who killed Kiki. When the narrator confronts Gotanda, the actor says it is probably true that he killed Kiki but he cannot remember. He says that all his life he has been compelled to do terrible things like hurting people and killing animals. He doesn’t know if he killed Kiki, but suggests he probably did. The narrator seems less convinced, but when he goes to get them both a beer, Gotanda drives off and kills himself by crashing the car into Tokyo Bay. The narrator goes back to Sapporo and checks into the Dolphin. Yumiyoshi visits him at three in the morning and they have sex. The narrator says he will move to Sapporo to allow them to pursue their relationship together. Later, he is woken in the night by Yumiyoshi, who has discovered their whole room is now in the other realm. They search for the Sheep Man but cannot find him. Yumiyoshi passes through a wall and the narrator follows her, panicked that he will lose her. He then wakes in his hotel room beside her and cries. “I cried,” he says, “for all that I’d lost and all that I’d lose.” Major themes Several of the novel's characters are hallmarks of Murakami's writing. Dance Dance Dance deals with themes of gender, sexuality, loss and abandonment, as do many of Murakami's other novels. Often, the male protagonist in a Murakami novel will lose a mother, spouse, or girlfriend. Other common Murakami themes this novel includes are technology, alienation, absurdity, and the ultimate discovery of a human connection. In Murakami’s first four books, no characters had been given names, except for comical or ironic ones. This changed with Norwegian Wood and then Dance Dance Dance, his sixth book, saw him adding some names. He even retroactively names one character from A Wild Sheep Chase – a woman called Kiki. Even with real names, however, Murakami is playful. Kiki has beautiful ears and her name means “hearing.” There is a mother called Rain and her daughter is Snow. The father is called Hiraku Makimura, an anagram of Haruki Murakami. Most people are playfully nameless and some are given nicknames for their appearance, such as Bookish and Fisherman. When someone asks the narrator his name, he replies, “Winnie the Pooh.” Differences in English translation The supernatural character known as the Sheep Man speaks differently between the two versions. The character speaks