A new novel by the Japanese author Haruki Murakami is set to hit bookshops this summer. The Tale of KAHO is an expansion of four interlinked short stories first serialised in the Japanese magazine Shincho, starting in 2024. Only the first of these stories, Kaho, has as yet been translated into English, by Philip Gabriel for The New Yorker.
The story’s narrator, Kaho, is a 26-year-old woman who illustrates children’s picturebooks. She has a bad date with a sinister man named Sahara who delights in telling women that they are ugly.
Kaho is a slight narrative that gives a strong impression of two characters: an emotionally complex young woman and a voyeuristic misogynist. In a 2024 interview with The New Yorker, Murakami mused on the possibility of expanding this story. Now that he has done so, what can readers expect?
Murakami’s harshest critics and most passionate fans disagree on the merits of his literary output. But they surely agree on one point: Haruki Murakami is a repetitive writer.
Fans have rendered this repetition a feature not a flaw, making Murakami memes and fan art out of this tendency. One fan, artist Grant Snider, even affectionately created a Murakami bingo game that resurfaces every time the writer releases new material.
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Murakami bingo is a fun way of interacting with his work. The idea is simple: when reading a Murakami novel or short story, cross off the narrative or thematic qualities listed on the bingo sheet. Empty wells, missing cats, erotic ears – all these tropes recur endlessly in Murakami-land.
Shinchosha
As with memes, the humour lies in recognising the familiar, and lovingly making fun of it. Writer David S. Wills identifies repetition as something that fans enjoy.
When you pick up a Murakami book, you know (to some degree) what to expect. However, the ordering, presentation and timbre of the tropes’ usage changes, recasting the same motifs in new lights and to different ends. His recent novel The City and Its Uncertain Walls, for example, begins as a retelling of an older novel, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, before veering wildly off-course in a totally original direction.
A solo female protagonist
Although based on a series of short stories, The Tale of KAHO will undoubtedly surprise readers of Murakami. Most significantly, it has been advertised as Murakami’s first novel featuring a solo female protagonist. While other novels such as 1Q84 and Sputnik Sweetheart foreground women narrators at various points, they are intercut with male voices.
Murakami has been the subject of much feminist critique and discussion. Japanese writer Mieko Kawakami – known for feminist works including Breast and Eggs – identifies Murakami’s female characters as frequently shallow. She argues that they can act as “kind oracle(s) … trigger(ing) metamorphosis in the protagonist. There are many cases where women are presented as gateways, or opportunities for transformation.”
However, given the short story Kaho’s focus on sexism, it seems that The Tale of KAHO seeks to critique misogyny, not indulge it.
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The name of the novel also could signal a departure for Murakami. The use of the construction “The Tale of” recalls Japanese novels from the Heian period, such as The Tale of Genji. The Japanese word for “The Tale of” is monogatari (written in kanji as 物語), and usually refers to court romances.
This seems an unusual allusion for Murakami, who famously takes inspiration from Euro-American writers like Raymond Carver. In the introduction to The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories, he asserts: “I learned practically nothing about novelistic technique from my Japanese predecessors.”
The guessing will soon be over for Japanese readers, who will be able to buy The Tale of KAHO in July. Sadly, English speakers will have to wait a little longer to play Murakami bingo with this book, as a translation is likely to follow next year.
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