" Kafka on the Shore contains several riddles, but there aren't any solutions provided. Murakami generally shies away from offering authorial explanations of his work, preferring to let his audience discover personal meanings. Unfortunately, the website has not been translated, so English speakers can’t read the results of what must have been an arduous effort for the author. They quickly garnered 8,000 submissions, of which Murakami answered 1,200. Shortly after Kafka on the Shore was released, Murakami’s Japanese publishers launched a website soliciting clarifying questions about the novel from the public. Indeed, readers looking to interpret the action through a rationalist framework will quickly find themselves overwhelmed and exhausted. Like the dense, darkling imagery of Miss Saeki’s song, the novel is full of images and events that resonate viscerally but resist logical explanation. Strange things happen in Kafka on the Shore and it’s not always immediately clear why. Kafka hazards an explanation: “Maybe it’s a metaphor?” Oshima is skeptical, “Maybe… But sardines and mackerel and leeches raining down from the sky? What kind of metaphor is that?” On two occasions, Japanese suburbanites have been startled by showers of sea creatures falling from the sky. Midway through Haruki Murakami’s novel Kafka on the Shore, Kafka and his friend Oshima take a moment to puzzle over the meaning of a bewildering recent meteorological phenomenon.
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