Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

by Haruki Murakami

The four of us who stayed behind weren’t brave enough to venture out like you did. We were afraid of leaving the town we were brought up in, and saying goodbye to such close friends. We couldn’t leave that warm comfort zone. It’s like how hard it is to climb out of a warm bed on a cold winter morning. We came up with all kinds of plausible excuses at the time, but now I see how true this was.”

He closed his eyes and, as if floating in water, drifted in that world of pain. Still, being able to feel pain was good, he thought. It’s when you can’t even feel any pain anymore that you’re in real trouble.

Being alone in two senses of the word was maybe like a double negation of isolation. In other words, it made perfect sense for him, a foreigner, to feel isolated here. There was nothing odd about it at all. The thought calmed him. He was in exactly the right place.

Force yourself to try to explain it, and you create lies.

A strange mix of guilt and longing. Special emotions that arise only in a dark corner unknown to other people, where the real and the unreal secretly mingle.

“Those names are finished?” She nodded. “But you don’t mind still calling me Tsukuru?” “You’re always Tsukuru,” Eri said, and laughed quietly. “So I don’t mind. The Tsukuru who makes things. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki.”

No matter how honestly you open up to someone, there are still things you cannot reveal.

It’s just that it’s hard to survive in the real world. They’ve both been more successful than most, in their different fields. They put in a lot of honest, hard work. What I’m trying to say is, it wasn’t a waste for us to have been us—the way we were together, as a group. I really believe that. Even if it was only for a few short years.”

“We survived. You and I. And those who survive have a duty. Our duty is to do our best to keep on living. Even if our lives are not perfect.” “The most I can do is keep building railroad stations.” “That’s fine. That’s what you should keep doing.

“But I don’t have any confidence.” “Why not?” “Because I have no sense of self. I have no personality, no brilliant color. I have nothing to offer. That’s always been my problem. I feel like an empty vessel. I have a shape, I guess, as a container, but there’s nothing inside.

“You’re not a simple person. You just try to think you are.”

“I’m sorry to have woken you.” “It’s all right. I’m glad to know that time still keeps on flowing at four in the morning.

Tsukuru Tazaki had nowhere he had to go. This was like a running theme of his life. He had no place he had to go to, no place to come back to. He never did, and he didn’t now. The only place for him was where he was now.

Not that everything about it was wonderful: his chest ached, he found it hard to breathe, and a fear, a dark oscillation, had hold of him. But now even that kind of ache had become an important part of the affection he felt. He didn’t want to let that feeling slip from his grasp.