Cats and the Representation of Mono no Aware in Murakami Haruki’s Neko o Suteru

Abstract

Literary works often convey emotion indirectly through symbols, and the meaning of a symbol is shaped by the cultural setting in which it develops. Murakami Haruki’s Neko o Suteru, an autobiographical work of nonfiction, presents a cat that prompts the author’s memories of his father. This study describes the meaning of the cat as a symbol and how it represents the cultural value of mono no aware in the work. It follows a descriptive qualitative approach based on Roland Barthes’s (1972) semiotics, covering denotation, connotation, and myth, and examines mono no aware at the level of myth through Motoori Norinaga’s thought as discussed by Flowers (2023). The data are passages that mention cats in the 2022 pocket edition, collected by note-taking while reading. The analysis identified 13 data: six representing sympathy and empathy toward living beings and seven representing awareness of the impermanence of life. At the level of myth, the cat carries four meanings in the relationship between the narrator and his father: memory, experience in small things, the transience of life, and a bond that persists even as a relationship grows distant. The cat therefore does more than represent mono no aware. It works as a reflective medium through which the father son relationship is understood in terms of a fleeting life.