Book Review: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, by Haruki Murakami (2013, English translation 2014)

Haruki Murakami’s novel Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage was first published in 2013, and in an English translation by Philip Gabriel in 2014. The novel tells the story of Tsukuru Tazaki, who has four close friends during high school, two male and two female. His friends all have names that include colors, but Tsukuru does not, leaving him “colorless.” Tsukuru is the only one of the five who leaves their city for college, and eventually during college the four friends break off all contact with Tsukuru, for reasons that Tsukuru does not understand.  

In the present time of the novel, Tsukuru is in his late 30’s and is prodded by his new girlfriend to seek some closure about why his friends cut him off. I’ll leave the plot summary there, especially since the plot is not always the main point in Murakami’s novels.  

Unlike some of Murakami’s fiction that I’ve read, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki is set quite firmly in the real world, and the surreal elements that often appear in his fiction are nowhere to be found in this novel.  

Music, often so important in Murakami’s work, is a key motif in the novel. A suite of piano pieces by Franz Liszt, “Years of Pilgrimage” is frequently referenced in the novel, in particular the eighth piece “Le mal du pays.” Murakami references the late 1970’s recording of “Years of Pilgrimage” by the Russian pianist Lazar Berman. Fortunately, thanks to Spotify and other streaming services, it’s easy to find Berman’s recording and you can listen along as you read the novel. And, true to Murakami’s universe, where bossa nova always seems to appear, at a Lexus dealership “in the background an Antonio Carlos Jobim tune played.” (p.133)  

Tsukuru is a curious character, as he has gone through his life without attaching himself to very many people. He has no close friends, and he has had very few romantic relationships. As he says about himself, “But I don’t have any confidence...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.” (p.273) The plight of Tsukuru Tazaki is a stirring reminder of how hard it can be to make and sustain connections in this world.  

If you’re a fan of Murakami, you’ll enjoy the journey he takes you on in Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage.  

Book Review: Novelist as a Vocation, by Haruki Murakami (2015, English translation 2022)

The Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami has had a long and successful career since publishing his first novel in 1979. Murakami seldom makes public pronouncements, but in 2015 he published a book about his life as a writer. Titled Novelist as a Vocation, the book was translated into English in 2022 by Philip Gabriel and Ted Goossen.  

Novelist as a Vocation is an interesting book, as Murakami keeps saying that he doesn’t really have anything to teach us about being a writer. But yet he’s written a whole book about being a novelist. There were a number of times while reading the book when I thought “Huh, you know what? This Murakami guy is really a unicorn. A unique novelist, if I may be allowed to say so.” He says he’s never had writer’s block. (p.34-5) He doesn’t carry around a notebook, “It’s a real pain to carry a pad around.” (p.77) And he doesn’t write novels just for money, “My own personal policy for many years has been not to write novels because I’ve been contracted to or requested to, but I might be a rare case.” (p.113) All of these things led me to the conclusion that Murakami is a very rare case indeed. Murakami also tells us that he’s never appeared on TV or the radio to promote his books. (p.179) That’s all well and good for Murakami, but I hope he knows that many writers would love to have the opportunity for the media exposure that TV and radio would bring them.  

I enjoyed reading Novelist as a Vocation, as I’m always interested in writer’s processes. Murakami is a creature of habit, and he has obviously paid attention to French novelist Gustave Flaubert’s advice: “Be regular and ordinary in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.” This could be almost a mantra for Murakami, who follows much the same routine while he’s writing and produces about 1,600 words a day. (p.95) I understand that the daily accumulation of words is what is most important about writing a novel, but sometimes I wish a novelist would say “Yeah, I usually write 1,500 words a day, but sometimes I’m really cooking and push it to 2,000 or 2,500!” I’ve never heard any writer say this. They always say variations on what Murakami says, “So I punch in, write my ten pages, and then punch out, as if I’m working on a time card.” (p.95) There is a contrast I can think of: Thomas Wolfe supposedly marched around New York City chanting “I wrote ten thousand words today! I wrote ten thousand words today!” That’s an extreme example, of course. But I’d love to hear more novelists acknowledge that sometimes chance and inspiration play more of a role in their daily routines and word counts.  

As a baseball fan, I appreciate Murakami recounting the moment when he decided to write a novel: it happened at a baseball game in 1978, as Dave Hilton belted a double. And I agree with Murakami: “To fully appreciate a baseball game, you really have to be there in person!” (p.26)  

I loved this quote from the book: “It is my belief that a rich, spontaneous joy lies at the root of all creative expression.” (p.67) Murakami has a democratic, egalitarian view of the artistic process, and that strongly appeals to me. I won’t make the claim that all of us can become novelists who are as successful as Murakami has been, with healthy sales and a high critical reputation, but there’s always the possibility. And that should give every aspiring artist hope.  

Book Review: After Dark, by Haruki Murakami (2004, English translation 2007)

My paperback copy of After Dark, by Haruki Murakami, 2004, English translation 2007. (Photo by Mark C. Taylor)

Night. It can be scary, romantic, sexy, all sorts of things. Darkness can reveal strong emotions and passions, and novelist Haruki Murakami knows this well. Murakami’s 2004 novel After Dark takes place between midnight and dawn on a single evening.  

The main character of After Dark is 19-year-old Mari Asai, who is reading a book at a Denny’s when the novel begins. This Denny’s plays a lot of 1960’s easy listening music, which I found unlikely, but hey, it’s Murakami’s Denny’s, so they can play whatever he wants them to. Mari is eventually approached by Tetsuya Takahashi, an awkward college student a little older than Mari who plays jazz trombone. Tetsuya tells Mari that he knows her older sister, Eri. From my limited knowledge of Murakami, Tetsuya seems to fit the pattern of other male Murakami protagonists: nice, awkward, a little goofy, with lots of pop culture knowledge.  

To reveal more about the plot seems, as usual with Murakami, superfluous. It’s less about the specifics of what is revealed and more about the journey Mari goes on over the course of this evening. There were things I didn’t quite understand in After Dark, but that’s sort of par for the course with Murakami, isn’t it?  

I like art that compresses the time frame, as it generally heightens tension and moves the plot along. After Dark is a bit of an exception to this rule, as the time frame is very compressed, but for me there wasn’t much tension in the plot. That’s not really meant as a criticism, as I don’t think After Dark is trying to be a page-turning thriller. I read After Dark very quickly, but I wasn’t breathlessly wondering what came next. I know, that sounds like a contradiction, doesn’t it? Hopefully Murakami would appreciate the contradiction.  

There are some great quotes throughout After Dark. One of my favorites is from a bartender who tells Mari, “Time moves in its own special way in the middle of the night.” (p.78) That’s so true, as time can speed up or slow down at will after night falls. One of my other favorite quotes was this: “In this world, there are things you can only do alone, and things you can only do with somebody else. It’s important to combine the two in just the right amount.” (p.204)  

If you’re a night owl like me, go ahead and add After Dark to your nighttime reading list.  

Book Review: First Person Singular, stories by Haruki Murakami (2020, English translation 2021)

The cover for the English translation of First Person Singular, stories by Haruki Murakami. English translation 2021. 

The Japanese novelist and short story writer Haruki Murakami.

The Japanese author Haruki Murakami is best known for his novels, but he’s also published several collections of short stories. His most recent collection of short stories is First Person Singular, released in Japan in 2020, and in English translation in 2021. True to the title, all eight stories in the book are written in, well, the first person singular.  

The narrators of these 8 stories sometimes have quite a bit in common with the real-life Haruki Murakami. Sometimes they are even named Haruki Murakami. Does that mean that these stories are true? Well, I doubt that Haruki Murakami actually met a talking monkey, as the narrator does in “Confessions of a Shinagawa Monkey.” But you never know.  

The stories detail some of Murakami’s obsessions, like jazz, classical music, and baseball. Western pop culture is another recurring theme as well. I enjoyed all of the stories in the book, and my four favorites were “On a Stone Pillow,” “Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova,” “With the Beatles,” and “The Yakult Swallows Poetry Collection.”  

Describing the plots of Murakami short stories seems superfluous, as it’s less about what happens in the stories and more about the writing style. Murakami’s style is straightforward and easy to read, even as the events he’s describing might take a turn towards the surreal.  

In “On a Stone Pillow,” the narrator has a one-night stand with a woman who is afraid that she might yell out the name of another man during sex. She suggests that he can stuff a towel in her mouth so she can bite down on it at the moment of supreme passion. When that moment arrives, she does yell out a name, and even though her voice is muffled by the towel, the narrator can understand the name. “All I recall is that it was some nothing, run-of-the-mill name, and that I was impressed that such a bland name was, for her, precious and important.” (p.38)  

The woman also writes tanka poems, and she later sends him a collection of her poems that she has self-published. He ruminates about them, and wonders what they reveal about her personality.  

“Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova” is a humorous story about the narrator writing a satirical review of an album that never existed, titled Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova. The satirical review tells us that this album was released in 1963, as bossa nova was becoming known outside of Brazil and taking the jazz world by storm. Of course, this album never happened, because Charlie Parker died in 1955. The narrator even went so far as to invent a track listing for the album. Much to his surprise, many years later, he finds a copy of a record titled Charlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova in a small record store. He doesn’t buy it, and then of course he never finds it again. Moral of the story: buy weird albums when you find them, because maybe you’ll never see them again. Even if it’s a weird album that your subconscious mind dreamed up and that doesn’t even exist in reality. Because you never know.  

“With the Beatles” has little to do with the album of that name. A memory of a girl holding that album triggers a reminiscence of the narrator’s girlfriend in high school. She wasn’t much of a Beatles fan though, as she preferred easy-listening music like Percy Faith and Ray Conniff rather than the Fab Four. The narrator recounts an odd encounter he had with his girlfriend’s older brother. It’s a melancholy story, and it also references the Japanese author Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s short story “Spinning Gears.” 

There’s a beautiful part in the story where the narrator tells us about his high school girlfriend: “It’s hard for me to say this now, but she never rang that special bell inside my ears. I listened as hard as I could, but never once did it ring. Sadly. The girl I knew in Tokyo was the one who did it for me. This isn’t something you can choose freely, according to logic or morality. Either it happens or it doesn’t. When it does, it happens of its own accord, in your consciousness or in a deep spot in your soul.” (p.119-20)  

“The Yakult Swallows Poetry Collection” is a great short story about my favorite sport, and also Haruki Murakami’s: baseball. Murakami paints a picture of what it’s like to be a baseball fan. When Murakami was a young man the Sankei Atoms (later to change their name to the Yakult Swallows) were a pretty lackluster team. “I’d enjoy it when the team won the odd game, and when they lost, I’d console myself with the thought that it’s important in life to get used to losing.” (p.207) When you’re following a team over a 162-game season in the US, or a 144-game season in Japan, even the best team will lose about one third of their games. You’d better get used to losing if you’re a baseball fan. As Murakami writes, “It’s true that life brings us far more defeats than victories. And real-life wisdom arises not so much from knowing how we might beat someone as from learning how to accept defeat with grace.” (p.208)  

The Haruki Murakami who is narrating the short story tells us that he wrote a book of poems about baseball called The Yakult Swallows Poetry Collection. The narrator Haruki Murakami also wrote novels titled Hear the Wind Sing and A Wild Sheep Chase, just like the real-life Haruki Murakami. But to add to the confusion, the real-life Haruki Murakami did not write a volume of poems titled The Yakult Swallows Poetry Collection. (The narrator fooled me, as I went searching through Murakami’s bibliography.) And I suppose that’s the point: to make something sound like it might be true, even though it’s not. Because I’m a baseball fan, I love the idea of the real-life Haruki Murakami writing a book of poems about his favorite baseball team, even though it’s something only the fictional Haruki Murakami has done. If I ever meet the real-life Haruki Murakami, I’ll tell him I like his baseball poems. And maybe we can watch a baseball game together over some dark beer.  

First Person Singular is an absorbing collection of short stories, and a look into some of the obsessions and preoccupations of Haruki Murakami.