"No," I reply.

"Tales of Moonlight and Rain was written in the late Edo period by a man named Ueda Akinari. It was set, however, in the earlier Warring States period, which makes Ueda's approach a bit nostalgic or retro. Anyway, in this particular story two samurai become fast friends and pledge themselves as blood brothers. For samurai this was very serious. Being blood brothers meant they pledged their lives to each other. They lived far away from each other, each serving a different lord. One wrote to the other saying no matter what, he would visit when the chrysanthemums were in bloom. The other said he'd wait for his arrival. But before the first one could set out on the journey, he got mixed up in some trouble in his domain, was put under confinement, and wasn't allowed to go out or send a letter. Finally summer is over and fall is upon them, the season when the chrysanthemums blossom. At this rate he won't be able to fulfill his promise to his friend. To a samurai, nothing's more important than a promise. Honor's more important than your life. So this samurai commits hara-kiri, becomes a spirit, and races across the miles to visit his friend. They sit near the chrysanthemums and talk to their heart's content, and then the spirit vanishes from the face of the earth. It's a beautiful tale."

"But he had to die in order to become a spirit."

"Yes, that's right," Oshima says. "It would appear that people can't become living spirits out of honor or love or friendship. To do that they have to die. People throw away their lives for honor, love, or friendship, and only then do they turn into spirits. But when you talk about living spirits-well, that's a different story. They always seem to be motivated by evil."

I mull this over.

"But like you said, there might be examples," Oshima continues, "of people becoming living spirits out of positive feelings of love. I just haven't done much research into the matter, I'm afraid. Maybe it happens. Love can rebuild the world, they say, so everything's possible when it comes to love."

"Have you ever been in love?" I ask.

He stares at me, taken aback. "What do you think? I'm not a starfish or a pepper tree. I'm a living, breathing human being. Of course I've been in love."

"That isn't what I mean," I say, blushing.

"I know," he says, and smiles at me gently.

Once Oshima leaves I go back to my room, switch the stereo to 45 rpm, lower the needle, and listen to "Kafka on the Shore," following the lyrics on the jacket.

You sit at the edge of the world,

I am in a crater that's no more.

Words without letters

Standing in the shadow of the door.

The moon shines down on a sleeping lizard,

Little fish rain down from the sky.

Outside the window there are soldiers, steeling themselves to die.

(Refrain)

Kafka sits in a chair by the shore,

Thinking of the pendulum that moves the world, it seems.

When your heart is closed,

The shadow of the unmoving Sphinx,

Becomes a knife that pierces your dreams.

The drowning girl's fingers

Search for the entrance stone, and more.

Lifting the hem of her azure dress,

She gazes- at Kafka on the shore.

I listen to the record three times. First of all, I'm wondering how a record with lyrics like this could sell over a million copies. I'm not saying they're totally obscure, just kind of abstract and surreal. Not exactly catchy lyrics. But if you listen to them a few times they begin to sound familiar. One by one the words find a home in my heart. It's a weird feeling. Images beyond any meaning arise like cutout figures and stand alone, just like when I'm in the middle of a deep dream.

The melody is beautiful, simple but different, too. And Miss Saeki's voice melts into it naturally. Her voice needs more power-she isn't what you'd call a professional singer-but it gently cleanses your mind, like a spring rain washing over stepping stones in a garden. She played the piano and sang, then they added a small string section and an oboe. The recording budget must have kept the arrangement simple, but actually it's this simplicity that gives the song its appeal.

Two unusual chords appear in the refrain. The other chords in the song are nothing special, but these two are different, not the kind you can figure out by listening just a couple of times. At first I felt confused. To exaggerate a little, I felt betrayed, even. The total unexpectedness of the sounds shook me, unsettled me, like when a cold wind suddenly blows in through a crack. But once the refrain is over, that beautiful melody returns, taking you back to that original world of harmony and intimacy. No more chilly wind here. The piano plays its final note while the strings quietly hold the last chord, the lingering sound of the oboe bringing the song to a close.

Listening to it over and over, I start to get some idea why "Kafka on the Shore" moved so many people. The song's direct and gentle at the same time, the product of a capable yet unselfish heart. There's a kind of miraculous feel to it, this overlap of opposites. A shy nineteen-year-old girl from a provincial town writes lyrics about her boyfriend far away, sits down at the piano and sets it to music, then unhesitantly sings her creation. She didn't write the song for others to hear, but for herself, to warm her own heart, if even a little. And her self-absorption strikes a subtle but powerful chord in her listeners' hearts.

I throw together a simple dinner from things in the fridge, then put "Kafka on the Shore" on the turntable again. Eyes closed, I sit in the chair and try to picture the nineteen-year-old Miss Saeki in the studio, playing the piano and singing. I think about the love she felt as she sang. And how mindless violence severed that love forever.

The record is over, the needle lifts up and returns to its cradle.

Miss Saeki may have written the lyrics to "Kafka on the Shore" in this very room. The more I listen to the record, the more I'm sure that this Kafka on the shore is the young boy in the painting on the wall. I sit at the desk and, like she did last night, hold my chin in my hands and gaze at the same angle at the painting right in front of me. I'm positive now, this had to be where she wrote it. I see her gazing at the painting, remembering the young boy, writing the poem she then set to music. It had to have been at night, when it was pitch-dark outside.

I stand up, go over to the wall, and examine the painting up close. The young man is looking off in the distance, his eyes full of a mysterious depth. In one corner of the sky there are some sharply outlined clouds, and the largest sort of looks like a crouching Sphinx.

I search my memory. The Sphinx was the enemy Oedipus defeated by solving the riddle, and once the monster knew it had lost, it leaped off a cliff and killed itself. Thanks to this exploit, Oedipus got to be king of Thebes and ended up marrying his own mother. And the name Kafka. I suspect Miss Saeki used it since in her mind the mysterious solitude of the boy in the picture overlapped with Kafka's fictional world. That would explain the title: a solitary soul straying by an absurd shore.

Other lines overlap with things that happened to me. The part about "little fish rain from the sky"-isn't that exactly what happened in that shopping area back home, when hundreds of sardines and mackerel rained down? The part about how the shadow "becomes a knife that pierces your dreams"-that could be my father's stabbing. I copy down all the lines of the song in my notebook and study them, underlining parts that particularly interest me. But in the end it's all too suggestive, and I don't know what to make of it.

Words without letters