How Kafka Tamura Reconciles His Fate: Haruki Murakami’s "Kafka on the Shore" (Part 3)

Kafka Tamura’s odyssey is not complete until he has been to that one place he has been cautioned not to underestimate: the thick forest around the cabin. While in there, he encounters two World War II soldiers who have, since the war, kept themselves hidden from the world because of their pacifist beliefs. They show him the way to a village of sorts, and it is here that Kafka is reunited with the fifteen-year-old Miss Saeki. Kafka describes being with her is “to feel a pain, like a frozen knife in [his] chest,” but the irony is that he is “thankful for it” (456).

Kafka has entered the forest to search for confirmation, and he has found it in the shape of the fifteen-year-old Miss Saeki, who promises she will be here if he needs her. She is eternally fifteen in this realm, and will be waiting for him whenever he needs her – a fact that has a profound impact on him.

Before the forest episode resumes in Chapter 47, an interlude simply entitled “The Boy Named Crow” appears out of the blue. The four-page mini-chapter describes how the boy named Crow flies above the forest and sees a man in “a bright red sweatsuit and a black silk hat” below (465). The man calls out to the boy named Crow and starts a conversation with him about how he has made his flute out of the cats’ souls he has collected. He has the following to say about himself:

I’m not the one who decides whether that flute turns out to be good or evil, and neither are you. It all depends on when and where I am. In that sense I’m a man entirely without prejudices, like history or the weather – unbiased. And since I am, I can transform into a kind of system (467).

These telling lines indicate that the man (Johnny Walker) is a “system” without bias, a metaphysical presence that does not distinguish between good and bad. This is also perhaps the closest definition one could attribute to Fate. It is a system that is entirely random and does not play by the moral rules human beings have invented. To put things in perspective, one could say that Kafka’s fate has little to do with his being good or bad.

At the end of this mini-chapter, the boy named Crow savagely attacks the man and tears out his tongue. Despite the mangling, the man continues to shake with laughter, which “sounded … very much like an other-worldly flute.” The boy named Crow’s (or Kafka’s) aggression, as the reader has known all along, can do nothing to alter Fate.

Resolution finally comes in Chapter 47, in which Kafka asks the young Miss Saeki if she is his mother, and to this, Miss Saeki replies: “You already know the answer to that” (476). Kafka then realises himself that he does know the answer. Miss Saeki admits that Kafka should never have been abandoned by the woman who gave birth to him, and asks for forgiveness:

“Kafka – do you forgive me?”

“Do I have the right to?”

… “As long as anger and fear don’t prevent you.”

“Miss Saeki, if I really do have the right to, then yes – I do forgive you,” I tell her. (476-7)

Once forgiveness has been given, the “frozen part” of Kafka’s heart dissolves. This allows Kafka to let go of his anger and fear, to make room for acceptance, harmony, and most importantly, love. Miss Saeki then sends Kafka back to the real world, where a teenage boy with a long future ahead like him belongs. When Kafka returns to the library and speaks to Oshima, he tells him he has decided to return to Tokyo to sort out the mess he has left behind, and then he may want to continue school.

On his way back to Tokyo, the boy named Crow tells Kafka to go to sleep, and that when he wakes up, he will be “part of a brand new world” (505). This is now a possibility because Kafka has finally learnt and accepted the truth about himself. He is a renewed man, a man who understands that his existence is not entirely without meaning and purpose, now that his odyssey has come to an end.

All page numbers refer to the 2005 Vintage edition.