The World's Literature in Europe discussion

Chapters 25-26.

At night, Tamura wakes to find the silhouette (or the dream) of Miss Saeki at the writing desk of his room at the library.

The next scene moves to the beach, Tamura's trying to locate an island he'd seen in a picture.

"I sit down in the sand, face the sea, and make a kind of picture with my hands. I imagine the boy sitting there. A single white seagull flits aimlessly across the windless sky. Small waves break against the shore at regular intervals, leaving behind a gentle curve and tiny bubbles on the sand."

Then, Tamura and Miss Saeki converse about symbolism and poetry and about their lives. The symbolic words of poetry, she says, are meaningless, illogical, and not a dream. Rather, they

"...create a prophetic tunnel connecting them to the reader..."

Considering the coincidences of their lives, Tamura thinks,

"Is...Miss Saiki ...my mother?"

Chapter 26 switches to Nakata and Hoshino, who just arrived by bus in Takamatsu, in search of an LP-sized, white, odorless entrance stone. Walking on a darkened, deserted street Hoshino unexpectedly meets the fried-chicken magnate Colonel Sanders, who offers him a lead on the entrance stone.

Chapters 27-28.

A detective arrives at Komura Public Library to find Kafka, who is laying low in his room. Oshima misleads the detective.

A smitten admirer of the librarian, Kafka visits Miss Saeki's office to chat about the fear of losing a person or a vision we love.

The characters and scene reverse to Nakata's story, though Nakata's friend Hoshino takes over this part, meeting Colonel Sanders, who announces that he knows the location of the "entrance stone".

For those inclined to philosophize, Bergson and Hegel are quoted with reference to volition and self-consciousness. And, Colonel Sanders says, "What you need to do is move from reason that observes to reason that acts".

Chapters 29-30.

After Kafka's not contacting Sakura for awhile--he's been living and working in the library and visiting the cabin in the forest--they talk by phone as if Kafka is in an "unreal place", connecting to Sakura's living in the real world of news reports.

The book's title echoes in Kafka's listening to a musical recording,"Kafka on the Shore", which seems to depict another place and time. Another echo of the title is the mesmerizing, realistic wall painting of a young boy at the seashore.

During the night, the shadowy silhouette of a fifteen-year-old girl sitting at the writing desk in his room, gazing at the wall painting is actually the forty-ish librarian Miss Saeki, who's sleepwalking, breaking through the "axis of time", meeting her long-ago boyfriend.

In Nakata's story thread, it is also night. He is asleep, seemingly unconscious. Meanwhile, Hoshino and Colonel Sanders are edging through a dark woods to a grove of shrines. Nakata had told them in which shrine the "entrance stone" would be.

The character of Colonel Sanders.
The Colonel describes himself, noting Ueda Akinari|788252]'s Tales of Moonlight and Rain to Hoshino.

"Shape I may take, converse I may, but neither god nor Buddha am I, rather an insensate being whose heart thus differs from that man."

He adds that "good and evil" don't pertain to his "pragmatic being...[of] consummating the function I've been given to perform".

"...I don't have any form. I'm a metaphysical, conceptual object. I can take on any form, but I lack substance. And to perform a real act, I need someone with substance to help out.
...
"Listen, every object's in flux. The Earth, time, concepts, love, life, faith, justice, evil--they're all fluid and in transition. They don't stay in one form or place forever. The whole universe is like some big FedEx box."

Chapters 31-32.

Kafka and Miss Saeki's romance. Her lapse of memory may initially appear problematic, but it enables her and Kafka to participate in "altered time", believing that they again are fifteen-year-olds, Miss Saeki and her young painter friend (now Kafka) during the summer before the youth died. Their psychological time travel is evidenced in Kafka's changing pronoun, the 'I' becoming the 'you'.

"I put my arm around her. You put your arm around her."

In Nakata and Hoshina's story, it is the next day after Hoshina took the entrance stone from the shrine with the help of Colonel Sanders. Nakata had wanted it.

In the last hours, the stone has taken on a phenomenal weight, so that Hoshina can hardly flip it over. He must do so, for the stone somehow holds the key to Nakata's returning to normal, i.e. his insides once again having substance and his outside having a complete shadow. Of course, Nakata's unique lack is compensated with some supernatural abilities, which prompt Hoshina's inquiry about cat language (Do cats all speak the same language?)

"Would foreign cats speak in foreign languages?"

The pair then tensely wait through the severe, darkening thunderstorm to see whether the thunder and lightening will affect the stone and in turn how the stone will affect Nakata, who long ago went through its entrance and by chance came back out of it. He says,

"I'm the one whose gone in and come out again."

There is a lot of suspenseful mystery in Nakata's story.

Chapters 33-34.

Kafka has a job and residence at the Komura Memorial Library in Shikoku. Similar to Kafka, Nakata had also lived in the Nagano Ward of Tokyo before his coming to Shikoku.

In Kafka's chapter, he and Oshima discuss freedom. For Kafka, freedom is all his possessions in his backpack; the backpack symbolizes freedom, says Oshima. Kafka nevertheless now has ties to Shikoku; so he does not leave to go somewhere else. Oshima illustrates the illusion of freedom, i.e. an object symbolizing freedom is preferable to the freedom itself,

"...all civilization produces a fenced-in lack of freedom. The Australian Aborigines are the exception, though."

Miss Saeki now arrives at the library, Kafka and her discussing their past and present lives, and Kafka asserting his theory,

"I'm Kafka on the Shore...Your lover--and your son. The boy named Crow. And the two of us can't be free. We're caught up in a whirlpool, pulled beyond time. Somewhere, we were struck by lightening. But not the kind of lightening you can see or hear."

In the next chapter, Nakata falls into another long, deep sleep, while Hoshino contemplates the connection between the two of them and the lack of any observable effect from the flipped over, activated entrance stone. Being Nakata's helper, Hoshino is pleased with himself. He remembers that Myoga was Buddha's disciple, the apostles were Jesus', the Archduke Rudolph was Beethoven's, and the composer Haydn his patrons' servant. Nakata's and Myoga's mental condition is similar; even so, Myoga's enduring service earned him enlightenment; and, there's something Haydn-like about the humble coffee shop owner's serving delicious coffees and classical music. Now in his mid-twenties, Hoshino senses life's tragedy in himself, i.e. his once having a child's sense of importance and energy. Those traits are slowly ebbing away through mere living; might they not be reversed, he wonders.

Chapters 35-37.

Oshima wakes Kafka from a dream-filled sleep to evacuate him from the library to the mountain cabin. Kafka's departure is good both to avoid questioning by the police about his father's murder and to leave his lover Miss Saeki to her musings at the end of her life.

In the next chapter, the concept, i.e. Colonel Sanders, who claims to be neither god, buddha, nor human, breaks all logical laws by calling Hosino's shut-off cell phone. The Colonel's message to Hoshino resembles Oshima's message to Kafka--quickly leave and go elsewhere because the police are seeking you in relation to Tamura's murder. The difference between those two scenes is that Kafka feels totally lost but Nakata intuitively knows that they are being sought and must necessarily go elsewhere.

About the flipped over, activated entrance stone, nothing apparently happened; yet, Nakata knows that something is happening through the stone.

"...[I]t's happening. And I'm waiting for it to finish happening...I don't know what's going to happen."

When that something finishes, the entrance can be closed, and Nakata will again be normal.

In the next chapter, Kafka and Oshima reach the stocked cabin in the woods. Because Kafka psychologically feels lost especially without Miss Saeki, Oshima guides him and warns him.

"...[T]his is something you have to figure out on your own. Nobody can help you. That's what love's all about, Kafka. You're the one having those wonderful feelings, but you have to go it alone as you wander through the dark. Your mind and body have to bear it all. All by yourself."

Oshima further adds that the forest has a pair of Imperial soldiers from the era of WW2, that there's a parallel world and a tricky, reflective labyrinth, and that Nakata needs new experiences for growth.

In comparing Johnnie Walker to Colonel Sanders, I don't have any problem with which character I like better. JW does malevolent deeds, harming cats and savoring their organs. CS transgresses the rules of sexual morality and fulfills his responsibilities as "an overseer" of the universe.

"I'm kind of an overseer, supervising something to make sure it fulfills its original role. Checking the correlation between different worlds, making sure things are in the right order. So results follow causes and meanings don't get all mixed up. So the past comes before the present, the future after it...The technical term for it is Ábbreviating Sensory Processing of Continuous Information'..." ch30

He's a "concept" whose outward form is changeable (in this chapter he is the familiar, corporate image of the fried-chicken enterprise), so needs the "substance" of Hoshino to do the physical actions. Those actions involve Hoshino's opening the door of the obscure shrine. Hoshino is also able to take pleasure with the smart, beautiful girl, whereas CS gets them together.

There is more than one book about the Third Industrial Revolution and as many definitions of that phrase as well as of each industrial revolution. The reference which Murakami is making in Chapter 32 is probably referring to G. Harry Stine's. Murakami's phrase is

"The clouds floating above the building were like hard clumps of dirt from a vacuum cleaner no one ever cleaned. Or maybe more like all the contradictions of the Third Industrial Revolution condensed and set afloat in the sky."

Stine's The Third Industrial Revolution sees industry being carried on in and being the polluter of outer space. He also sees new sources of energy derived from other planets and from the sun.

Spotted the following. They look noteworthy for insight into Murakami's early biography and about his connecting a character's interiority with the external landscape, i.e. "Subjectivity and Space..." My original search prompt was to check out the theme of Buddhist perspective in Murakami's novels.