Summary
Hoshino and Nakata return to the library when it is open on Tuesday. Nakata is not sure what he will do once inside. Hoshino reads a Beethoven biography and chats amiably with Oshima about it. Nakata looks at pictures in furniture books. Miss Saeki introduces herself to the men. Hoshino thinks to himself that she is smiling at them but looking at something beyond them; she is not entirely there. She goes to her office and Nakata suddenly follows. Oshima says the area is restricted but Nakata continues. Oshima and Hoshino follow him up to find that he has entered Miss Saeki’s office. Nakata tells her he would like to discuss the entrance stone. Miss Saeki asks Hoshino and Oshima to leave her alone to talk with Nakata.
Kafka brings tools, supplies, and a can of yellow spray paint when he goes back into the woods. He leaves paint marks on trees to have an idea of how to get back. Kafka thinks about soldiers and then thinks about the dream sex he had with Sakura. Crow walks behind him, telling him he shouldn’t have raped her, even in a dream. Crow says that he can’t rid himself of the omen by fulfilling it; the curse is still in his DNA, branded on his soul. He is still being tortured by the curse even after fulfilling the omen. Crow says he can still get his “self” back, but he has to use his head. Kafka feels something rearrange itself under his skin. He throws off his backpack and drops his tools. Feeling lighter and more hollow, he takes just the hunting knife with him as he ventures into the heart of the forest, thinking that he could slash his wrists if he needs to. He can escape the prophecy by dying.
In Miss Saeki’s office, Nakata listens as Miss Saeki explains she opened the entrance stone many years earlier. She wanted to hold on to her boyfriend. Nakata says he opened it again to restore things to the way they should be. Nakata says it is his role to restore things, and he doesn’t know if everything became warped because she opened the stone. Miss Saeki gives Nakata a thick stack of papers she has written about the series of meaningless mistakes her life has been. She asks him to burn them. Downstairs, Nakata shows Hoshino the files. Hoshino says he will try to find a dry riverbed where they can burn them and watch the smoke rise into the sky. Oshima doesn’t notice the pair leave because the library is so busy. Eventually he goes upstairs to find Miss Saeki dead, face down on her desk with a slight smile. Oshima notes the time—4:35 on Tuesday—knowing that he will have to tell Kafka what happened, if Kafka doesn’t already know.
Kafka moves deeper into the forest, no longer afraid. He feels he is being shoved from behind by some huge heartbeat. Kafka discusses with Crow how he is in love with Miss Saeki, and how he still wonders if she is his mother. Crow says his mother loved him and that he has to forgive her for leaving when she did. Kafka asks why loving somebody has to hurt so much. Instead of responding, Crow flies off. Soon after, two WWII soldiers in Imperial Army uniforms appear in the forest. Speaking casually, they say they have been waiting for him. They have been guarding the entrance. They offer to let him in, but they warn that it isn’t easy to return. Without hesitation, Kafka says he would like to enter. They bring him further down the path, commenting on how strange the name Kafka Tamura is.
Hoshino and Nakata find a riverbed by the highway and burn Miss Saeki’s manuscript. A brown cat watches and Nakata wishes to speak with it, but decides not to with Hoshino there. Nakata says there’s nothing left to do now but close the entrance stone. Back at the apartment, Nakata gets very sleepy. He thanks Hoshino for his help. Hoshino speaks at length to thank Nakata for helping him see the world in a new way. Nakata has already drifted off. In the morning, Hoshino realizes Nakata is dead, having passed away calmly in his sleep. Hoshino panics, knowing he has to close the stone himself. He considers fleeing, calling the police, begging for his old job back. He talks to Nakata’s dead body, which doesn’t respond to his questions. Hoshino realizes that Colonel Sanders might get in touch again and tell him what to do. Meanwhile Kafka follows the soldiers ever deeper into the forest, walking carefully down a slippery basin. There is a small settlement. They bring him to a cabin with electric lights and a TV. The soldiers leave him and say they have to return to their post. Kafka falls asleep and wakes up to discover that the fifteen-year-old Miss Saeki is in the kitchen making him dinner. She isn’t a ghost though; she is real. She says she doesn’t have a name because they don’t have names there. She says she will be there if he needs her. She leaves at nightfall and says she will be back in the morning.
Still in the apartment with Nakata’s body and the entrance stone, Hoshino is unsure what to do. He turns up the air conditioning very cold to keep Nakata’s corpse from decomposing too quickly. Hoshino talks to Nakata and the entrance stone, though neither replies. He reflects on the women he has been with and realizes that he was self-centered in all his relationships. Eventually he sees a fat black cat on the balcony railing. He opens the door and tells the cat it’s a pretty nice day. The cat replies by agreeing that it is, addressing him as Mr. Hoshino. Hoshino shakes his head and says, “Gimme a break.”
Next there is a brief chapter from the point of view of the boy called Crow. Flying as a crow, Crow lands in a clearing where he meets a man who says he had been expecting him to arrive. The man wears a silk hat and talks about how he collects cat souls to make a flute—a flute that is beyond good or evil. He says he could play the flute to get rid of Crow in an instant, but he doesn’t feel like it. He says he died by his own bidding but hasn’t gone into the next world yet: the forest is limbo, the neutral point between life and death. He tells Crow that he won’t be able to kill him no matter how he tries. Crow pecks violently at his eyes, but the man laughs. He still laughs silently after Crow removes his tongue. It sounds like wind in a far-off desert, or a flute.
In the other-world cabin, Kafka and the young Miss Saeki chat over breakfast. She tells him he will be “completely” himself once he accepts what is inside of him. He asks if she has memories and she says she doesn’t. The girl leaves and then the adult Miss Saeki visits. She says that she burned up all her memories and so wanted to see him while she can still remember. She makes him promise he will leave as soon as he can; the entrance is closing again soon. He says he has nothing to go back to. She says he has to go back anyway. She asks him to take the Kafka on the Shore painting from her boyfriend’s old bedroom. He asks if she is his mother and she says he already knows the answer. Kafka agrees that he does, but neither can put it into words because to do so would destroy any meaning. She says she once abandoned someone she shouldn’t have, and that Kafka was abandoned by the one person who shouldn’t have left him. She asks forgiveness and he gives it, forgiving his mother at the same time. The frozen area of his heart crumbles. She pricks her arm without explanation and he drinks the blood that comes out. After she bids him farewell, Kafka leaves the cabin. The soldiers lead him back through the entrance and tell him never to look back as he makes his way through the forest. At Oshima’s cabin, he falls asleep.
Talking to the cat on his balcony, Toro, Hoshino learns that they can speak because they are “on the border of this world, speaking a common language.” After discussing his weight issues as the overfed cat of a sushi chef, Toro tells Hoshino he will have to kill a creature who changes form. Toro says Nakata won’t rest in peace until the creature is killed. In the middle of the night a white snakelike creature emerges from Nakata’s mouth. Hoshino understands that it is using Nakata’s body as a portal to get to the entrance. However much he hacks at it with knives and kitchen implements, the creature reconstitutes itself. Hoshino panics until he realizes he can crush it with the entrance stone. The stone is very difficult to lift. As he tries, the stone flips over and Hoshino realizes he has closed the entrance. Once that is accomplished, the creature tries to retreat to Nakata’s body. Hoshino hacks it into small pieces that he collects in bags. He decides to burn the remains of the creature at the beach and then head back to Nagoya. He turns the AC off and bids farewell to Nakata’s body. Before Hoshino leaves, he tells the entrance stone that he knows he should return it to the shrine but he can’t remember which shrine it was. He tells the stone that if there’s any curse coming, it should be on Colonel Sanders, not him.
In the final chapter of the novel, Oshima’s brother, Sada, picks Kafka up from the cabin. On the drive to the library, they discuss how they’ve both ventured deep into the forest. Sada, who is a surfer, says his brother doesn’t know anything about the soldiers because he has never told anyone what he experienced in the forest. Sada drops Kafka at the library. Oshima tells Kafka Miss Saeki had a heart attack at her desk on Tuesday; it is now Friday. She left Oshima her Mont Blanc pen and Kafka the painting of the boy on the shore. Oshima asks if Kafka already knew she was dead. Kafka says he did. Oshima says he had thought so. Kafka says his plan is to return to Tokyo and tell the police what he knows, otherwise they will be after him forever. Then he’ll go back to school. Oshima offers to give Kafka a job at the library when he is done with school. Kafka and Oshima say goodbye. Kafka goes to the train station and buys a ticket to Tokyo. He phones Sakura and they both admit they had dreams about each other. She says she’s been worried about him but he says nothing bad has happened. They make tentative plans to meet in Tokyo when she visits in the summer. Kafka gets on the train and thinks about the rain falling at the edge of the world. He sheds a tear and Crow tells him he did the right thing; that no one was tougher than him. Kafka falls asleep. When he wakes up, he is “part of a brand-new world.”
Analysis
After dozens of chapters alternating between storylines, Murakami brings Nakata’s narrative into contact with Kafka’s in the most explicit way when Nakata and Hoshino meet Oshima and Miss Saeki in the Komura Memorial Library. Nakata knows he is fated to come there, but he isn’t sure until he arrives that he is there to speak with Miss Saeki. The two greet each other as though they already know one another, having mutually recognized that they are people with weak shadows—people whose souls have left their bodies and returned only partially.
Speaking cryptically, Miss Saeki admits that she opened the entrance stone many years earlier because she had wanted to hold on to her dead boyfriend, but that the desire to exist between worlds warped reality. Nakata takes the memoir files—her memories put down on paper—and burns them in a riverbed. Having done so, he has fulfilled the duties the parallel world has dictated for him, and he dies peacefully, joining the rest of his soul in the other world. Simultaneously, Miss Saeki dies at her desk. Having finally let go of her memories of her boyfriend, she too can join the other part of her soul in the world of the dead.
Meanwhile, Kafka takes advantage of the entrance to the other world being open. He ventures deep into the forest and meets the ghosts of WWII soldiers who help him visit the village that exists in limbo. In the neutral space between life and death, Kafka can confront his subconscious and make peace with the fears that have driven him on his quest. Although it remains ambiguous to what extent Miss Saeki is Kafka’s mother and to what extent she is a surrogate figure, the act of forgiving Miss Saeki, pretending she is his mother, is as good as forgiving his real mother. In doing so, Kafka regains his sense of self and is haunted by the prophecy. Simultaneously, in another part of the forest, Kafka’s alter ego Crow does battle with Koichi’s alter ego Johnnie Walker. Although Crow cannot end Johnnie Walker’s life completely, he removes his tongue, rendering Johnnie Walker—and Koichi by extension—a silent presence in Kafka’s mind. His father is not gone, but Kafka no longer hears his prophetic words.
Alone with Nakata’s corpse, Hoshino discovers that he is now able to talk to cats. His proximity to Nakata and assistance in opening the entrance between worlds has seemed to make him a being who, like Nakata and cats, exists on the borderline between worlds. With Toro the cat’s guidance, Hoshino fights the snake-like creature who uses Nakata’s shell-like body to try to get to the entrance stone. In an instance of situational irony, Hoshino is only able to destroy the creature when he unwittingly closes the entrance by accidentally flipping the stone, which he had intended to lift and use to crush the snake creature. Having fulfilled his duties, Hoshino leaves the apartment with the snake creature in pieces in a bag. The surreal experience of having randomly met Nakata and become his sidekick on a metaphysical odyssey has been life-changing. Hoshino knows he will approach life with a new perspective, for which he feels grateful to Nakata.
The novel ends with Kafka returning, with Oshima’s brother’s assistance, to the library. Upon learning of Miss Saeki’s death, Kafka is not surprised: spiritually, he already knew she was dead. Having confronted the fears that lived in his subconscious, Kafka is prepared to return to Tokyo and to high school. He says goodbye for now to Oshima and to Sakura, both of whom have been very supportive of the teenage runaway. Giving the journey a sense of circularity, Kafka notes that it is raining as he returns to the city, just like when he left. After shedding a tear, Kafka falls asleep, and upon waking is part of a “brand-new world.” With this closing line, Murakami suggests that the warped reality of the novel has been replaced with a new and more balanced world now that the major characters have fulfilled their quests and accepted their fates.
