Abandoning a Cat, When I Talk About My Father is an essay by Haruki Murakami, about his family history especially his father. And it’s not only and usual essay, but also has a story and is like a novelette take up his family history and his fundamental experiments. His father, Chiaki Murakami (1917 – 2008) was the second son of a buddhist temple family, was a junior high and high school teacher of Japanese (literature). Main account of this essay is his life and the experience in the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Why does Murakami think he should write about his father ? He may think his being and a part of origine of Murakami’s personality are made and shaped by his father directly or indirectly. Murakami’s father was a good, earnest and dedicated Japanese teacher, a book lover owns many books and his hobby was Haiku. And he gave up become a scholar, so he had and exception to fulfil his hope for the only son, but Murakami feel repulsion to his hope and the Japanese educational system of uniformity. Such elements of his father made and shaped the personality of Murakami includes antipathies and reactions.
Also, Murakami can be existed by the War. Unfortunately his father was conscripted by mistake into the army when the Second Sino-Japanese War, but fortunately somehow he wasn’t conscripted by the Pacific War. His mother’s fiancé (a music teacher) was died by the war, her parents’ home in Osaka was burnt by bombing raid. So his father and mother met and married, had birth to Murakami. That’s why life includes and is shaped by accidents. People are being lived by accidents, also accidents make inevitabilities, necessities and facts. Murakami states a precept below by the episode of a cat climbed up the upper part of a pine tree.
A result gulps a cause easily, and makes impotent. (p. 94)
So I think, a theme of this essay is concerning about accident and necessity on life.
And cats on this essay are gods or god-like beings of accident and fate, bring necessity and life. The first episode of a big female tubby cat is a metaphor of his father’s mysterious and incomprehensible discharge from the army. The second episode of a cute small white kitten is a metaphor of the Resurrection of the Christ. The cat vanished on the upper part of the pine tree, went to heaven. It’s an accident or a miracle brought a necessity or a story to Murakami, and became a fragment of him.
On the other side, another theme of this essay is story and history. Murakami’s personality and works may be affected by his experiences, environment, family and age. Two episodes about cats are consists of parts of Murakami. A talk by his father about he watched a killing of a Chinese prisoner or killed a prisoner, affected Murakami and he take over as a trauma even so it’s an indirect experience. His father was adopted into a buddhist temple in Nara temporary, might affect to Murakami as an unconscious experience. Personal episodes of a man shapes his personality and story. And Murakami thinks each of stories of men made the grand story of the world and the history. He wrote in the afterword.
History is not a thing belongs to the past. It’s a thing runs as living warm blood inside a consciousness and an unconsciousness, carries over to the next generation by force. In a sense, this essay is a personal story, in the same time, it’s a part of the grand story shapes the whole world we live. It’s a very small size of part, even so it can be trusted it’s a one fragment as a fact. (pp. 99 – 100)
People are to be existed by accidents, to be lived by facts, to be affected by the history. But we live in a society as a person, and need to think, to interpret, to decide and to act. The things connect between accidents and necessities, stories and the history are thinking, consciousness and will. I think this essay told the importance of each one of ways of living, wills and consciousnesses of the people on an age, made stories the history.
Details of the Book
Abandoning a Cat, When I Talk About My Father
Haruki Murakami
Bungeishunju, Tokyo, Japan, 23 April 2020
104 pages, JPY 1320
ISBN 978-4163911939
Contents
- Abandoning a Cat
- Afterword: A Fragment of History
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Note | Abandoning a Cat, When I Talk About My Father
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