Ninagawa's 'Kafka' tells tale of youth
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A scene from Yukio Ninagawa’s play “Kafka on the Shore” / Courtesy of LG Arts Center
By Kwon Mee-yoo
Japanese writer Haruki Murakami has a strong fan base in Korea, so much so, that his fans line up at bookstores when his new books are translated into Korean and published here. There even is a neologism "Haruki-esque," referring to the writer's unique world filled with loneliness and melancholy.
Murakami's novels are received favorably by critics and general readers alike because he describes universal situations in detail and his characters pursue small pleasures in their lives. Kyung Hee University professor and literary critic Lee Myung-won said Murakami's work reflects the internal emptiness and a desire for communication among urbanites, which is universal.
The award-winning "Kafka on the Shore," originally published in 2002 was adapted for stage by American playwright Frank Galati for the Steppenwolf Theatre company in 2008, and famed Japanese director Yukio Ninagawa staged it in Japan in 2012. It was the first time for a Japanese director to stage an adaptation of a Murakami novel.
Rich with literary devices and unique sensibilities, not all Murakami novels have been successful when adapted for film or stage. However, Ninagawa's "Kafka," staged at Seoul’s LG Arts Center, interweaves the mesmerizing yet convoluted plot with the physicality of theater, skillfully transforming the parallel worlds onto the stage.
The original novel alternates chapters to parallel two narratives ― one of 15-year-old boy, Kafka Tamura, running away from home on a quest to find his long-lost mother and sister, and the other of Satoru Nakata, an elderly man who lost his memory after a childhood accident but can talk with cats.
The stage adaptation lacks the rich literary references of the novel ― "Oedipus the King," "The Tale of Genji" or "Ugetsu Monogatari" (Tales of Moonlight and Rain) ― but it has the simultaneity instead. Ninagawa deftly juxtaposes the two parallel worlds such as scenes in which Kafka reading Hannah Arendt's "Eichmann in Jerusalem" in a library and the serial cat killer Johnnie Walker beheading cats to collect their souls.
The Crow, or alter ego of Kafka, is portrayed as a boy dressed in black, as if the boy has a twin who reads metaphysical lines, maintaining the literary quality of the text.
The 80-year-old director put all the drama into museum-like acrylic cubes, literally. Black-clad stagehands move the transparent display cases with a forest, a truck, library bookshelves, bedroom and a singing girl in blue dress as if they are the invisible hands behind human beings, adding surrealism to the play.
The director said he took inspiration from a model of earth encased in a glass display at the Museum of Natural History in New York. He materialized the massive plot and precise details of Murakami's novel by putting the details into the display cube and telling the narrative through moving boxes.
Ninagawa insists that the first three minutes of a play should captivate the audiences and this play does not fail to do that, just by moving around transparent trees, a handless clock and bending machines.
Nino Furuhata plays a 15-year-old boy who embarks on the journey. Rie Miyazawa plays the dual role of library director Saeki and the Girl and Naohito Fujiki her assistant Oshima.
The production is on tour celebrating Ninagawa's 80th birthday this year and travelled to New York, London, Tokyo and Singapore before arriving here at its final destination Seoul.
"Kafka on the Shore" runs through Saturday. Tickets cost from 40,000 to 80,000 won. The play is in Japanese with Korean subtitles. For more information, visit www.lgart.com or call 02-2005-0114.