Kafka on the Shore

Kafka packs for his journey, taking clothes, and several items from his father’s study, including his father’s cell phone, a picture of Kafka and his sister taken long ago at the beach, a five-inch long pocket knife, and a flashlight. He leaves home on the afternoon before his fifteenth birthday, which is Tuesday, May 21st. Kafka confesses that he has been preparing for something like this for a long time; for example, he has worked out to gain muscles so he looks older than he is. He believes that a prophetic voice or an “omen” (10) inside his head has foretold his leaving home. Kafka lives alone at home with his father; his mother and sister are gone, and he has no memory of what his mother looks like. He takes the night bus west from Tokyo and his home neighborhood in the Nakano ward, to Takamatsu.

This chapter contains a Top Secret document—an interview conducted in March and April 1946 by American military intelligence into the Rice Bowl Hill Incident. The name of the town is redacted. A teacher, Setsuko Okamochi, answers the military interviewer’s questions about a strange incident that occurred at 10 a.m. on November 7, 1944. She describes taking her class on an outing to a hillside called Rice Bowl Hill to gather mushrooms and other edible plants. Because of rationing and a war blockade, the children were constantly hungry, so classes commonly took field trips to scavenge for food. Five of her students were evacuees from Tokyo, the rest were local children. Everyone saw a flash from a passing plane high overhead just as they were setting out on the trip.

Her class, consisting that day of eight boys and eight girls, reach a clearing where they commonly stopped on such trips. They put down their packs and scatter out to gather mushrooms in the surrounding woods. About 10 minutes into the mushroom gathering, all the children fall down unconscious. After trying to wake up several students, she races back down the hill to get help at the school. The children are completely limp, and their open eyes move back and forth as if scanning their environment.

Just before dawn on Tuesday morning, Kafka wakes up on the bus to Takamatsu. The bus driver pulls in to a rest area so that the passengers can refresh themselves after the night’s journey. Kafka goes inside and sits in the cafeteria drinking a free cup of hot tea. A girl sits down next to him, and she strikes up a conversation. She is about five years older than Kafka, and she has a younger brother about Kafka’s age. He gives his age as 17. She compliments him by saying that he looks like a famous singer and gives him hairdressing tips that would make him look more like the singer. She reveals that she is a hairdresser. She then hands him one of her sandwiches to eat and asks if she can sit next to him for the remainder of the trip so she can feel comfortable enough to fall asleep. When they return to the bus, she sits next to him. She falls asleep and her head falls on his shoulder. He is attracted to her, but then wonders if this girl is his absent sister.

The military investigation into the 1944 Rice Bowl Hill incident continues with the interview of the town doctor, Juichi Nakazawa. The doctor was summoned by the school’s assistant principal to rescue the unconscious children from the hill. Everyone assumed that the children must have eaten poisonous mushrooms that sickened or paralyzed them. The adult men in the village are rounded up to help bring the children back home, including the principal, assistant principal, two policemen, an elderly male teacher and the school janitor.

When they arrive at the clearing, nearly two hours after the children fell unconscious, three or four of the children seem to be waking up. The rest remain unconscious. The doctor examines them, one by one, and finds them breathing, and not in any pain they are limp, with lower than normal temperatures and their eyes moving back and forth. The doctor explains that the children seemed to be looking at or observing something that only they can see. Eventually, nearly all the children wake up, with no memory of falling unconscious or what caused it. One little boy, nine-year-old Satoru Nakata, an evacuee from Tokyo, does not wake and must be carried down the hill.

The doctor rules out mushroom poisoning and looks for other reasons for the children’s condition. He also rules out poison or nerve gas, because there was no way for gas to have gotten to them, with no reports of airplanes overhead at the time the children fell ill. Though some villagers believed that the flash of metal they saw in the sky was a new secret weapon that the Americans had dropped on them, the doctor does not believe this either. The doctor collects and later tests the mushrooms; he finds nothing.

When they return to school, the doctor examines each child. They are all completely fine, except for being hungry because they missed lunch. Satoru Nakata does not wake that day, or the next. He is taken to a university hospital in Kofu and from there to a military hospital. The doctor can offer no explanation for what had happened to the children, and he does not know what happened to the unconscious child, Nakata.

Kafka wakes up when the girl taps on his shoulder as the bus pulls into the station at Takamatsu. He asks the girl’s name; it’s Sakura. He tells her his name is Kafka Tamura. Though he doesn’t tell Sakura, this is not his real name. Because it’s so unusual, she probably figures this out. They part after she gives him her cell phone number and tells him, “Don’t be a stranger” (33). She begins a saying that Kafka finishes and interprets to mean that there are no coincidences, even chance meetings happen because of fate. He muses after she leaves that she cannot be his sister because Sakura isn’t his sister’s name. Still, he knows that names are easily changed.

Kafka stops to eat a bowl of udon noodles, before asking how to get to the Komura Memorial Library. Kafka likes libraries and has spent a lot of time in them at home. He discovered a picture of this library before coming to Takamatsu, and he’s wanted to see it ever since. He’s put a lot of thought into the types of places that he will be able to spend time in without drawing attention to himself. The Komura Memorial Library was once a private home that has been converted into a library.

Kafka enters the library; just inside the open door, he is greeted by a young man at the reception counter. Oshima, the young man, kindly explains the library and its holdings to Kafka. When Oshima asks him if he’s in high school, Kafka lies and says he is. Oshima assumes that Kafka is on some sort of educational field trip, even when Kafka admits that he’s not studying haiku or tanka poetry or poets—the specialties of this library. Oshima lists many famous Japanese poets who have visited or stayed in the library.

Kafka leaves his backpack at the counter with Oshima and explores the library. He chooses a multivolume set of The Arabian Nights to begin with, and settles on a couch nearby. He realizes that this is exactly the place he has been searching for his whole life, but didn’t believe exists: a place where he can truly relax.

After eating his lunch outside, he returns his backpack to Oshima. Oshima questions him about why he’s not in school, and Kafka admits that he’s just decided not to go to school for a while. In response, Oshima recounts an episode from Plato’s Symposium, where the philosopher Aristophanes explains that, originally, the world was made up of three genders of people with dual souls: male/male, female/female, and male/female. God split each person into two, leaving the split souls to wander, forever searching for their missing halves. He reminds Kafka that it’s very difficult to live your life alone.

Kafka joins a tour of the library, led by its director, Miss Saeki. She is beautiful, with a slim figure, and Kafka feels immediately drawn to her and that she is trying to tell him something.

When the library closes for the day, he asks if it’s OK for him to return the next day. Oshima reassures him that the library is a place for anyone who wants to read. Kafka returns to town and his hotel, where he reminds himself that he is free and alone before turning on his father’s cell phone and calling home. He hangs up before anyone answers.

Nakata is searching for a young female cat named Goma. He sits in a park near her family’s home in the Nakano ward of Tokyo and strikes up a conversation with an elderly black tomcat. They discuss the weather and differences between cats and humans, such as needing to name things in order to remember them. Nakata names this cat Otsuka. Nakata recounts a little of his history to Otsuka: Nakata is dumb, but his father was a college Finance professor and his two brothers are smart. Nakata now lives on a government disability subsidy, and he earns a little extra money searching for lost cats. Nakata asks Otsuka if he’s seen the young female tortoiseshell cat Goma and shows him a picture of her. Otsuka has not seen her, but he agrees to look out for her. They both agree that it’s dangerous for a sheltered young cat to be out by herself in the world.

Nakata tells Otsuka that he fell into a coma for three weeks when he was nine years old. When he woke up his mind was completely empty, “like a bathtub after you pull the plug” (51). He didn’t even remember his own name or the faces of his family. Otsuka tells Nakata that his problem isn’t being dumb; it’s that his shadow is half as dark as it should be. He muses that Nakata should stop looking for lost cats and start looking for the lost half of his shadow. Nakata promises to consider what Otsuka says.