From the Bookshelf of Book Riot's Read Harder Challenge…

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Haruki Murakami,

Philip Gabriel (Translator)

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Oct 02, 2014 Jeff Scott rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, japanese-fiction

We often cannot identify our true self. It is nearly impossible to hold up a mirror and determine our own abilities. We end up measuring our worth against others, what they think of us. We want to find a way to appraise ourselves, but this can only be found within. It is our own confidence that will draw others in.

Tsukuru Tazaki is a lonely man. He spends his days building railroad stations in Tokyo, a lifelong dream for him. Yet, he is unfulfilled. This wasn't always the case. He was once part We often cannot identify our true self. It is nearly impossible to hold up a mirror and determine our own abilities. We end up measuring our worth against others, what they think of us. We want to find a way to appraise ourselves, but this can only be found within. It is our own confidence that will draw others in.

Tsukuru Tazaki is a lonely man. He spends his days building railroad stations in Tokyo, a lifelong dream for him. Yet, he is unfulfilled. This wasn't always the case. He was once part of a group of five friends who were harmonious together. Each member had their own color, their own flavor to add to the group. Red, Blue, White, and Black all served a role from the star athlete and star pupil to the talent pianist. For Tazaki, his name meant gray field. He felt he was the most uninteresting of the group and brought nothing to it. As a result, when the group suddenly expels him he never questions it. It leads to a bad spiral downward for him and it is only years later that he set out to find out the truth.

This is a fairly straightforward Murakami. While it may hit many of the Murakami bingo points (see here http://www.incidentalcomics.com/2012/... ) it is a very plain story. An aspect that I have enjoyed with his work lately is the inclusion of a classical music piece that acts as the soundtrack for the book. In searching for the music, one can find other Murakami fans.

There are very little supernatural aspects (I was looking for something strange about their hometown such as in Kafka on the Shore, or something to do with time like 1Q84). However, this doesn't take away from the story and the main theme. One shouldn't rely on others for their worth. Furthermore, a harmonious relationship includes the good and the bad. Any relationship that doesn't acknowledge hardship cannot be truly harmonious.

Favorite passages:

You can hide memories, but you can't erase the history that produced them. P. 44

People whose freedom is taken away always end up hating somebody. P. 73

In the deepest recesses of his soul, Tsukuru Tazaki understood. One heart is not connected to another through harmony alone. They are, instead, linked deeply through their wounds. Pain linked to pain, fragility to fragility. There is no silence without a cry of grief, no forgiveness without bloodshed, no acceptance without a passage through acute loss. That is what lies at the root of true harmony. P322

That amazing time in our lives is gone, and will never return. All the beautiful possibilities we had then have been swallowed up in the flow of time. P341

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