, einer gewissen Großzügigkeit, natürlich auch mit allen...