Existential Romanticism in Haruki Murakami’s “Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage”

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

(Haruki Murakami)

Haruki Murakami’s Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage is an existentially romantic bildungsroman which explores the construction of selfhood in a traumatic narrative. Despite its postmodern fragmentation, coming to terms with his past and a pilgrimage for personal truth classifies Tsukuru’s narrative as more befitting of a romantic reading. In my essay, I will offer a brief synopsis of the novel, exemplifying how his growth reflects the romantic ideals of personal truth, self-efficacy, and acceptance, in line with Søren Kierkegaard’s existentialist ideals of living authentically. Followed by illustrating how transcendentalism from Emerson’s ‘The Over-soul’ and Gallen Strawson’s Episodic selfhood are instrumental for arriving at that view of self. Ultimately, concluding on how like Tsukuru, these ideals are reflected in both Murakami’s personal beliefs and novels, written for the purpose of promoting within his readers a more resilient selfhood apt for a modernized era.

Although Japanese by nationality, Murakami is known widely for his ‘nationality-less’ (Mukokuseki) writing style, lacking characteristics typical of traditional Japanese literature (Strecher 11). As a result, his work resisted categorization into literary categories of tsuzoku- shosetsu (popular novel) or jun-bungaku (pure literature). This would earn him the ire of the Budan (Japanese literary society) who refused to acknowledge his work as ‘true’ Japanese literature due to its commercialization and disengagement (as they see it) from the intellectual and moral issues (in a social, ecological, and political sense) of Japanese society (Suter 47, 59). Despite his rejection, Murakami remains a staunch proponent of personal truths and living authentically, criticizing the Marxist student leaders during the 1968 student rebellion, ‘They just talked in slogans all the time...words they used were strong and beautiful, but they weren’t their own...I just believe in honest words, from myself.’ (Strecher 10). Murakami’s belief in personal truth extends to his authorship, much like his protagonists, he resembles a romantic hero, rejected by the Japanese literary society, he kept true to his authorial style, believing that writing is what ‘he can do to help people in times of trouble’ (Kyodo).

Murakami’s novels revolve around protagonists questing to recover a meaning in life, individual identity and/or a deeper personal truth (Strecher 19). By either, introspectively reconnecting with their roots or confronting elements of their past (Strecher 44-45). Despite the romantic plot, he has primarily been considered as a postmodern author with his novels being pastiches of detective fiction and magical realism, told in fragments by unreliable narrators (F. Murakami). Despite its fragmentation, Turkuru’s narrative differs from his previous work. A realistic bildungsroman based on a spiritual pilgrimage, Tsukuru does not look inward for answers but outwards, visiting each friend to uncover the truth behind his exile. This by Murakami’s own admission (Poole) classifies this novel as divergent from his older works, warranting a closer reading for its romantic perspectives of selfhood.

In his youth, Tsukuru Tazaki had been part of an inseparable group of five children, each with a color in their names, key amongst which were his female friends, Shiro(adult name: Yuzu) and Kuro(adult name: Eri); despite understanding his importance in the group, he felt like an ‘empty vessel’, out-of-place with ‘no traits of note’. His name has no color in it (despite him wishing otherwise), instead, it represented ideals of a ‘builder’, which he exemplified through his fascination of train stations. A fascination that drove him to leave his friends to further his studies in Tokyo to fulfill his dreams of station construction. It was in his second year of college when his friends abruptly and inexplicably cut all ties with him. This traumatized him, shocking him into apathy and leading him to obsess over death. However, he ‘couldn’t conceive of a method that fit his pure intense feelings he had to death...If there was a door that led straight to death, he would not have hesitated to push it open.’. Illustrating that to Tsukuru, ‘Death’ is not merely an escape from pain but a romantically ideal beauty, of which the means of its achievement proved too distasteful for Tsukuru, hence preserving his life. It was only through a strong sense of jealousy invoked by a dream of a woman that awoke within him a desire, an emotion that allowed him to move past his circumstances and return to a sense of normalcy. Despite his newfound self, he has yet to come to terms with past traumas and it was only with Sara’s (his then girlfriend) encouragement that he embarks on a pilgrimage to confront his past (Charles). Positioned in a bildungsroman, Tsukuru is our romantic hero, melancholic, introspective and individualistic (Wilson), he chases a dream, endures great suffering, is haunted by his past, but eventually, guided by others, arrives at a more expansive understanding of self.

To Murakami, ‘innovations begin and ends with language’ (Strecher 10), hence, language use plays an integral part in the construction of his novels. One instance would be his protagonist’s use of the Japanese pronoun of ‘Boku’ to describe themselves. Understood as ‘I’ in English, Murakami uses ‘I’ to begin sentences, sometimes unnecessarily so, having characters speak their thoughts as opposed to thinking them (Morales). Referencing to self in the third person creates a ‘distance from ourselves’ leading protagonists to become ‘observers unto themselves’, able to detach themselves emotionally and rationally from the realities they inhabit (F. Murakami). This detachment also causes readers to find themselves distant from (as opposed as drawn into) the unfolding narrative. The theme of distance is shared with Strawson’s Episodic selfhood, where protagonists experience their pasts in distant episodes (Strawson). He purports that only the present self, ‘I’ of the moment exists, whereas past selves ‘I*’, are not ‘I’. ‘I*’s are past episodes that ‘I’s’ have access to, but ‘I’ and ‘I*’ are not the same person, and as the ‘I’ of the present apprehends the past, it recognizes that past events happened to ‘I*’, another self in another time (Strawson). This alludes to how ‘I’ is isolated not only temporally but also spatially. A reflection of individual isolation and alienation endemic in Japanese society (Bachnik), internally the present self, the observer unto self (the ‘I’ that does the apprehending) calls other selves (non-existent otherwise) into existence as it apprehends them, (Strawson) but is in fact, alone when not self-constructing other selves for company. As a result, although ‘I’ is isolated in the present, it is empowered to interpret ‘I*’s’ experiences and create their own sense of self. Episodic selfhood is evidenced in the postmodern fragmentation of Tsukuru’s narrative into three clear phases of self, youth, a college student, and an adult, with each iteration of Tsukuru possessing different beliefs and characteristics. Beside the fragmented narrative, the text clearly demarcates the separation between ‘I’ and ‘I*’. Example being, moving past his trauma of abandonment, Tsukuru acknowledges that ‘the boy named Tsukuru Tazaki had died.’ (Haruki Murakami 55), ‘death’ in this sense could refer to the death of his romantic youth, a closure on his previous phase of life; as if emerging from a chrysalis, he underwent both physical and mental changes. His physical appearance changed due to weight loss and he ‘no longer believed in the perfect community nor felt the warmth of chemistry between people’ (Haruki Murakami 53-55). This illustrates how Tsukuru applies an episodic understanding of self to distance himself from his past and overcome his traumatic experiences to return to a semblance of normality. While the certainty in which present-day Tsukuru, ‘I’, declares the death of his past self, ‘I*’, locates self-construction in the present, empowering the individual the liberty to determine their own view of the past.

Besides postmodern style and arrangement, Tsukuru’s narrative follows one of a Bildungsroman. Popularized by the German romantic Wilhelm Dilthey, a Bildungsroman is a literary genre centered around the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood. In Tsukuru’s case, the goal of his pilgrimage is an acceptance of past traumas, leading to personal truth and authenticity in line with Kierkegaard’s terms of “facing reality, making a choice and then passionately sticking with it.” (Holt). When read linearly, Tsukuru’s narrative charts key moments in his life as he matures from youth to adulthood, documenting his growing pains of surviving abandonment and learning acceptance. The marked difference between young and old Tsukurus’ understanding of ‘harmony’ is indicative in their depth of maturity, of which will be explicated in the following paragraph. Other romantic elements in his novel include references to nature as the sublime (Shmoop Editorial Team). One instance being, music as a central theme of the novel, Yuzu’s rendition of Franz Liszt’s Années de Pelerinage is visualized as a ‘groundless sadness called forth in a person’s heart by a pastoral landscape.’ (Haruki Murakami 71). While another being the end of his pilgrimage marked by a romantic ‘return to the pastoral’ (Waugh 504) as he escapes Tokyo and journeys (for the first time) to the ‘other world’ of Iceland to meet Eri deep in nature. Where they acknowledge their own pasts, and come to transcendental realizations of self, while Années de Pelerinage plays in the background. These romantic elements support that Tsukuru ’s narrative is romantic despite its postmodern retelling of it.

Tsukuru’s pilgrimage although a physical act of dislocation symbolizes an inward introspection, a spiritual journey into the recesses of one soul. The ‘existentially romantic’ nature of the novel can be observed more clearly in its conclusion where Tsukuru reunites with Eri.

'Maybe I am just an empty, futile person,' he thought. 'But it was precisely because there was nothing inside of me that these people could find, if even for a short time, a place where they belonged.' (Haruki Murakami 258)

“Let’s say you are an empty vessel. So what? What’s wrong with that?” Eri said. “You’re still a wonderful, attractive vessel. And really, does anybody know who they are? So why not be a completely beautiful vessel? The kind people feel good about, the kind people want to entrust with precious belongings.”

(Haruki Murakami 337)

In coming to terms in being an ‘empty vessel’, his rejects his worthlessness and creates meaning for the void within himself. An existential conclusion, he takes Eri’s belief he can be a ‘completely beautiful (empty) vessel’ and makes it his own, finding that he need not struggle to derive meaning for existence but find meaning and purpose in existence itself. However, not quite Sartre’s “Existence precedes essence”, Tsukuru instead redefines his essence, staying true to himself but adopting a different, more positive view of his being.

“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.” (Haruki Murakami 322)

Yuzu was mentally ill when she accused Tsukuru of rape, Tsukuru friends disbelieved her at first but presented with physical evidence on Yuzu’s person they were forced to cut Tsukuru off to protect her, convinced that he was strong enough to ‘swim alone in the cold night sea’ (Haruki Murakami 312). The passage above reflects a belief in Emerson's ‘The Over-soul’ that at some basic level humans are connected to each other (Emerson). This transcendental understanding brings him to realize that as much pain Yuzu (of which she was not to blame) has caused him, her actions were too motivated by pain (not quite her own), and it is through their shared pain which they are linked. He accepts how his history and selfhood was shaped by the hands of others, taking his past as a necessary fact and acknowledging how his pain has changed him, rather than hiding from it. This transcendental realization aids Tsukuru in understanding that ‘true harmony’ is all- encompassing, not found in joy alone, but in sorrow as well and it is the cumulation of life experiences that create his present self. This realization frees him from unforgiveness and past trauma allowing him to move forward, determine his own destiny and in Kierkegaard terms, live authentically.

'He suddenly noticed a cold, hard object near the center of his body— like a hard core of earth that remains frozen all year long...From now on, he had to make that cold core melt, bit by bit ...But his own body heat wasn’t enough to melt that frozen soil. He needed someone else’s warmth.

(Haruki Murakami)

His pain manifested as a “cold hard object within himself”, that when he realizes can only be removed with another’s help. Knowing that only Sara can melt that core, he makes a commitment to ‘build a station’ for her (Haruki Murakami 357-358), availing a permanent part of his heart for her presence, acknowledging that it is only with her love that he can truly be free of the past. This commitment brings him out of his self-imposed isolation, granting within him a desire and believing once again in the ‘warmth of connection between people’, but this time with a new understanding.

“Tsukuru Tazaki had nowhere he had to go.”

(Haruki Murakami 369)

Near the novel’s end, Tsukuru reflects on how all his life he felt a need to go somewhere but at the pilgrimage’s end, this need of relocation abated, revealing that he is ‘now here’ right where he needs to be, living authentically and in his personal truth. He understands the steps he must take to move forward, and even if rejected by Sara, and perhaps led to ‘die’ again. Despite which, Tsukuru understand his self as resilient and with a transcendental understanding of self, he acknowledges that although his old self may pass, a new one will take its place, as it has happened before, and he will continue to draw breath as ‘human hearts don’t stop so easily’ (Haruki Murakami 377). The novel concludes without a clear conclusion, we are uncertain if Tsukuru gained Sara’s acceptance or if he, in fact, murdered Yuzu. This implies that to Murakami, life imitates art and that there are no finalities (in life) but, a continuously written story.

Murakami believes that fiction is his means of ‘helping others’ (Kyodo) hence, Tsukuru ’s narrative can be understood as a parable of self-acceptance and living authentically. Guided by personal experiences and beliefs, Murakami aims to promote within his readers a selfhood capable of overcoming past traumas and deriving personal truth from their experiences. Marrying postmodern style with romantic thought, Tsukur’s narrative teaches us that our past selves are apprehended in the present. Events of the past could be understood as happening to ‘I*’ not ‘I’, freeing us from our pasts and allowing the self-efficacy to determine our own view of self. Guided by ‘existentially romantic’ ideals we will be able to face up past realities and determine our personal truth, although we cannot erase our pasts, we certainly should not be defined by them.

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