Will Haruki Murakami win the Nobel Prize a few days from now? In which case, do you not need to be cynically well-informed about his latest novel, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage? We thought so.
Poor old Tsukuru Tazaki, who’s neither poor nor old ‒ but then what do you expect from a bestselling literary author whose own name means "upper village" ‒ is desolate because his name has no colour in it. Literally. All his childhood friends were colourful. Ao was blue for blue sea, Aka was red for red pine, Shiro was white for white root and Kurono was black for black meadow. Even his might-be-lover Sara and his was-be-lover Haida have names that imply colour ‒ under the tree and grey paddy, respectively.
Tazaki would like to kill himself because he too wants to sound like an entry in the Encyclopaedia of Nature ‒ok, not really, because his actual reason for wanting to kill himself is that his colourful friends from his adolescence, unceremoniously evicted him from the "orderly, harmonious community" (because Total Quality Management) they had formed back in Nagoya. Or maybe he wants to kill himself because he has been given such a silly reason to want to kill himself.
Not many options
Tazaki, who has a rich father, two sisters, and the burden of a name that means "to make or build", obviously has no choice in life but to make or build railway stations (because trains, Japan, get it?). Worse, he cannot commit suicide, because when your name has destined you to make ‒ or build ‒ how can you do the exact opposite? So Tazaki shakes off his death-wish one fine day and resumes cooking, eating simple meals and riding the train to work.
Since he cannot kill himself, our hero decides to stop living like a zombie and promptly becomes friends with Haida, whose colour, luckily for Tazaki, is grey. Falling on his sofa with a gasp of exhaustion at maintaining a frenetic social life of swimming and listening to classical music ‒ the dead symbolic Years of Pilgrimage by Franz Liszt ‒ together, Tazaki allows Haida to tell him a story that the author of the book had most likely written as a separate piece and then cleverly inserted it here as a story within a story.
It is about a pianist who does not play the piano and will soon die. After many pages, Tazaki is stirred sufficiently to fulfil his real sexual fantasies in what else but a dream, in which he shamefully betrays the asexual charter of his group of friends back in Nagoya. Tazaki dreams of being made love to by both Shiro and Kurono ‒ though his subconscious will not allow him to have intercourse with both of them ‒ after which, to mitigate his guilt, he also dreams (or perhaps it did happen, who can tell in this writer’s novels?) of receiving fellatio from Haida. Who, naturally, disappears from the novel thereafter, while Tazaki eats several simple meals and wonders why he doesn't have a cat.
But all that was a long time ago. Now 36, Tazaki is seeing ‒ after they confirm every meeting over email, because efficiency ‒ Sara, whom he slept with after their third date and who seems to him a suitable object of desire. But Sara, wise beyond her age of 38, intuits he has not come to terms with his expulsion and his past ‒ subtle reasoning, considering Tazaki sings like a canary under her interrogation ‒ and forces him with cunning use of denial-of-sex to go back to Nagoya, meet his childhood friends, eat simple meals, and unravel the truth.
Revenue targets
Tazaki meets Ao and Aka in Nagoya, who inform him and confirm to him, respectively, that they threw him out of the group following Shiro’s accusation that he had raped her. Did he? Shiro, he discovers, was later strangled to death, with the culprit never being found. Did he kill her, wonders Tazaki. He has so much time on his hands, because minimalist existence, that he can fantasise ‒ not in a sexual way, but in a manner that gives him the thrill of imagining himself a criminal. Meanwhile, as a good maker ‒ or builder‒ he builds bridges with his former friends, both successful and one gay, and reports back to Sara, hoping that she will now let him sleep with her.
But Sara, who is in the travel business, needs to meet her revenue targets. So she promptly sends Tazaki off to Finland, where Kurono now lives. Not only does this help her earn her performance bonus, it also brings Tazaki face to face ‒ and, nudge-nudge wink-wink, chest to breast ‒ with Kurono, who revives his faith in himself by admitting that she was in love with him back in the days when harmony and order ruled their lives. Who cares if my name has no colour, Tazaki tell himself ‒ or not, because no male bluster allowed ‒ and returns to Japan to eat simple meals.
But there has been another cherry blossom thorn in Tazaki’s side, because just before leaving for Finland, he happened to see Sara arm in arm with another man, looking radiantly happy. After more than two worrying about the lack of colour in his name for over 200 pages, poor ‒ but actually the beneficiary of a handsome legacy from his father ‒ Tazaki now has to wait for Sara to tell him whether she is in fact seeing someone else. Wait for how long? Maybe 2017, when a sequel might be forthcoming?
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Poor old Tsukuru Tazaki, who’s neither poor nor old ‒ but then what do you expect from a bestselling literary author whose own name means "upper village" ‒ is desolate because his name has no colour in it. Literally. All his childhood friends were colourful. Ao was blue for blue sea, Aka was red for red pine, Shiro was white for white root and Kurono was black for black meadow. Even his might-be-lover Sara and his was-be-lover Haida have names that imply colour ‒ under the tree and grey paddy, respectively.
Tazaki would like to kill himself because he too wants to sound like an entry in the Encyclopaedia of Nature ‒ok, not really, because his actual reason for wanting to kill himself is that his colourful friends from his adolescence, unceremoniously evicted him from the "orderly, harmonious community" (because Total Quality Management) they had formed back in Nagoya. Or maybe he wants to kill himself because he has been given such a silly reason to want to kill himself.
Not many options
Tazaki, who has a rich father, two sisters, and the burden of a name that means "to make or build", obviously has no choice in life but to make or build railway stations (because trains, Japan, get it?). Worse, he cannot commit suicide, because when your name has destined you to make ‒ or build ‒ how can you do the exact opposite? So Tazaki shakes off his death-wish one fine day and resumes cooking, eating simple meals and riding the train to work.
Since he cannot kill himself, our hero decides to stop living like a zombie and promptly becomes friends with Haida, whose colour, luckily for Tazaki, is grey. Falling on his sofa with a gasp of exhaustion at maintaining a frenetic social life of swimming and listening to classical music ‒ the dead symbolic Years of Pilgrimage by Franz Liszt ‒ together, Tazaki allows Haida to tell him a story that the author of the book had most likely written as a separate piece and then cleverly inserted it here as a story within a story.
It is about a pianist who does not play the piano and will soon die. After many pages, Tazaki is stirred sufficiently to fulfil his real sexual fantasies in what else but a dream, in which he shamefully betrays the asexual charter of his group of friends back in Nagoya. Tazaki dreams of being made love to by both Shiro and Kurono ‒ though his subconscious will not allow him to have intercourse with both of them ‒ after which, to mitigate his guilt, he also dreams (or perhaps it did happen, who can tell in this writer’s novels?) of receiving fellatio from Haida. Who, naturally, disappears from the novel thereafter, while Tazaki eats several simple meals and wonders why he doesn't have a cat.
But all that was a long time ago. Now 36, Tazaki is seeing ‒ after they confirm every meeting over email, because efficiency ‒ Sara, whom he slept with after their third date and who seems to him a suitable object of desire. But Sara, wise beyond her age of 38, intuits he has not come to terms with his expulsion and his past ‒ subtle reasoning, considering Tazaki sings like a canary under her interrogation ‒ and forces him with cunning use of denial-of-sex to go back to Nagoya, meet his childhood friends, eat simple meals, and unravel the truth.
Revenue targets
Tazaki meets Ao and Aka in Nagoya, who inform him and confirm to him, respectively, that they threw him out of the group following Shiro’s accusation that he had raped her. Did he? Shiro, he discovers, was later strangled to death, with the culprit never being found. Did he kill her, wonders Tazaki. He has so much time on his hands, because minimalist existence, that he can fantasise ‒ not in a sexual way, but in a manner that gives him the thrill of imagining himself a criminal. Meanwhile, as a good maker ‒ or builder‒ he builds bridges with his former friends, both successful and one gay, and reports back to Sara, hoping that she will now let him sleep with her.
But Sara, who is in the travel business, needs to meet her revenue targets. So she promptly sends Tazaki off to Finland, where Kurono now lives. Not only does this help her earn her performance bonus, it also brings Tazaki face to face ‒ and, nudge-nudge wink-wink, chest to breast ‒ with Kurono, who revives his faith in himself by admitting that she was in love with him back in the days when harmony and order ruled their lives. Who cares if my name has no colour, Tazaki tell himself ‒ or not, because no male bluster allowed ‒ and returns to Japan to eat simple meals.
But there has been another cherry blossom thorn in Tazaki’s side, because just before leaving for Finland, he happened to see Sara arm in arm with another man, looking radiantly happy. After more than two worrying about the lack of colour in his name for over 200 pages, poor ‒ but actually the beneficiary of a handsome legacy from his father ‒ Tazaki now has to wait for Sara to tell him whether she is in fact seeing someone else. Wait for how long? Maybe 2017, when a sequel might be forthcoming?