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Book Review | Abandoning a Cat, When I Talk About My Father by Haruki Murakami, Bungeishunju, 2020

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 by Haruki Murakami, Bungeishunju

Summary

A day of the early age of showa 30’s (1955 – 1965), Murakami and his father went to abandon a big female cat at the beach of Koroen. But she went home ahead somehow, and continued to live together. For Murakami, why he agreed with abandoning, why the cat went home ahead are remain as a mystery. (pp. 9-15)

Murakami’s father, Chiaki Murakami every morning prayed to a statue of bodhisattva in a small grass case for dead people by the war. (pp. 15-17)

Chiaki Murakami was born in Kyoto, on 1917, as the second son of a buddhist temple family. And he was in the misfortune age involved in the WW II. When grand father died, he was expected to take over the temple, but he denied, his older brother Shimei took over the temple. (pp.17-30)

His father served in the war from 1938, by a working-level mistake of a document. He fought fiercely against the China army, as a logistics officer. And he told that he watched, at the battlefield, the unit he belonged was forced to kill Chinese prisoners. (pp. 37-52)

Chiaki Murakami was an intelligent person, so, after the conscription, he entered the Kyoto Imperial University from a buddhist professional school. (pp. 56-58)

In September 1941, he be recruited again. But in 30 November, 8 days before the opening of the Pacific War, some show he was exempt from military service. The 16th division, he was supposed to belong, fought in fought a severe battle in the Southeast and pacific especially Bataan, and destroyed at the Battle of Layte. (pp. 64-76)

Murakami’s father became a teacher of Japanese for a means of living. He was a excellence teacher and adored by many students. (pp. 76-81)

Sometimes, Murakami felt strange if his father wasn’t exempt from military service,,, fiance of mother wasn’t died at the war,,, he doesn’t exist in the world. He thinks an activity to live as a novelist is an unreal transient fantasy. (pp. 90-91)

(…)

Characters

Haruki Murakami

Chiaki Murakami – Murakami’s father was born in Kyoto, on 1917, as the second son of a buddhist temple family. A teacher of Japanese at a junior high school and a high school. He died in August 2008 at the age 90.

A big female tabby cat – Murakami and his father went to abandon at the beach of Koroen, Nishinomiya. But she went home ahead, and continued to live together.

Benshiki Murakami – Murakami’s grand father. The abbot of a big Jodo-shu temple Anyouji.

Shimei Murakami – Murakami’s uncle, the oldest son, resigned from a tax office and took over the buddhist temple.

Murakami’s mother – Was a teacher of Japanese too. A daughter of a wealthy merchant family of Osaka.

A cute small white kitten – At an evening, a cat Murakami’s family keeps, climbed up to the upper part of at a pine tree in the yard, and can’t come down.

Keywords & Key Elements

a statue of bodhisattva in a small grass case

haiku

trauma

history

taking over

Hanshin-kan (between Osaka-Kobe)

cinema

mysterious common experience

story

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

Related Posts and Pages

Book Review | Abandoning a Cat, When I Talk About My Father

commentaire | Abandonner une chatte: Quand je parle de mon père

Note | Novelist as a Vocation

Note | Horned Owl Spreads Its Wings Only With the Falling of the Dusk (Haruki Murakami A Long, Long Interview) with Mieko Kawakami

Timeline of Haruki Murakami

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Note | Philosophy of René Descartes

Originator of the Modern Philosophy

René Descartes was the originator of the modern philosophy. Also he was a polymath made great contributions in mathematics and physics. He opened up the new frontier and the starting point of modern philosophy and modern science, and made the basic method, rule and questions of modern philosophy. But he left many problems behind.

Methodological Skepticism

From his youth, Descartes questioned and searched the truth and the certainty of philosophy and science. But he felt, on mathematics, especially arithmetic and geometry, there’s a special certainty of human knowledge. So he pursued the certainty like mathematics on philosophy and all sciences.

Descartes’ point of arrival is the methodological skepticism and the principles of “Cogito ergo sum”. The methodological skepticism is an intentional doubt on all knowledge and things to acquire the truth and certainty. To produce the positive and reliable philosophy and science, Descartes strongly doubted temporarily and eliminated all doubtful and uncertain things beforehand. On positive philosophical system, there should not be an uncertain thing.

1 – Descartes regard external things and internal senses as uncertain. 2 – He regard the reality as uncertain. Because during we see a dream, I can’t comprehend it is dream or reality. When I wake up, I comprehend it is a dream. 3 – The mathematical truth may be uncertain, because the omnipotent and omniscient God has the power to deceive me. 4 – Then all things are doubtful and there is no certain thing. But my thinking is here, is not nothing. Doubt for my own thinking repeats, and my thinking can’t be removed on this consideration, like “Are all things dream ?”, “I am deceived by the God ?” So my thinking is certain, and I must exist by thinking. Then Descartes states “I think therefore I am.” (Cogito ergo sum. « Je pense, donc je suis. ») is undoubtedly and certain.

The import characteristics of Descartes’ skepticism is which is a starting point of philosophical study, not an end like Pyrrho’s skepticism. Pyrrho’s is epoché (suspension of judgment) to obtain a calmness of mind. Descartes’ skepticism is an intentional method to find a certain thing for philosophy and science.

Existence of God

From cogito, at first, Descartes certified the existence of God. For the present, the God is an idea of us, and the possible content of the God is the infinite substance. The “infinity” isn’t generated by human as a finite being. The infinity must be generated by infinite being, so the God is exist.

The God is the perfect being, so he must exist. The existential concept of the God is more perfect than possible beings or nothing. Also the God is the perfect good, so the God don’t deceive us. So there’s the God’s integrity, and exist of beings of the world is certified.

Subject / Object Dichotomy

Then contrary to the way of the methological skepticism, Descartes concerned things and beings of the external world. I exist precede (a priori) to external world. The world exists owing to my conscience and is a result of my thinking.

On Descartes’ thought, human conscience is a subject, and the external world is an object. So all of things in the world are object for men to percept and to think. And the reason of exist of things is me.

This Descartes’ subject-object dichotomy and the thought of “all things are perceptional objects” became a basis of the positive science by survey, observation and experiment. Also it drove scientific researches and became a basic thought of the modern society which control the nature by technology.

Dualism of Mind and Body

By Descartes’ thought, subject is a pure being of thinking (mental substance, res cogitans). Descartes explained by the wax argument, essence of physical things is extension which occupies certain space (extended and unthinking substance, res extensa). This view is called foundationalism.

Also by Descartes skepticism, my body is dubious thing. Human body is also an extension and an object. So Descartes regard body as a delicate machine, and it resulted the theory of Man a Machine (L’homme-machine).

The Problem of Descartes

Conclusion

References

René Descartes, Discours de la méthode (Édition j’ai lu, 2013)

Paul Strathern, Descartes in 90 Minutes (Ivan R. Dee, 1996)

Tom Sorell, Descartes: A Very Short Instroduction (Oxford University Press, 2001)

Jean-François Revel, Histoire de la philosophie occidentale (Nil Éditions, 1994)

Luc Ferry & Claude Capelier, La plus belle histoire de la philosophie (Éditions Points, 2014)

Roger-Pol Droit, Une brève histoire de la philosophie (Flammarion, 2008)

Bertrand Russell, The History of Western Philosophy (Simon & Schuster, 1972)

Nigel Warburton, A Little History of Philosophy (Yale University Press, 2011)

Roger Scruton, A Short History of Modern Philosophy (Routledge, 2002)

Gen Kida, History of Anti-Philosophy (Kodansha Academic Library, 2000)

Seiji Takeda, An Adventure on The Contemporary Thought (Chikuma Arts-and-Science Library, 1992)

Seiji Takeda, An Introduction to Philosophy: To Know Thyself (Chikuma Arts-and-Science Library, 1993)

Shigeto Nuki, Illustrated & Standard History of Philosophy (Shinshokan, 2008)

Shigeto Nuki, Philosophy Map (Chikuma New Books, 2004)

Sumihiko Kumano, The History of Western Philosophy: From The Modern Ages to The Present Day (Iwanami New Books, 2006)

Thierry Paquot & François Pépin, Dictionnaire Larousse de la Philosophie (Éditions Larousse, 2011)

Simon Blackburn, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (Second Edition Revised), (Oxford University Press, 2008)

Robert Audi, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (Second Edition), (Cambridge University Press, 1995)

Thomas Mautner, The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy (Second Edition), (Penguin Books, 2005)

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