Kafka is an angst-ridden 15-year-old boy. His journey toward self-knowledge and healing lies at the heart of the novel. Kafka is shy and self-contained and doesn’t share himself or his thoughts easily with anyone. He says that he has never had a friend, yet he forms friendships very easily with Sakura and Oshima. He wants to be self-sufficient and keep a low profile, but people are constantly interfering and trying to help him. In fact, without the interference and help of Sakura and Oshima, not to mention Nakata and Hoshino—whom Kafka never learns about—his journey of self-discovery would never have happened. Murakami does not paint a picture of a blameless youth; though there is much to admire in his bravery and intelligence, he is not a particularly loveable figure, unlike the more sympathetic Nakata, and he has a violent temper.

Kafka talks a lot about fate and there being no coincidences, but it is his choices that drive the action in his part of the novel. It is the “intuitive” Nakata who seems to act out a “fated” part instead. It seems that some people are bound to a particular fate, while some choose their own destinies. For all his philosophizing about his lack of choices, Kafka’s survival depends on him escaping the horrible fate his evil father—the sculptor Koichi Tamura—has prophesied for him.