fr Kafka on the Shore is a bildungsroman which is part of universal literature. Haruki Murakami tells the story of the peregrinations of Kafka Tempura, a 15-year-old teenager on the roads of Japan looking for his mother and the wanderings of Nakata, a simple old man, searching for lost cats. When their paths meet, each one might find his own truth. In this quest story, cats converse, fish fall from the sky, prostitutes worship Hegel and dreams come true. 

Yukio Ninagawa is particularly famous and celebrated for his stagings of Greek tragedies, Shakespearian plays and contemporary Japanese theatre. Created little before he died in 2016, this adaptation of Kafka on the Shore along with many of his plays have been performed all over the world. With a succession of frames, he comes and goes from reality to supernatural, telling gracefully the sweet life lesson of Murakami’s prizewinning novel.