Sep 6

JQ Magazine: Book Review – ‘Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage’ by Haruki Murakami

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“Tsukuru Tazaki is more akin to a collection of related experiential pieces on existentialism rather than a straightforward story, which is why sometimes it can feel incomplete and unexplained. But there is a certain pleasure to be had from reading Murakami’s descriptive text, as he unhurriedly takes his time in building a backdrop by utilizing bits and pieces of asides and ephemera.” (Knopf)

By Eden Law (Fukushima-ken, 2010-11) for JQ magazine. Eden hails from the JETAA New South Wales chapter in Sydney, Australia, aging one hour at a time, his soul still empty, on the slow gentle slide to the eternal sleep of the grave. With the wind in his hair and a song in his heart, of course.

Haruki Murakami is a rare, superstar author who can engender the kind of excitement and anticipation more often seen with pop and movie idols. His latest novel, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, sold over a million copies in Japan in the first week, and overseas, the reception has been no less enthusiastic, with its release celebrated by midnight openings of bookstores with breathless fans queuing with anticipation.

Since its debut in English, the novel has topped the New York Times best sellers hardcover fiction list. As befitting such a book, it comes in a handsome dust jacket and cover designed by Chip Kidd, heavy with symbolism in blocked color bars and Japanese train routes peeking through plastic windows. Not all international covers for the book were created equally—check out this Tumblr gallery of all its international permutations, if you’re curious. It would seem that one doesn’t just read a Murakami novel; one experiences it.

I fully intended that last sentence to be facetious, but having finished the book, I’m not so sure I’m too far off the mark. In Tsukuru Tazaki, the author skillfully creates a world where characters are connected to each other by the most tenuous of relationships, gossamer-thin and fragile. For our eponymous protagonist, the most important relationship of his life—that with the only group of friends he has ever had—is suddenly and inexplicably severed, and he finds himself banished without explanation, causing a kind of spiritual trauma.

As he would describe it years later, it was like being thrown overboard into the dark cold sea, all alone, and set adrift, as he waited and even willed for death to come and take him. But in time, Tsukuru would recover, inured to being rootless, gradually rebuilding himself and over that wound, establishing himself outwardly as a comfortably successful single man, until he meets Sara, a woman with whom he contemplates risking having a deeper connection with. She, in turn, persuades him to go back and re-engage with the past, and to discover the reason for his exile so long ago, suggesting that such a trauma cannot be so easily shrugged off: “Maybe inside the wound, under the scab, the blood is still silently flowing. Haven’t you ever thought that?”

Murakami explores themes of loss and alienation with his characters, many of whom, like Tsukuru, have tightly coiled emotional cores masked by a carefully maintained professional exterior. But internally, there is a fear that the spirit is withering away, starved of genuine human connection until, as Tsukuru fears about himself, nothing more than an empty vessel is left, unappealing and useless to everyone else, further sinking one into that dark sea, adrift until death seems preferable. Perhaps this is why it has struck such a chord, particularly in Japan, where the cultural requirements of maintaining an acceptable public face is emphasized, though it would not be too hard to extend that to the description of disconnection about modern society in general.

In terms of style, Murakami does have a tendency to be verbose and indulgent. Sometimes he does get quite repetitive, either in describing the same things repeatedly or giving a paragraph a light sprinkling of synonyms. Depending on your preference, this predilection for deeply detailing just about everything either makes for a wonderfully immersive read, or a punishingly hard slog through the mundane. I find that it works well in creating wonderfully realized characters that come with their own set of quirks and idiosyncrasies, and being instantly recognizable as someone the reader might perhaps half-recognize in their own lives (though as people you might connect with—well, that probably isn’t the point).

It certainly works quite well in emphasizing the state of isolation for Tsukuru, describing his moments of stillness where nothing much happens except the passing of time: “He was sitting alone in a huge, old, vacant house, listening as a massive grandfather clock hollowly ticked away time…his heart was still a blank, as he aged, one hour at a time.” A kind of lyrical, rather rhythmic quality, like a pattern of notes underscoring the passages, echoes the frequent mention of music in the text much like the background noise to a surreal scenario, and there are telling instances of dreamlike episodes, both literally and metaphorically in the book.

But then once in a while well-worn phrases creep into the story, like describing an erotic dream with two women who are “naked as the day they were born.” Character conversations, for the most part, aren’t particularly deep and meaningful but are almost functional and perfunctory, short and sharp, straight to the point, in order to impart information and get things moving along. Murakami seems more preoccupied with the environment and surrounds rather than the actual human interaction—probably fitting, given the book’s central preoccupation.

When the book does delve into philosophical musings, like between Tsukuru and Haida, a young man he briefly forms a friendship with, it can get a bit esoteric and mystifying. It’s all very familiar in a Japanese way, somehow, as it incongruously reminds me of similar moments in lots of anime when some sort of exposition takes place, and just like watching those moments, it tends to go over my head—maybe it has some sort of significance if read in Japanese by someone well-versed with that culture (like longtime Murakami translator Philip Gabriel), but the delivery falls short across languages and cultures.

Tsukuru Tazaki is more akin to a collection of related experiential pieces on existentialism rather than a straightforward story, which is why sometimes it can feel incomplete and unexplained. But there is a certain pleasure to be had from reading Murakami’s descriptive text, as he unhurriedly takes his time in building a backdrop by utilizing bits and pieces of asides (like the rather fantastical story by Haida) and ephemera.

Whether or not you agree with the praise the author has received in his career, approach this novel differently from a more traditionally written novel, as something to be experienced, and take your time, rather than rush to discover what awaits Tsukuru at the end of his pilgrimage. Getting there, with this novel, is the point, rather than the destination itself.

For more JQ magazine book reviews, click here.