Kafka on the Shore: Chapter 12 Summary & Analysis

In a letter dated October 19, 1972, Setsuko Okamochi makes a confession to a psychology professor who participated in the military investigation into the Rice Bowl Hill Incident. Setsuko reveals that she kept certain things hidden during the investigation but now, many years later, they weigh heavily on her mind. Setsuko writes that the night before the incident, she had an incredibly vivid dream about having sex with her husband, who was away at war at the time. Even after waking and heading out on the field trip, Setsuko felt as if she were “still in the middle of that realistic, erotic dream.”

Just as Setsuko reached the top of the hill with the children, she realized that her period had started—perhaps, Setsuko writes, because the dream had physically stirred something in her body. Setsuko cleaned herself up in the woods with some towels and returned to supervise the children, feeling guilty for allowing her mind to linger on the erotic dream in front of her students.

One of the children, Nakata, approached Setsuko with something in his hands: one of the bloody towels Setsuko had used to clean herself up. Horrified, Setsuko began to slap and yell at Nakata while the other children watched as if frozen in place. When she realized what she was doing, Setsuko began to weep and apologize. But then, the children collapsed. Later, none of them seemed to remember anything about the incident.

Setsuko writes that she never found out what happened to Nakata after the incident. Previously, Nakata had been a bright, if quiet, child. Setsuko had hoped to draw him out of his shell. But after the incident, Nakata was hospitalized and that was no longer possible. Setsuko feels to blame. She closes her letter with a note that when her husband died shortly afterwards, she felt no shock at all. Ever since that day in the woods, it felt to Setsuko as if her husband’s death was fated to be.