Reading Kafka on the Shore (Part 2)
The second part of three parts
An extended summary of Kafka on the Shore (a magical realism novel wherein we find the main character has an Oedipus complex) in three parts. You can find Part 1 here.
Kafka and the bloody incident
On Kafka’s eighth morning in Takamatsu, he wakes up with a blood-stained shirt front behind a Shinto shrine. He goes to sleep at his hotel that evening, but somehow or other, he finds himself stirring awake in the small hours of the night with his T-shirt stained with blood as if the blood was poured on him. Save for a sore shoulder, he has no injuries. The blood must be from whatever or whomever he tangled with in his somnambulism. Kafka may have sleep-walked and killed someone or something, but he has no memory of meting out such violence, not even in a dream. All bloody, and fearful of raising suspicions at the hotel, Kafka calls Sakura—the only person he can call at the hour. Sakura takes him in at an apartment she is house-sitting for a friend, but he leaves that very morning after cleaning and tidying up the place, grateful for Sakura’s hospitality. “I have got to make it on my own,” he says in a note he leaves for Sakura.
He goes to the library and tells Oshima he is “in a bit of a fix.” He needs a place to hide for a while. Oshima drives Kafka to a cabin Oshima shares with his older brother in the hills in Kochi; he helps Kafka, protects him and mentors him. When Kafka comes back to Takamatsu from Kochi, Oshima arranges for him to be an employee of the Komura Library. Kafka’s wish to run away so he might live in the corner of a small library is fulfilled. He will sleep in the library in the same room Miss Saeki’s lover lived as a young junior high student; where she came to visit him to talk, listen to music, to read etc.—practically living there. With Kafka occupying the room, we begin to see him reincarnate into Miss Saeki’s lover, the Kafka in Kafka on the Shore.
In the room, Oshima hands Kafka a newspaper issued while Kafka was in Kochi. Kafka reads that Kiochi Tamura, a famous sculptor (and Kafka’s father) was found dead in his study in Nogata, Nakano Ward. His body was discovered, covered in blood, by a cleaner. There were signs of a struggle. The murder weapon is a kitchen knife found next to his body. The report says Kiochi Tamura’s son has not been seen for ten days at home or at school. The police are tracing his whereabouts.
Kafka protests his innocence to Oshima, who explains he knows on the day of the murder Kafka was in the library reading till evening. But Kafka can’t be sure. By his calculations, his father was murdered the night Kafka woke up covered in blood.
He is sad that his father has died, but he regrets that he didn't die sooner because he wanted to die. And Kafka feels the path he is following, even as a runaway, is pre-ordained, events are determined by someone else, and he is merely fulfilling the plan. Oshima offers up a Greek tragedy motif, “Man doesn’t choose fate. Fate chooses man.”
Oshima shows Kafka, another newspaper. It reports that fish fell from the sky—it reports a rain of two thousand live sardines and mackerel, flipping and jumping as they hit the ground, in Nakano ward near Kafka’s home. This is where his father is murdered, where Mr. Nakata lives, and predicted the fish rain to a police officer after reporting he murdered someone. Although he murdered Johnny Walker not Kiochi Tamura, they may be one and the same. The murder took place on the 28th, the fish rain took place on the 29th. On the same day, later at night at Fujigawa rest area, a mass of leeches fall from the sky, these are all places Mr. Nakata had been.
Kafka reveals to Oshima his fathers prophecy for him when he was still in elementary school. He calls it a curse. Kafka’s father said, “Someday you will murder your father and be with your mother.” And you would be with your older sister too. When Kafka ran away, perhaps he was running away from his father’s prophecy. Yet it still caught up with him in Takamatsu. Crow tells him that distance will not solve anything. Kafka thinks if it is impossible for him to have been in Tokyo on the day of the murder, he may have killed his father in a dream.
In their search, the police trace Kafka to the Komura Library via the SOS phone call he made to Sakura on the bloody night because he used his fathers phone. When they ask at the library, Oshima lies that he had not seen Kafka since May 28th. This is the day of the murder.
After the police intensify looking for Kafka , Oshima drives him back to the cabin in the Kochi hills to hide Kafka from the police, but also to keep Kafka away from Miss Saeki, to protect her. Oshima knows they had sex, but he does not care. It's their decision. But he worries she is fragile.
This relationship blooms when Kafka is employed by the library, and starts sleeping in Miss Saeki’s former lover’s room.
Kafka & Miss Saeki
Kafka’s theory is that as long as he doesn’t know his real mother, Miss Saeki could be his mother. As a member of the library staff, he often interacts with Miss Saeki. During the day Kafka takes coffee to her, and in the night the ghost of Miss Saeki at 15 years old visits him in his room. When they talk during the day, he asks Miss Saeki if she has children. She is noncommittal; perhaps as a way to let him enjoy his theory.
He also shares with Miss Saeki his fathers prophecy, and his idea that his father wanted to die since he could not have Miss Saeki—he was in love with her. And that he wanted his son to murder him and that his son will sleep with his mother and sister. As if eager to fulfill the prophecy, beyond talking to her, Kafka dreams of making love to Miss Saeki, and eventually he talks the grown Miss Saeki into showing up at night in person in his room.
They go and walk at the beach. She asks him why did he have to die? He could not help it, is his reply. They walk back to Kafka’s room at the library and make love. She leaves in tears; she remembers the boy she knew a long time ago.
There is a place beyond the flow of time, and Miss Saeki is sure that as a 15 year old she had run across the entrance that would take her to that other world. At 15 years old, Miss Saeki knew she would never be happier than she was then, and she wished she could go just as she was to a place where there was no time. Kafka reminds Miss Saeki of the boy she knew a long time ago.
Miss Saeki had her own fantasy about reliving, even for night, the idea of being in the arms of her long dead lover. She accomplished this with Kafka.
Although Oshima separates Kafka and Miss Saeki by taking Kafka to Kochi, the two meet again in an alternate world, when Mr. Nakata finds the entrance stone and opens the entrance.
Opening the entrance
Helped by Sanders, Hoshino fulfills Mr. Nakata’s mission of finding the entrance stone. Mr. Nakata wakes up with the entrance stone in the room where Hoshino placed it. He has to deal with the stone business because he is the one who has gone in and come out again. He went in during the Yamanashi incident. He also wishes he was normal like everyone else, “with his own ideas, his own meaning .” He feels he is empty inside, and that anyone can go inside him and do what they want. Johnny Walker went inside him, and made him do things Mr. Nakata didn’t want to do. Johnny Walker used him.
Once the entrance stone is found, it must be opened. Again, Hoshino fulfills this mission for Mr. Nakata. With thunder and lightning outside their inn window, Hoshino strains to the breaking point of his nerves and flips the stone over—the entrance is open.
Opening the entrance allows Kafka to enter and experience another world and come to the decision that his life is in this world. It also allows Miss Saeki to leave this world and go to the other world. While they are in this alternate world together, Miss Saeki convinces Kafka to go back to the world left behind so he can remember her, even if everyone else forgets her.