“Kaho”
by Haruki Murakami
translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel
from the July 8 & 15, 2024 issue of The New Yorker
The second story in this year’s fiction issue of The New Yorker is Haruki Murakami’s “Kaho,” translated by the always reliable Philip Gabriel. I’m trying to figure out if “Kaho” is an excerpt from Murakami’s forthcoming book The City and Its Uncertain Walls, but I can’t tell yet. If you know, please let me know in the comments below. In the meantime, enjoy some new fiction from Murakami. Here is how it starts:
“I’ve dated all kinds of women in my life,” the man said, “but I have to say I’ve never seen one as ugly as you.”
Well, not the nicest start to a story, but I’m interested to see where this goes.
Please feel free to comment below. The other three stories in this week’s magazine have their own posts which I’ll link to here:
I have read “City” in Japanese and the first paragraph of Kaho in the New Yorker. No overlap, I believe.
I doubt anyone will respond as this story is a few months old, but I’m curious if anyone had an interpretation of its meaning? The character is definitely a parallel to the fictional girl she writes about in her breakthrough children’s book, but that character went on a search after a random occurrence which suggest it was something she needed to do. The protagonist, though, would probably have never had this upset she does without this encounter with a very strange man plus she’d never expressed any previous dissatisfaction with her appearance or even interest. Is she hiding her real feelings and the man insulting her is the “random” incident (like the girl in the story’s sudden lack of a face) that brings these feelings out? I’d love to hear ANY response.
I did like this and I always like Murakami’s stories.
I’m glad if “Kaho” isn’t an excerpt.
It’s great as a single story.
Ken: to your questions:
Basically I agree with you.
I’d better start with a bit of philosophy:
The face we show others isn’t only our physical face. The real face is what we express with/through our physical face, which is merely a flexible mask. With our expression, we may reveal little or nothing, or a false face, an incomplete face, a mix of real and false… We may not know ourselves well, may be hiding our true face from ourselves and others. Others may see a face we don’t know we’re showing…
Ken, I know you read the story, but let me set it up anyway. Other readers: If you haven’t, go read the story now and come back!
On Kaho’s first date with Sahara, the reader is witness to Kaho’s thoughts when Sahara insults her, but she is not revealing them to Sahara, not expressing herself. As the narrator is following Kaho’s point of view, we hear Sahara’s words, but are not witness to his thoughts. However, he seems to her, and to us, to be good at reading her thoughts.
Kaho quite naturally has no intention of seeing him again, but is intrigued enough to accept a second date. He explains how he insulted her to see how she’d react, as he has done with otther women. He was impressed that she didn’t respond with the usual anger or hurt feelings of the others. Obviously this has inspired in him a real interest in her, but she says he’s sick—which he admits to, but still asks her to give him a chance, and take a ride with him in his motorcycle, which she declines.
We’ve been given to understand that Kaho had loving parents who never made her feel self-conscious about her appearance. Unlike other girls, she grew up not caring about her looks or even having much interest in her face, rarely looking at herself in the mirror. She had plenty of boyfriends, well into her young adulthood when she met Sahara, and *this experiece has left her troubled.
Kaho continues to think of him, anticipating he’ll seek her out again. Apparently, Sahara is looking for a woman he can respect, even love; but he’s willing to hurt people in the process. Kaho can’t respect or trust that, isn’t like that herself, doesn’t relate to that…; so maybe she’s wise not to get mixed up with him, however tempting that may be, in a way…
Koho goes through a spell of studying her face in the mirror. We’re told her thoughts:
“This was definitely her face, yet she could find nothing that dictated that it *had to be her face. … When the right time comes, my life may simply take away what I owe. … Kaho understood that, if she’d never met that guy, Sahara, she never would have thought this way.”
Her interaction with Sahara has triggered her process of discovery, culminating in a revelationary dream and the writing of a remarkable children’s story in which a girl has *lost her face
and spends years searching for it.
Did Kaho lose her face? I’m not sure she did. I suggest maybe meeting Sahara led her to realize she never wholly *had a face, at least not any *concept of one. We aren’t told enough to really know. She hardly though about her face until Sahara brought it to her attention.
Maybe her face was what *others saw: the unself-conscious expression of her real self—her *real face. We aren’t shown much of her relationship with anyone but Sahara, so we are left to fill in the blanks—or not.
“Is Kaho hiding something?”
Maybe. The children’s story may not be exactly what happened to Kaho. Would Sahara think it was?
I don’t think it’s necessary for a story to directly correspond to a certain episode in an author’s life. It can be only *inspired by a particular experience, yet effectively achieve the author’s intent. Could that be the case here?
What if the girl had started out with *no face and then somehow found a face that confused her, then managed to free herself from that face? Might that have been more difficult for children to understand?
This suggestion is merely an alternative notion, probably nothing Murakami ever had in mind (need I say).
In the story Kaho actually wrote, she makes the girl’s losing and finding her face effective and meaningful when she concludes:
“All sorts of experiences, all kinds of emotions and thoughts, had joined together to create her face.”
—
Well, Ken: you asked for an interpretation!
I had finished writing my comment, then accidentally erased half of it. I’m (almost) glad I did, because I ended up changing part of it that I now think was poorly conceived. I also lost some paragraphs I think were better, but couldn’t duplicate. Oh how I hate writing on this little phone!