Kafka wakes up in a shrine at night, sore, tee-shirt bloody; 4 hrs of time missing

Nakata wakes up in vacant lot after he has murdered Johnnie Walker—but no blood on him. Rescues Mimi and Goma but can no longer talk to cats

He is in trouble; calls Sakura and spends night with her in Takamatsu – his sister?

Kafka’s father discovered murdered on the 30th—died on the 28th = same day he claimed to have killed Johnnie Walker

Oshima’s cabin = quiet, dark, alone

Kafka was in Kokura library that day

Story of Miss Saeki’s Song, “Kafka on the Shore” – did she marry and have a son in Tokyo in the 1970s?

29th sardines, mackerel and leeches fall like rain from the sky

“Kafka on the Shore” painting in Kafka’s room – 12 year old boy Miss Saeki’s love?
Beach Scene in painting would be 40 years ago

Ôshima mentions on p, 199 Oedipus Rex who was drawn into tragedy by his courage and honesty = Irony = which helps a person Mature

201-02 father’s prophesy for Kafka: “Someday you will murder your father and be with your mother and sleep with older sister, too.”

“In dreams begin responsibilities” (Yeats, 204) did Kafka murder his father “through a dream?”

p.225 Tale of Genji and Lady Rokujo come up. Living spirits passing down the tunnel of her subconscious into Aoi’s bedroom.

Dreams, metaphors, allegories, analogies

That night Kafka sees a ghost in his room—the young Miss Saeki?

Turns out, Miss Saeki interviewed survivors of lightning strikes for a book; Kafka’s father was a survivor.  Did they meet?

Crow and Johnnie Walker meet in the forest.  JW believes the flute he made from cat’s souls will protect him.  His flute is beyond any world’s standards of good and evil, love or hatred.  He could make a supersized one that could become a system unto itself.  Crow attacks JW with his talons and rips his eyes and tongue out.  JW just laughs a silent laugh.

Kafka winds up deep in the forest in the strange village where time does not exist.  If you accept its premises, you can become completely yourself.  Memories, like time, are not so important there.  A young woman who looks like the young Miss Saeki cooks for Kafka and does his laundry but on p. 439 the real Miss Saeki—who died on p. 395 after meeting with Mr. Nakata and giving him all her memories to burn—appears and tells Kafka that he has to get out of there as quickly as he can.  She wants him to be go back and live a life.  He says he does not know how to have one and she tells him to look at the painting which she has left for him back at the library.

“Farewell, Kafka Tamura.  Go back to where you belong and live. 

On the bullet train back to Tokyo, Crow tells Kafka he has done well.  “But I still don’t know anything about life.”
“Look at the painting and listen to the wind.” (467)
Kafka is part of a brand-new world.

Meanwhile, Hoshino must take over for Mr. Nakata who has died.  A cat comes and talks to him.  Before he died but while he was asleep, Hoshino tells him how much he has meant to him—his time with Nakata was the most meaningful time in his life.  Now he must pay up and return the entrance stoner—and fight with a demon?