Week 7: 海辺のカフカ - Kafka on the Shore 🏖

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海辺のカフカ - Kafka on the Shore :beach_umbrella: Home Thread

Week 7

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Start Date: July 9th
Previous Part: Week 6
Next Part: Week 8

Reading:

Week Start Date Chapters Page Count
Week 7 July 9th 14, 15 50

Discussion Rules

  • Please use spoiler tags for major events in the current chapter(s) and any content in future chapters.
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Chapter 14. The cats that Johnny Walker catches are possibly food for his dog? :smiley:

But I actually have a theory: Johnny Walker is Kafka‘s dad! He lives in Nakano, he is rich, I can definitely see why his wife left (:grimacing:). And Kafka also mentioned something about an actual execution device being in his environment, back when he talked about this one Kafka story (流刑地にて) with Oshima. That might be the cat execution device that Mimi told Nakata about.
I also wonder whether Nakata is wanted for his half-shadowness, or for his ability to talk to cats? Or maybe those two things are related?

Chapter 15. I‘m glad Kafka didn’t get lost in the woods, I would’ve been so mad. And I had already forgotten about the time when Kafka woke up with blood on his shirt!
For one moment I thought that the clearing in the woods that Kafka found was the same one where the teacher gathered mushrooms with the children… But I’m not sure that’s realistic. Do we have any info on where exactly the 田舎 of the Rice Bowl Hill Incident was?

Also, why does Murakami have to write sentences like 君はその夢の中で、ほんものの姉や母を犯すことになるかもしれない。

5 Likes

Whoops I never said anything about these chapters :joy: weird times as always. Aliens are feeling more and more possible haha, there’s a lot that just feels… weird? Like with Johnny Walker being all weird about “yeah you can think of me as a foreigner or something, that’s close enough” uh?? Sir what are you :joy: He’s just borrowing the real Johnny Walker’s existence?? All very weird, don’t really know what to make of that, but aliens :joy:

Chapter 15, I don’t know what’s going on with these woods but they sure don’t feel friendly :sweat_smile: Whether these woods are directly related to the whole rice bowl hill thing or not, woods seem to generally be sketchy for sure. Especially just being a 15 year old all alone in them, カフカ why are you like this!! There seems to be a lot of themes about like loneliness, isolation, emptiness, maybe especially with human connections and the lack thereof with the whole shadow thing. Very interesting :eyes:

Yeah… yeah. Sometimes I read a sentence and I’m just like… hm. :sweat_smile:

4 Likes

So far I only read chapter 14 but I could not help but comment :laughing:

Omg here is another theory: So Johnny Walker says he knows Nataka. But Nataka does not remember. And then we have this talk about Johnny Walker being a foreigner or not? So what if… Johnny Walker is actually one of the aliens that were on the weirdly reflecting plane back on the Rice Bowl Hill? He went into Nakata’s brain and communicated with him. That’s why he says he knows him. Then he landed somewhere and now spends his days on Earth with whatever (executing cats maybe?) Oh, oh, and what if this nicely attaches to Myria’s theory of him being Kafka’s dad? :exploding_head:

Also fun fact: I could read this chapter very fast because half of the text was just ジョンニー・ワォーカー and the other half was just Nakata’s weird keigo :stuck_out_tongue:

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カフカ’s dad being an alien would sure explain some things :joy:

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Chapter 14:

I also had this thought! I spent the whole time searching for anything that affirmed this but other than the desk, I wasn’t able to make as many connections as @Myria did! The execution device especially was exciting when you pointed it out!

This was soooo intriguing to me!! Because Nakata’s memory from his entire early childhood up to The Rice Bowl invident was forgotten, and Johnny Walker seems like shadowy figure anyway, there are far too many possibilities for when they could have met before.

I love that the alien theory is growing stronger! I keep leaving space to be suprised… Like there’s a perfectly logical reason behind everything… Or even that Nakata and Kafka are actually in different time periods… Something! But i can’t stop thinking it’s aliens.

Chapter 15:
I share the same opinion as many of you! Just want to add that the rain scene at the end was so satisfying to read! Of course it have to be cut off with the typical Murakami scene. :caught_durtling: Getting more used to being horrified by now.

1 Like