Kafka on the Shore Lesson Plan

While going to find the stone, Colonel Sanders tells Hoshino that "God only exists in people's minds. Especially in Japan, God's always been a flexible concept" (p. 286). The Colonel then explains that the emperor used to call himself God until the Americans beat the Japanese in the war. Given Colonel Sanders character, how does this portray Japan? What might the novel be trying to say about contemporary Japanese life through this aside?

The Colonel seems to be saying here that, though Japan has always had a flexible understanding of who "God" is, the idea of God became particularly destabilized after World War II. At one point in his short speech, he says that this...