Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2013

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-12

Chapters 13-15

Chapters 16-19

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Chapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 1 Summary

Content Warning: This section features mental health issues, including depression and emotional distress.

When Tsukuru Tazaki was 20 years old, he was obsessed with dying for about six months. Tsukuru fell into this despair after his four high school friends dropped him from their tight-knit group without a real explanation. No longer being part of the friend group caused Tsukuru feel lonely and isolated.

The group originally became close friends while they were all volunteering at an after-school tutoring program. Because they were the only five who chose this program, they all looked at their friendship as a fateful convergence. Everyone in the group aside from Tsukuru has a color in their name: Two young men named Akamatsu or Aka (red pine) and Oumi or Ao (blue sea), and two young women named Shirane or Shiro (white root) and Kurono or Kuro (black field). The narrator describes the traits of each character. We also learn more about Tsukuru, who is very even-tempered and uninterested in everything except train stations.

The narrative shifts to the present. Tsukuru has a date with a woman named Sara. In his interactions with Sara, Tsukuru’s personality traits rise to the surface. Much of their dinner conversation centers on the friend group and how it came to be. Importantly, we learn that while Tsukuru left to attend university in Tokyo, the other four stayed in their home town of Nagoya. As Tsukuru details his life since his friends dropped him, the narrator hints that Tsukuru and his friends had conflict.

Chapter 2 Summary

Tsukuru became disconnected from his group on a return trip home to Nagoya. During a college break, Tsukuru was essentially ghosted by all of his friends. He tried continuously to call each of them, but they all intentionally avoided him. As time passed, Tsukuru realized that they had severed ties with him, which came as a shock. There was no indication that anything was different, and there were no clues to explain this sudden circumstance.

The narrative once again shifts to the present. Sara is sympathetic and curious; she continues to probe into what may have triggered such an abrupt friend break-up. Tsukuru, who is now in his mid-thirties, is no closer to the truth than when it first happened. All he knows is that this event changed him—it magnified his innate sense of struggling to belong in society.

The narrative once again shifts to the past. After being ghosted, Tsukuru struggled with his sense of self. He fell into a depression, and became quite indifferent toward life. Moreover, Tsukuru felt an actual physical change that coincided with the emotional changes that he endured.

Chapter 3 Summary

Tsukuru spent six months pondering death and feeling generally aimless. His ouster from the friend group set him on a track toward depression, and his body suffered as well: He lost a lot of weight and became sickly looking. At one point, Tsukuru decided that maybe he actually did die, imagining that he was just existing in some in-between state after death.

One night, Tsukuru had a strange dream during which he felt intense love for a nameless woman. In his dream, he experienced a fierce rage when the woman forced him to choose between her body or her heart, but not both. Overcome by jealousy at the thought of relinquishing either part of her to another man, he woke up drenched in sweat. Soon after, he realized that he no longer wanted to die.

Chapters 1-3 Analysis

The novel begins with a flashback that allows the narrative to dive right into the most significant event in Tsukuru’s life: being abandoned by his friend group. The plot line is asynchronous, moving from the past to the present and back again to provide more detail on the causes of this abandonment and its aftereffects. This jumping back and forth in time mimics the way Tsukuru perseverates on this emotional trauma—his thoughts are never far from his college experience, and the novel similarly returns to it over and over again.

This section reveals some of Tsukuru’s weaknesses as a person, exploring the theme of The Formation of Self. He is generally aimless as a college student, uninterested, and tends to feel as though he is a passenger in his own life. Within his friend group, he is given the nickname “colorless” because unlike those of his friends, his name does not contain reference to a color. The word “colorless” suggests that Tsukuru lacks vibrancy, vitality, and generally blends into the world. His existence does not offer contrast to the world around him. Another significant aspect of Tsukuru’s personality is his fascination with train stations: “everything about stations moved him deeply” (10). As we soon discover, the adult Tsukuru works as an engineer designing modifications to current stations—a seemingly perfect job for someone with his interest. Tsukuru’s love of train stations aligns him with transiency and an inability over the course of his life to ever feel as though he is fixed in the present. His thoughts are always on the move, only temporarily attaching to the present moment. Often, his mind wanders to past events, especially as the rejection from his friend group informs much of who he becomes.

In Chapter 3, an important narrative development takes place. Tsukuru has the first of the novel’s many vivid dreams. In the dream, Tsukuru is with a woman for whom he has a burning desire. The woman asks him to choose between having her heart or her body. Tsukuru becomes jealous, awakens from sleep, and realizes that his six-month infatuation with dying has come to an end. The events of his dream snap him out of his despondency. The lines between Dreams and Reality are thus blurred. Readers are left to wonder how dreams—manifestations of our subconscious—impose themselves on our conscious thought. Just how much do dreams influence our waking lives? That question becomes a central concern as the novel moves forward.