Analisis Novel Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage author: Murakami Haruki

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• Publisher: First published by Harvill Secker 2014 in London. First published in Japan by Bungeishunju Ltd. Tokyo in 2013

•  Setting of Time: Sixteen years ago, and the present of Tsukuru Tazaki

•  Setting of Place: Nagoya, Tokyo, Finland.

• Characters

A.    Main characters:

Tsukuru Tazaki

The protagonist, his given name mean is "To make or build" and his family name doesn't contain any color symbol. The character's current age is 36. Single. Liked train stations since childhood, and now makes a living designing train stations at a railway company in Tokyo.

Kei Akamatsu

He was a high-school friend of Tsukuru, and nicknamed Aka or "Red". Now a seminar seller still in Nagoya, he has a successful business that offers employee training to big companies in the area.

Yoshio Oumi

He was a high-school friend of Tsukuru, and nicknamed Ao or "Blue". Now a car dealer still in Nagoya, he sells Toyota's luxury car Lexus.

Yuzuki Shirane

She was a high-school friend of Tsukuru, and nicknamed Shiro or "White". She became a private piano teacher and lived in Hamamatsu, before being strangled to death in an unsolved murder six years ago.

Eri Kurono Haatainen

She was a high-school friend of Tsukuru, and nicknamed Kuro or "Black. Now a pottery artist, she married Edvard Haatainen, a Finn who came to Japan to learn pottery, then she moved to live in Finland as Eri Kurono and now has two daughters.

Sara Kimoto

Tsukuru's current love interest, her given name means "sal tree" and her family name "Under the tree". Two years older than Tsukuru, she lives in Tokyo and works for a travel agency.

Fumiaki Haida

One of Tsukuru's few friends from college, his family name means "Gray Paddy".  Two years younger than Tsukuru, he disappeared from the university before the beginning of the new semester.

B.     Secondary characters:

Haida's father

Haida's father was a college teacher. In the 1960s, he took a leave of absence from school to travel Japan and worked odd jobs. While being employed as handyman at a small hot-springs inn, he met Midorikawa, whose strange tale he later told his son.

Midorikawa

A jazz pianist from Tokyo, his family name means "Green River". According to the tale of Haida's father, he only played after placing a small bag on the piano, carried a deadly burden, and could see the color aura of people.

The stationmaster

He explains to Tsukuru that a lot of strange things are lost and found in his train station. One was a formaldehyde jar containing two severed sixth finger.

Sakamoto

A young coworker of Tsukuru. Despite his job, his other passion is genetics.

Olga

A younger friend and colleague of Sara. An energetic Finn who works in a Helsinki travel agency. She helps Tsukuru in Finland.

Edvard Haatainen

The husband of Eri. A Finn pottery artist. Tsukuru meets him while his wife and children are away.

The two daughters of Eri and Edvard

About 3 and 6 year-old. The oldest one was named Yuzu in memory of Eri's deceased friend.

•  Plot

Chapters 1–3

Tsukuru Tazaki is a 36-year-old man whose defining features are his love of train stations and the fact his four best friends all ceased to speak to him during his second year at university: "Like Jonah in the belly of the whale, Tsukuru had fallen into the bowels of death, one untold day after another, lost in a dark, stagnant void." He now lives in Tokyo and has started seeing a new girlfriend, Sara Kimoto, who works at a travel agency. As he explains to her over dinner, back in Nagoya his high-school friends were called Ao, Aka, Shiro, and Kuro nicknamed after a color in their surname, unlike his "colorless" one. They used to do everything together like the five digits of a hand, until that single phone call one day, when they "announced that they did not want to see him, or talk with him, ever again. It was a sudden, decisive declaration, with no room for compromise. They gave no explanation, not a word, for this harsh pronouncement. And Tsukuru didn't dare ask."

Chapter 4

After he overcame that loss and suicidal impulses ("Perhaps he didn't commit suicide then because he couldn't conceive of a method that fit the pure and intense feelings he had towards death."), Tsukuru befriended Haida (whose name contains "Gray") at university. They started doing everything together, and listened to classical music such as Franz Liszt's Années de pèlerinage: "Most people see Liszt's piano music as more superficial, and technical. Of course, he has some tricky pieces, but if you listen very carefully you discover a depth to it you don't notice at first. Most of the time it's hidden behind all these embellishments."

Chapter 5

One evening, Haida told him a strange story about his father: when he was a college student, he took a leave from his studies and worked in a secluded hot-springs inn where he met man who called himself Midorikawa (whose name contains "Green"), a jazz pianist from Tokyo who was incredibly talented: "His playing had the power to physically and viscerally move the listener, to transport you to another world." One evening, Midorikawa told him a strange story about himself: one month ago, he had willingly accepted a "death token" condemning him to die two months later unless he could pass it on to another volunteer, but despite his talent he was tired of his life : this near-death experience had opened for him "the doors of perception", making his last weeks more wonderful than the decades he was giving up, and it also made him able to see the color aura of people. During these tales, Tsukuru sometimes felt a sort of confusion between himself, Haida, his father, and Midorikawa.

Chapter 6

Later that night, while Haida slept over on his couch, Tsukuru had a strange erotic dream involving both Shiro and Kuro, who then merged and morphed into Haida before the climax. Tsukuru wondered for himself whether it was all a dream, then Haida didn't show up for next semester. All he left behind was the boxed set of Years of Pilgrimage he had lent Tsukuru.

Chapters 7–9

Sara states that if he wants to progress in his current relationship, he needs to find out what happened to move on emotionally. Since Tsukuru doesn't use the Internet, she'll help him getting started: "We live in a pretty apathetic age, yet we're surrounded by an enormous amount of information about other people. If you feel like it, you can easily gather that information about them. Having said that, we still hardly know anything about people." After using Google and Facebook to locate these former friends, she updates Tsukuru on their current whereabouts and even arranges for his travel tickets.

Chapter 10

Tsukuru travels to his home town of Nagoya and meets Ao, the former football jock who is now a successful Lexus dealer. From an apologetic Ao, he learns that Shiro had accused Tsukuru of rape, prompting all communications between the friends to cease. Shiro eventually became a successful piano teacher, but six years ago she was found strangled in an unsolved murder case.

Chapter 11

Several days later, Tsukuru arranges to meet Aka, now a trainer of corporate warriors. A successful but deeply unhappy man, Aka tells him that Shiro's story did not stack up at the time, and that Shiro seemed to have lost her love for life long before she died. Aka himself has issues, having belatedly realized after a failed marriage that he is gay, and feeling rejection from the people of Nagoya, including Ao, who dislike his somewhat shady business, taking up some psychological methods used by the Nazis. Tsukuru reassures Aka that he still cares for him and departs.

Chapters 12–13

Back at work in Tokyo, Tsukuru and his colleague Sakamoto visit a stationmaster whose strange tale reminds him of Haida's story. After discussing his findings with Sara over dinner, Tsukuru decides he has to know the rest of the story. To do so he must visit the only other surviving member of the friendship group, Kuro, who now lives in Finland with two daughters. While preparing for the visit, Tsukuru goes to buy presents for Kuro's children and sees Sara hand in hand with a middle-aged man, smiling in a way she never did with Tsukuru.

Chapters 14–15

Filled not with jealousy but with sadness, Tsukuru flies to Finland. In Helsinki, he enlists Sara's friend Olga to help him track down Kuro for an unannounced visit. The next day he drives to Hameenlinna, the rural town where she has her holiday cottage. He first meets her husband, the Finnish potter Edvard Haatainen. When she arrives with her daughters, Edvard takes the latter to do some shopping.

Chapters 16–17

Tsukuru stays alone with Kuro, now a successful pottery artist. Eri prefers to dispense with nicknames and explains that Yuzu was mentally ill. The rape accusation was a fabrication, but he was cut off as a way of not frontally contradicting Yuzu to enable her to deal with her problems. Eri reveals that she was in love with Tsukuru, which could have played a role in the accusation, but also that Yuzu was actually raped and had a miscarriage, then developed anorexia as a way of never being pregnant again. Eri told him nothing, maybe because he never noticed her love, but mostly to prevent a confrontation with Yuzu. Tsukuru was sacrificed to protect Yuzu because the group believed he was the strongest emotionally and could deal with the ban. These redemptive revelations gives lie to Tsukuru's own perception of himself as plain and colorless.

Chapters 18–19

Tsukuru returns to Japan a wiser man. Against Kuro's advice, he decides to press Sara on whether she is seeing someone else. Sara says she will need three days to reply. After a late-night profession of love by phone-call, the novel ends with Tsukuru still waiting and looking at the traffic in a train station.

•  Implication: The most valuable implication of Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage is the obligation to respect all the multitudes contained within a person and always communicate when there is a problem so it wont cause a misunderstanding.