Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

More than most writers today, Japanese author Haruki Murakami possesses his own unique collection of images and tropes. They have become so essential to his work that he never writes a book without some combination of them. Wells, cats, jazz music, cooking, dreams, weird sex and the city of Tokyo are a few of the most notable — Murakami has his interests and sticks with them.

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Yet beyond all of those story commonalities, Murakami’s protagonists are often chiseled from the same stone. They’re quiet, simple men, living in Tokyo, listening to music, following a strict routine of solitary life and for the most part existing away from the hustle of the world. There’s something inherently comforting in such a life, unplagued by troubles and drama, but there’s also something profoundly lonely. When Murakami’s characters have friends, they’re often temporary, passing flashes of human companionship who fade away before any lasting connection can be made.

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage lives in that space of loneliness. The eponymous Tsukuru Tazaki, now a 30-something train station engineer living alone in Tokyo, recounts how his close group of high school friends suddenly cut all contact with him right after college began. Prompted by a new relationship, Tsukuru tries to confront the gaping loss of his past and learn why he was excised from the most important social circle he’d ever been a part of. It’s an exaggerated version of the general fading away of friendship throughout life, but like the best works of fiction, exaggeration only serves to heighten the truth of the real thing.  

Tsukuru believes he was the odd one out of the group, especially since the other four all had colors in their surnames, giving rise to their nicknames. He remained colorless, a vessel, useful for the other four to talk to but not much of a person himself. He resonates with those people who find themselves fading into the background of a group of more vibrant friends, prompting questions like, “Do I have any value of my own?” and “Am I just a piece of this social circle without any personal strengths?”

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki doesn’t have multiple worlds, mysteriously disappearing cats or many of the other distinctly strange elements that pervade Murakami’s most well-known and loved works. The novel confines most of its strangeness to obvious dream sequences instead of reality-blurring visions. The novel isn’t about a grand overarching conspiracy — it’s about one man confronting the idea that maybe there’s nothing special about him, that not only is he a vessel for others’ personalities, but he’s actively negative, a blight on others’ lives. It’s rough stuff, and Murakami doesn’t offer much in the way of answers. There’s no big resolution, no hugely grand reveal, but the incompleteness only bolsters the novel’s ideas about purpose or lack thereof.  

Is Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage Murakami’s best work? Quite possibly, though if you’re more of a lover of the strange, you might still hold The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle or Kafka on the Shore on that pedestal. Regardless of its lack of weirdness, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki boasts subtle finesse and holds a piercing sense of the wisdom of a long life. It isn’t overly complex, but it somehow encapsulates what it means to be a person more than anything else of Murakami’s. Like a warm cup of tea, like sitting on the porch as the night drifts off, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage is calming, reflective and achingly human.