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During the Spring Festival holiday, I took time to read Haruki Murakami's new book "Abandoning Cats". This little book is so thin that I finished it soon. It is not so much a book as a slightly longer article. Born in 1949, Haruki Murakami, who is over 70 years old this year, reviewed his family history in detail, revealing the dark family history of his father's invasion of China as a Japanese invaders, and also showing the profound influence of social and historical environment and family inheritance environment on his father, himself and the relationship between father and son.
Haruki Murakami's grandfather used to be the abbot of a temple (monks are allowed to get married in Japan). He has six sons. It may be that his grandfather decided to give Murakami's father, who was then a child, to someone else as an adopted son because of difficulties in life. As a result, the child couldn't adapt to the new environment and was returned after a while. After being sent back to his hometown, Murakami's father was not sent to other places, but grew up as a child of his grandparents. But in Haruki Murakami's view, "I'm afraid that experience left a deep scar in my father's young mind. I don't have any evidence to explain why, but my father really has that taste. " This kind of "breath" is probably the so-called "childhood psychological trauma" according to the fashionable vocabulary of modern psychology.
So that when Murakami's father grew up and got married, he rode his son to a remote seaside on a summer afternoon and abandoned a pregnant female cat. This constitutes the opening story of abandoning the cat.
Unexpectedly, Murakami's father and son thought the abandonment was successful, but when they got home, they found that the mother cat had arrived home before them. Murakami's father was very surprised to see this scene. According to the book, "the surprise in his expression quickly turned into admiration, and then he seemed relieved." In the end, this matter will go away, and the family has since acquiesced in the existence of the female cat.
As the only child in the family, Haruki Murakami is taken care of and raised by his parents as much as possible. In his carefree childhood, his father prayed to a statue of a bodhisattva before breakfast every day, without stopping for a day. Murakami once asked his father, "Who are you chanting for?" My father replied that it was for those who died in previous wars, for the friendly troops who died on the battlefield, and for the hostile people of China at that time.
In Murakami's memory, my father never told the story of his past military service; Only once did the father tell his son that he witnessed his comrades cutting off the heads of China's captured soldiers with sabers on the battlefield, which cast a shadow over Murakami's young mind.
In fact, according to Haruki Murakami's research, his father was called up for military service three times before and after, but only the first time he really went to China to be a trench soldier for a year, and the other two times he failed by mistake. If history is slightly distorted, Murakami's father may have participated in the notorious "Nanjing Massacre", or simply died on an unknown island in the distant Philippines like many of his comrades. Murakami's father was very lucky to escape the last two military service until the end of World War II. Finally, I was introduced to Murakami's mother (the woman Murakami wanted to marry just died in the war), and they got married and gave birth to Haruki Murakami, the only daughter.
Through the systematic combing and excavation of the above family history, Haruki Murakami clearly felt, "That is, I am just an ordinary son of an ordinary person. This is a natural thing. But the more you sit down and dig deeper into this fact, the more clearly you will find that it was just an accident. In the end, each of us just regarded this accident as a unique life. "
Some philosophers have said that all accidents are inevitable in disguise. What are the inevitable factors behind Murakami's family history, which are influenced by the complex social history and changes in the background of the times? The cruel and bloody social and historical background of Japanese militarism in World War II brought great pain to the Japanese nation, including the Murakami family, and brought great disaster to the invaded nation-state. Although Murakami's father only served as an auxiliary arm of the trench for one year, he could not personally participate in the front-line operations, but the atrocities he witnessed in his own war also left a great shock to his heart. And he chose to tell his only son who was still in the lower grade of elementary school about the atrocities he witnessed, even if it left a shadow in his heart.
As Haruki Murakami wrote in his book, "In short, my father remembered the cruel scene of cutting off a man's neck with a saber, which undoubtedly left a bright scar in my young mind ... My father hardly told anyone about his experience on the battlefield. Whether he did it himself or just witnessed it with his own eyes, I'm afraid it's all past events that he doesn't want to recall or mention. But for this one thing, he may have to tell his son who inherited his blood in some form anyway-even if it will leave scars on both sides' hearts, he must do so. This is naturally just my guess, but I always think so involuntarily. "
Heeringer, a famous German family therapist, believes that family history belongs to the long river of the whole social history, and people who have been hurt by someone in the family history will also occupy a certain position in the subsequent history of the family, thus becoming a potential force to determine the future historical trend of the family.
In addition to the influence and inheritance of the macro-history of the whole society at countless micro-family levels; Compared with the family river, the family microscopic cells derived from it are also inherited and developed in sequence. Murakami's father, in addition to having experienced war as an adult, left a wound in his heart. He was abandoned by his grandfather's family in his early years and left an irreparable scar on his young mind. Although Murakami's father and wife tried their best to love and raise their children in their new family, his sensitive and kind nature, love for literature and good habits of reading also deeply influenced Murakami, the only child. However, with the child's age and self-awareness, conflicts and contradictions inevitably broke out between Haruki Murakami and his father. In the end, the father and son have not contacted each other for more than 20 years. In a sense, both father and son inherited the seemingly doomed fate of "abandoning cats" in The House of Origin.
It was not until his father was seriously ill and Murakami was over 60 years old that he got up the courage to visit his father in the hospital. After a clumsy and perhaps awkward short conversation, the deeply related father and son finally reached a settlement, and soon his father died.
In Haruki Murakami's view, it seems natural for each of us to live in this world and bear our unique destiny so far, but it is actually a very accidental thing. Small changes in the long river of social history and family history may profoundly affect or even determine our fate, but "each of us just regards this accident as unique."
On the other hand, all accidental results or events inevitably contain inevitable factors. Just like Murakami's story about his grandfather, father and his own fate in the family, a lonely individual can only, or must, "inherit" history and family fate in the embrace of social and historical rivers.
On the other hand, when we clearly realize the historical limitations and constraints of our own destiny, such as historical inheritance and family inheritance, we can also have the courage and strength to go beyond the established destiny to a great extent. Just like Haruki Murakami's personal destiny, he did not blindly follow the long river of social history and family destiny, but on the basis of sober reflection and full consciousness, he embarked on a brand-new road of facing up to history and deeply reflecting on the fate of the country, society and even the family. So as to finally get rid of the inevitable tragic fate of unconsciously inheriting the fate of the country, society and family.
As Haruki Murakami wrote at the end of Abandoning Cats, "The so-called history is like this-it is the only cold reality born from countless assumptions. History is not a thing of the past. It exists in the interior of the conscious or subconscious mind, flows into blood with temperature and life, and passes it on to the next generation without hesitation ... "
As an individual, whether he realized it or not, he undoubtedly inherited the double burden of social history and family history. Forgetting history means betrayal; And blindly inheriting history is blindness. While bravely facing and deeply reflecting on the history of our country and family, we should also dare to abandon the dross in the past history, re-choose the growth path of upward goodness, and open up a brand-new bright future in the so-called inevitable historical trajectory! This is a clear and beneficial revelation to readers from Haruki Murakami's short book "Abandoning Cats".