Kafka on the Shore
by Haruki Murakami

Kafka on the Shore: Setting 1 key example

Definition of Setting

Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or it can be an imagined... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the... read full definition

Key Examples in Kafka on the Shore

Chapter 32
Explanation and Analysis:

The novel takes place largely in Takamatsu, a coastal city located in Kagawa Prefecture on the island of Shikoku. It is characterized in the novel as a mundane urban space where nothing remarkable happens, where Kafka goes about his daily routines and where Hoshino and Nakata wait for something supernatural to occur:

A shabby, miserable sort of building. The kind where shabby people spend one shabby day after another doing their shabby work. The kind of fallen-from-grace sort of building you find in any city, the kind Charles Dickens could spend ten pages describing. The clouds floating above the building were like hard clumps of dirt from a vacuum cleaner no one ever cleaned. Or maybe more like all the contradictions of the Third Industrial Revolution condensed and set afloat in the sky. Regardless, it was going to rain soon.

Chapter 49
Explanation and Analysis:

The novel takes place largely in Takamatsu, a coastal city located in Kagawa Prefecture on the island of Shikoku. It is characterized in the novel as a mundane urban space where nothing remarkable happens, where Kafka goes about his daily routines and where Hoshino and Nakata wait for something supernatural to occur:

A shabby, miserable sort of building. The kind where shabby people spend one shabby day after another doing their shabby work. The kind of fallen-from-grace sort of building you find in any city, the kind Charles Dickens could spend ten pages describing. The clouds floating above the building were like hard clumps of dirt from a vacuum cleaner no one ever cleaned. Or maybe more like all the contradictions of the Third Industrial Revolution condensed and set afloat in the sky. Regardless, it was going to rain soon.

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