Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami is a book of growth, about a person gaining color and facing his past.
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage Synopsis
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage is the remarkable story of a young man haunted by a great loss; of dreams and nightmares that have unintended consequences for the world around us; and of a journey into the past that is necessary to mend the present. Here Haruki Murakami—one of the most revered voices in literature today—gives us a story of love, friendship, and heartbreak for the ages.
Book review
The story takes place in Tokyo, Nagoya, and Finland. It describes a physical journey to discover a hidden past, but more than that it describes a personal journey. One of growth and a second coming of age.
After losing his friends, Tsukuru loses the will to live. He survives, but barely, and his body still shows the signs of nearly starving to death. He can’t shake the thought that he did perhaps really die when his four friends rejected him. That the young man he was ceased to exist and only the shell remains.
Jealousy is what makes him want to live again. A jealousy that “was not a place he was forced into by someone else, but a jail in which the inmate entered voluntarily, locked the door, and threw away the key.” With the prison being his own heart, as hard as a stone wall. A place he calls the very essence of jealousy.
He experiences growth but is still haunted by what happened in the past. His new girlfriend points that out to him and helps him revisit his past and find out what happened over sixteen years ago. “You can hide memories, but you can’t erase history.” Throughout the book, Lazar Berman’s performance of Years of Pilgrimage makes appearances. A passage from this recording kickstarts his memories of his friends.
The main character, Tsukuru Tazaki, grew up in Nagoya. His friends all have names with colors in them, and he is the only one without a colorful name so he feels left out. Hence Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki. His group of friends is called the ‘circle’. As Tsukuru leaves Nagoya to study in Tokyo, he is the first to step outside the circle and without him, the circle slowly falls apart.
Tsukuru experiences strange (sexual) dreams in which the girl Shiro (from his circle of friends) and Haida (a new friend who also has a colorful name) make an appearance. At one point he is not sure whether it actually happened or not. When people keep leaving his life he thinks he is fated to always be alone. And until he comes to terms with what happened in the past, he probably will.
At one point Haida tells Tsukuru an extraordinary tale about something his father experienced in Oita on Kyushu Island. A story of life and death and what in life is worth living for. “You should be able to handle what life sends your way. You need to use the thread of logic, as best you can, to skillfully sew onto yourself everything that’s worth living for.”
When Tsukuru finally travels to Nagoya and later to a lakeside cabin in Finland, he begins to understand what happened in the past. He won’t get his sixteen lost years back and there are a lot of might-have-beens but now he has a chance for the future. Even though the book has an open ending, it seems to me that he will find something worth living for.
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage is a book of growth, about a person becoming stronger and facing his past. At first Tsukuru travels alone but later others join his pilgrimage. It was nice to follow his journey from the start until his new beginning. Tsukuru is not a perfect person and he never will be. It is inspiring to see how he takes the first step and moves from inaction to action to make something of his life. In a sense, his pilgrimage gives him color.
Translated from Japanese by Philip Gabriel.
Questions for reflection
This is the first book I read by Haruki Murakami and a very inspiring one at that. For me it was less about the surreal parts of the novel but more about the questions:
- How do you give your life color?
- What actions can you take yourself and where do you need the help or nearness of others?
Something to reflect on after finishing the book.
Interested?
You can get your copy of Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage from Amazon.
