http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kafka_on_the_Shore

1. Murakami spends several chapters discussing the incident at Rice Bowl Hill before we actually get to meet Nakata. Discuss Murakami's decision to use so much deep background before introducing a character. Why do you think he allows us to get to know the teacher, the doctor knowledgeable about the incident, if they do not appear again in the novel? 

5. As you may have noticed, this novel shifts point of view as well as story lines. Kafka's storyline is told in first-person from his perspective, where the Nakata storyline is told from a third-person limited omniscient perspective shadowing Nakata. Since both choices of perspective limit our knowledge of the characters' interior thoughts to Kafka and Nakata, respectively, why didn't Murakami just use all one or the other? (Hint: the answer isn't "to keep the reader interested.")

7. Discuss why Murakami made Nakata specially able to communicate with cats.

Question 1. Rice Bowl Hill- Background

Murakami has decided, with his depth of background story regarding Rice Bowl Hill, to weave a very complex mystery, while also providing some rich symbolism and foreshadowing. The allusion to the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is obvious enough, with the flash of a metallic relection visible at a very high altitude, but it's never determined for sure that it is a plane. Military records showed no planes in the vicinity (which of course provess nothing), but more importantly the logistics of dropping some sort of gas on a group of schoolchildren makes no sense. I believe the B-29 is a “red herring”, something to throw us off the trail.

The female teacher who led these children up the hill for their outing is the catalyst in the incident, although we don't discover the full implications until after meeting Nakata. When we later learn in her confessional letter about the bloody cloths and how she begins striking Nakata (who found them), and that the other children witnessed this terrible moment too- it becomes a possibility that this is what triggered their strange reaction. It's like some kind of post-traumatic condition, with Nakata bearing the brunt. The blood there foreshadows later bloody episodes. And all the children have blocked the memory. This is why the teacher and doctor are introduced so early on.

Everything about the Rice Bowl Hill incident seems full of dream imagery. The doctor describes the strange eye movements of the children, similar to the R.E.M. phase of sleep. A lone shiny object in the sky, perfect calm and no clouds, and an idyllic hilltop clearing in the woods. Too good to be true.

Question 5. Shift of Perspective

The most basic reason for Murakami to shift perspectives between the odd and even chapters is because the internal dialogue of Kafka is much more sophisticated than Nakata's. There's a clear advantage in seeing the action through his eyes and to have his very intelligent mind open to us. Nakata on the other hand is a simpleton and unreliable. He refers to himself in second-person often, which adds to the effect that he is unstable, and his dialogue is more endearing heard from the more neutral standpoint. He suffers from a very poor memory and vocabulary, so having the third-person narrator makes his part of the story much easier to tell. The shift from one perspective to the other contrasts their very different mental capacities.

Question 7. Talking to Cats

Just as a personal note, when it became apparent in Chapter Six that Nakata could talk to cats, this story had me hooked. It gives a surreal, fairy-tale quality to this otherwise quite disturbing work. Perhaps Murakami's intent is to lighten things up a bit, at least for starters. The cats also provide Nakata with information he could never obtain otherwise. It gets weirder as things progress, as Johnny Walker takes the cat element to a much darker place. Eating their hearts, he collects their souls. This is so bizarre and cruel, and somehow Nakata loses his ability to talk with cats after murdering this cruel man. Also of note is the cat and fish connection, and Nakata's strange new power to rain fish. Murakami is creating a very unusual dreamscape in this novel that twists on many subtle word and phrase associations, perhaps even puns.