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Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his years of pilgrimage.

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DOI: 10.1037/pap0000038

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 Psychoanalytic Psychology © 2016 American Psychological Association
2016, Vol. 33, Supplement 1, S137–S152 0736-9735/16/$12.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pap0000038

Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His

Years of Pilgrimage
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

Marilyn Charles, PhD, ABPP

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Austen Riggs Center, Stockbridge, Massachusetts

Literature has long been a means by which writers and readers attempt to make
sense of the complexities of human life and experience. Fiction affords the
reader a vicarious experience, an opportunity to engage deeply but with suffi-
cient distance to be able to titrate whatever discomfort is entailed in delving into
difficult territories. Metaphor pulls the reader into the more experiential aspects
of knowing, inviting greater contact with primary process and with affect, in
particular. Haruki Murakami is one author who explicitly and implicitly ex-
plores the subterranean terrain of dreams, desire, and unconscious motivation,
using his peculiar brand of imaginary fiction to invite us into experiences that
cross borders of space and time. Many of Murakami’s novels can be seen as
traumatic narratives, in which we are offered fragments that are difficult to put
together. In his recent novel, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of
Pilgrimage, Murakami (2014) once again offers a traumatic narrative to directly
consider issues regarding history and memory through the characters. In this
article, I will consider ways in which he addresses interpersonal trauma, ex-
ploring how we can injure one another through lies and deception, and then
become lost to ourselves.

Keywords: trauma, narrative, identity

Our patients come to us because they are stumbling in their lives or, perhaps more
pointedly, stumbling in their lies. The life’s journey entails putting together a narrative
that makes sense to us, that puts together the pieces of our lives sufficiently that we can
find our way. At times, however, the stories we are offered in childhood are so incomplete
that there is not sufficient cogency and we stumble over the gaps. This type of gap and the
incoherency that accompanies it are signals of a traumatic story that has resisted telling.
Such a lack of coherence impedes the development of a secure and stable self, which
invites shame, thereby further covering over the story. Shame invites us to turn away, to
cast down our eyes such that it is difficult to recognize and face whatever stands in our
way. This is the blind eye that can be seen at the heart of the Oedipal dilemma

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Marilyn Charles, PhD, ABPP, Austen
Riggs Center, 25 Main Street, P.O. Box 962, Stockbridge, MA 01262-0962. E-mail:
mcharlesphd@gmail.com

S137
 S138 CHARLES

(Bion, 1977). In turning away from whatever seems impossible to face, we become lost
in a universe in which we are imprisoned by our own negative self-evaluation that seems
to bear the face of an oppressive other. There is no escape from the internalized critical
eye, the gaze that marks our lack, our unworthiness.
Literature has long been a means by which writers and readers have attempted to make
sense of the complexities of human life and experience, to propose and play with
prospective meanings and possibilities. Traditionally, myths had been the stories that held
the essential mysteries of the human spirit in a time when culture was more cohesive.
Today, however, with greater mobility and access to information, there is always another
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possibility that breaks into cultural presumptions derived from one’s own particular
heritage. Literature and psychoanalysis each in their own way serve the mythic function
in these modern times in which “in the absence of an effective general mythology, each
of us has his private, unrecognized, rudimentary, yet secretly potent pantheon of dreams”
(Campbell, 1949, p. 4). Like myth, literature provides a structural frame through which the
reader can consider various elements of the story in relation to one another without losing
sight of the whole. In marking particular challenges and ways of being through the
characters, the novelist can play out possibilities as the narrative evolves. Literature also
affords the possibility of diverse perspectives on a story or even on a character, as we are
offered internal versus external vantage points. Psychoanalysis less explicitly affords that
type of transitional space within which to consider possibilities beyond whatever has
seemed fixed and unalterable.
Literature invites the reader into a vicarious experience that can simulate social
interaction, affording the opportunity to try an experience or a way of being on for size,
to identify with the characters and the dilemmas in which those characters find themselves
(Mar & Oatley, 2008; Kuiken, Miall, & Sikora, 2004). Through this type of deep
immersion, reading can provide a type of expressive enactment that includes the affective
engagement Gallese (2009) has termed embodied simulation. Literary devices such as the
use of kinaesthetic imagery and metaphor invite emotional engagement and “prompt
reflection on felt meanings, and loosen the boundaries that normally delimit conceptual
understandings” (Sikora, Kuiken, & Miall, 2011, p. 266). Primary process engagement
symmetrizes meanings and further heightens our responsiveness to the structure, rhythms,
and other formal aspects of the text (Matte-Blanco, 1975).
Fiction affords an opportunity to engage deeply but with sufficient distance to be able
to titrate whatever discomfort is entailed in delving into difficult territories. Metaphor
pulls the reader into the more experiential aspects of knowing, inviting greater contact
with primary process and with affect, in particular. Metaphor also provides the safety of
the displacement, through which we can hide from precisely what we need to be able to
recognize and to bear in order to move forward on our path. Although psychoanalytic
theory owes many debts to myth and to literature, our earnest studies in our field can push
fiction to the side, to our detriment. Over time, I have learned to repair that imbalance and
have come to recognize the importance of immersing myself in both theory and literature
sufficiently to have access to literary metaphors and themes along with those culled from
the psychoanalytic texts (see, e.g., Charles, 2015).
From the other side of that divide, Haruki Murakami is one author who explicitly and
implicitly explores the subterranean terrain of dreams, desire, and unconscious motivation,
using his peculiar brand of imaginary fiction to invite us into experiences that cross
borders of space and time. Many of his novels take the form of a labyrinthian, enigmatic
maze in which the principal character becomes caught. The labyrinth, as a trope, can be
linked to Lacan’s (1978) ideas of anamorphosis, something that becomes visible when it
 YEARS OF PILGRIMAGE S139

can be viewed from a new perspective. That moment of novelty, of defamiliarization, is

fundamental to art, which functions precisely at that juncture where we are jarred from a
habitual way of engaging to discover that there is something more to be discovered,
something that had been hidden behind our force of habit. That capacity to suddenly see
things from a new vantage point is also fundamental to the psychoanalytic journey, in
which what we are seeking often is hidden in plain sight. The challenge is to discover— or
rediscover—the meaning (Parsons, 1986).
Many of Murakami’s novels can be seen as traumatic narratives, in which we are
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offered fragments that are difficult to put together. This type of fragmented narrative is
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perhaps most notable in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (Murakami, 1997), in which we are
offered pieces of personal and cultural history, dream and waking life, as the character
tries to locate himself in space and time. Through these literary devices, Murakami invites
us into a process of discovery that can be similar to the analytic journey, as we allow the
bits to flurry and flutter, coalescing over time into meaningful signs, symbols, and
structures. In both psychoanalysis and literature, there is an important interplay between
the structure that contains the meanings and the freedom that affords sufficient room for
creative engagement to allow the fragments to reveal themselves over time. The openness
of this process, the fact that there is no absolute ending but rather that discovery and
revelation can continue to evolve over time, is an essential aspect of life, literature, and
psychoanalysis.
In his recent novel, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, Murakami
(2014) once again offers a traumatic narrative to directly consider issues regarding history
and memory through the characters. In this novel, he addresses interpersonal trauma, the
ways in which we can injure one another through lies and deception, and then become lost
to ourselves. Notably, it is the meaning of the event to the character, not the facts
themselves, that marks the experience as traumatic. The novel begins with our introduc-
tion to a young man who is focused on dying. We learn that his vitality has been killed
off by the sudden loss of the friendships that had enlivened his childhood.
Tsukuru Tazaki had been part of a group of five children who had been inseparable
throughout childhood. He had been the only one of this group of five close friends whose
name had not marked a particular color, leaving him feeling colorless, different, and
insignificant. His name, given to him by his father, had been carefully chosen to designate,
not a creator, but rather a builder. The inference had been that the father had wanted to
provide a possibility for his son rather than an imposition. Tsukuru, however, was so
focused on feeling colorless in relation to his companions that he had no sense of any
particular gifts, nothing that made him special. That idea solidified when his friends
unilaterally rejected him without explanation during his college years. Unable to repair
this rift or to put together a story that makes sense to him, Tsukuru finds himself cast
adrift, unable to derive pleasure or to move on with his life.
The other members of the group had each shown particular talents and had expressed
some ambition to move out into the larger world, but when the time came to leave home
for college, all of the others had stayed in their hometown. Tsukuru had been the only one
to move away, going to a place where he could fulfill his dream of learning to build train
stations. In that way excluding himself from the tight bonds of this circle of friendship,
Tsukuru’s energies and social life had been focused on those occasions when he could
return home and be reunited with his friends. Suddenly, however, upon one return home,
he had found the way blocked. None of his friends accepted or returned his calls and he
never heard from any of them again. Utterly perplexed, dismayed, and abandoned, the
 S140 CHARLES

rejection had been unassimilable. It was as though he had no substance and no value.
Worse still, it was as though he had never truly existed.
After being rejected by his friends, for half a year Tsukuru felt as though he was on
the verge of dying. Later, he wondered whether he had, indeed, truly died during that time.
He felt like an empty shell. It was only in meeting Sara some years later, in his mid-30s,
that he begins to have feelings again, some of which, like jealousy, he had never before
experienced.
In Murakami’s novels, the line between dream and waking life can be virtually
invisible. In this way, there is always the sense of the permeability of conscious and
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unconscious processes. The intensity of Tsukuru Tazaki’s feelings was awakened in a

dream in which he discovered that he could only have the heart or the body of the woman
he loved. He found that choice both compelling and impossible. Later, he realizes that this
encounter in the dream marked the moment when he stopped wanting to die. As he begins
to come back to life, he can see a new face in the mirror and realizes that he is becoming
a man. It occurs to him that it was the boy he had been who had died. Gradually, Tsukuru
becomes accustomed to the changes he can see in this new self as it evolves slowly over
time. He describes the changes, with some reverence, in terms of “acquiring a new
language, memorizing the grammar” (p. 56).
Murakami often invokes a musical theme that might play in the reader’s mind while
reading that particular book. In this book, it is a particular rendition of Franz Liszt’s ‘Le
mal du pays’ from his Years of Pilgrimage Suite that is highlighted. The piece had been
played on the piano by Shiro, one of Tsukuri’s childhood friends, and was later reintro-
duced to Tsukuru through a friend he met swimming. The piece can be translated as
“homesickness,” in this way condensing memories into melancholy. The reintroduction of
this piece of music in his current life very directly links past and present, insisting on
marking the melancholy that continues to affect him and is obstructing Tsukuru’s ability
to live fully in the present or to build a future.
His enigmatic but kindly friend, Haida, leaves his recording of that music in Tsukuru’s
apartment and also leaves him with a story about an encounter Haida’s father had when
he was young. The story, much like a dream, marks meanings in the displacement,
providing further signs, symbols, and metaphors that will play upon the reader as the
narrative unfolds. In the story, the father encounters a jazz pianist who has come to the
countryside for a rest. The father is also named Haida, stressing to the reader that there is
something passed down from father to son that is essential. Remember that Tsukuru, too,
has inherited his name from his father, who chose carefully this name, bestowing upon his
son the designation, not of a creator (which might have imposed too much demand) but
rather of a builder, one who makes things.
In Haida’s tale, the father is treated to an utterly absorbing piano solo by a jazz
musician who has come to the country for respite. The pianist, Midorikawa, plays for
Haida in ways he finds utterly transporting. But the pianist then relates to the young Haida
a story about a deal with the devil. In telling that story, he speaks about the fragility of
talent, the ways in which talent can be ephemeral and easily broken down, the ways in
which talent can be destroyed by desire. This story, we can only appreciate later on,
presages the later denouement that will help us to make sense of aspects of Tsukuru’s
childhood relationships that had previously been incomprehensible to him.
Midorikawa tells Haida that each person has his own color, and that there is a
particular color that marks those to whom death can be transferred, who are not afraid of
taking the type of leap required in order to stand in that place of possibility. According to
the musician, the agreement to take on death affords the individual extraordinary powers,
 YEARS OF PILGRIMAGE S141

including a sense of heightened clarity. These powers include the ability to expand one’s
consciousness such that perception becomes truer and less adulterated, as though a fog
were lifting. Midorikawa describes an exhilarating sense of omniscience, as though one
has a privileged view of the universe and can glimpse things one has never before seen.
Transcending the traditional gaps between reason and experience, there is the sense of
being at one with one’s intuition. He describes this experience as both a wonderful and a
hopeless sensation because one recognizes, “almost at the last minute . . . how shallow and
superficial your life has been” (p. 98). Midorikawa suggests that the state he is describing
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is the realization that occurs at the point of death, a realization that, if it occurs earlier,
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might invite a different way of living, one that perhaps has greater depth because one is
in a position to recognize the value and potential that otherwise might be wasted.
Along with this expanded consciousness, says Midorikawa, comes the ability to
perceive the colors that people emit. In that way, the individual can recognize others who
have this particular capacity. Haida, the father, begins to realize that Midorikawa is telling
him the story because he recognizes in him that capacity. The tension, in this moment, lies
in the recognition of the dualities inherent in this story within a story, as Haida the father
recognizes a call to action that he might or might not take up and we, the readers,
recognize that, in tandem, Haida the son is telling the same story to Tsukuru. Although
colorless Tsukuru cannot imagine himself as the person who might accede to such a call,
he can, over time, recognize this capacity in his friend. That recognition helps him
eventually to be in a position to accept the loss of his friend as a call to action. That call
had been marked by his friend as best he could, albeit not directly, but rather in a story
whose meanings emerge over time, as Tsukuru is able to recognize and begin to reflect on
them.
Murakami often tells two (or more) stories at the same time, which he does again in
this novel. Chapters detailing Tsukuru’s earlier life are interspersed with chapters detailing
his current life. In this way, Murakami insists that the stories are inherently related and
relevant to one another. The reader stumbles over the gaps and disjunctions much as does
the main character, himself. Most notably, Tsukuru does not even realize how profoundly
he is stumbling over the gaps in his history until he sees those gaps reflected in the mirror
of Sara’s mind. In this way, Murakami provides the type of encounter with truth that
Lacan (1977a) links to the possibility of stumbling within the analytic discourse. It is only
in such a way, contends Lacan, that some greater truth might be revealed. The paradox,
he writes, is “that the discourse in an analytic session is valuable only in so far as it
stumbles or is interrupted: if the session itself were not constituted as a cut in false
discourse, or rather, to the extent that the discourse succeeds in emptying itself as speech”
(p. 299). The lie must fail, or at least falter, to be revealed.
We are always ambivalently in search of a greater truth that is inevitably painful
because we catch ourselves in the moment of hiding. In this way, we are in a similar
position to the young child who closes her eyes and believes she cannot be seen. Seeing
ourselves thus exposed has a pinch to it. Making our peace with the part of us that winces
at such exposure helps us to keep looking and learn what lies beyond the reactively closing
eyes. Opening our eyes can be painful, as in the moment when Tsukuru sees Sara looking
at another man in a way he has never seen. That gaze, in marking for him what is missing
in their relationship, also marks a possibility that he can hope to attain, something that
previously had not been imaginable because he had never been sufficiently present to be
able to invite and receive such a glance. This and becomes important when Tsukuru
discovers from his old friend Kiru that she had, indeed, once gazed at him in such a
 S142 CHARLES

fashion and he recognizes that he had not been sufficiently present in himself to be able
to receive the gaze.
In the novel, it is Sara who recognizes and insists that the stories are inextricably tied
to one another. She can see ways in which Tsukuru’s emotions are utterly blocked and
suggests that the unresolved questions from the past are keeping him from being present
in his current life. She encourages him to go back and find out what happened, to discover
for himself whatever he needs to know in order to set himself free from the past that is
haunting him. She recognizes ways in which his hiding only further entraps him, like the
child who closes his eyes to what he prefers not to see. Although he might be able to hide
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from his memories, she suggests, the hiding does not erase the history that gave rise to the
memories but rather leaves it further fixed and intractable. Quite intently, with delibera-
tion, she tells him that he needs to keep in mind that he cannot erase or change history,
that to do so “would be like destroying yourself” (p. 42).
After hearing about the elder Haida’s encounter with the jazz musician, Tsukuru has
an odd experience that is so lucid that he is certain it cannot be a dream. In it, his friend
Haida comes into his room. Tsukuru feels utterly immobilized. He cannot even speak. He
thinks about Haida’s story, in particular about the small bag the musician had laid upon
the piano. He senses that this bag was the key to the story. Tsukuru falls asleep again and
awakens into another dream in which he is in bed with the two girls, Kuro and Shiro, who
had been part of his childhood circle of friends. They had always seemed intertwined to
him, he could never entirely separate one from the other even though they had distinctly
different characters, Kuro solid and engaged, Shiro fragile and ephemeral. As they are
having sex in his dream, however, the girls turn into his friend, Haida. Afterward, Tsukuru
searches for words but circling in his head is the melody of “Le mal du pays.” He then falls
deeply into sleep. When he awakens, everything seems the same as always, quite ordinary,
though he has the sense of a certain intensity in Haida’s gaze. The friends have breakfast
and go swimming together, and then Haida leaves.
Haida is gone for about 10 days without explanation and then just as suddenly shows
up once again at the swimming pool. After exams, however, Haida returns home and
Tsukuru never sees him again. Upon investigation, he discovers that Haida has, indeed,
known he was leaving but never told this to Tsukuru. This intentional omission is
troubling to Tsukuru, re-evoking the mysterious rejection and abandonment of his child-
hood, the sense of having too little value to be worth holding on to. During this time,
Tsukuru continues to be troubled by his erotic dreams in which his two childhood friends
are always intertwined. We learn that it was only after Haida left that Tsukuru had his first
sexual relationship with a woman. That relationship had freed something up in him,
opening a door that had been closed.
Unlike Haida, who spoke through metaphor, Sara tries to help Tsukuru more directly,
by finding out where he can find his four lost friends. He goes to visit them, each in turn,
and discovers that Shiro, the fragile young pianist, is dead. He also discovers that she was
the one responsible for the sudden alienation from his friends’ affections. Shiro, he
discovered, had accused him of raping her. Even though the other three did not entirely
believe her story, they supported her because of her fragility. When Tsukuru asks his
friend, Ao, why he never approached him to discover his side of the story, Ao replies that
their first concern had been for Shiro, and that Kuro had enjoined the other two to accede
to Shiro’s demand to cut Tsukuru off entirely. Tsukuru then reveals to his friend his sense
of himself as the empty member of the group. Ao is surprised by this view and counters
with his own sense that Tsukuru had, rather, kept the group stabilized and afforded a sense
of security. His going away to college had dealt a blow to the group that left them
 YEARS OF PILGRIMAGE S143

untethered. When Tsukuru leaves his old friend, he is still puzzled as to why Kuro had
taken such a cold and unyielding stance that was, from his perspective, utterly untrue.
The second former friend he engages, Aka, acknowledges that Tsukuru had been cut
off utterly and completely, with neither mercy nor pity, for something that retrospectively
one could recognize he never could have done. At the time, says Aka, they felt they had
no choice because Shiro’s pain was so compelling and because of the intense pressure
from Kuro. In the wake of having cut off ties with their friend, however, they began to
question Shiro’s story and felt increasingly confused with the passing time. In thinking
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back to that period of time, Aka suggests that although Shiro had a certain talent, she had
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been driven to excel beyond her capacities. That drive had resulted in increasing pressure,
which began to manifest in increasingly strange behavior. Through this reminiscence,
Murakami returns to the theme invoked by the story of the jazz pianist, affirming the
importance of being able to know oneself sufficiently to be able to recognize and make use
of one’s gifts without torturing oneself by desiring more than one can manage.
Confronted by Tsukuru, Aka is able to recognize more fully the harm the four friends
had done. He also recognizes that they had not been able to protect Shiro from the forces
that were impinging on her. He recalls with pain the last time he saw Shiro, shortly before
she died. At that point, he says, the spark she had as an adolescent was gone. Her intense
vitality had been drained from her, leaving an empty space. In that way, it was as though
some essential aspect of her had died even before she was killed, leaving a hole in Aka’s
heart, one that had never been filled. In thinking back over those times, Aka is filled with
regret at what he had done to his old friend.
Aka leaves Tsukuru with the parting shot: “Each of us is given the freedom to choose,”
he says, “That’s the point of the story” (p. 218). In striking contrast to this statement,
Tsukuru had not felt free within the group. He had, rather, felt at their mercy. He treasured
the friendship so much that he had not dared to pursue other relationships lest he break up
the harmony. When he talks to Sara, she highlights for him the impossible constraints that
his excessive valuing of the group had placed on him, and suggests that in some ways it
had been too good, leaving him “locked up inside the perfection of that circle” (p. 231).
The group had been so important to him that he had had been eclipsed by his friends and
had failed to define his own being.
As he reflects on the utterly false accusation made by Shiro, but now in relation to the
unsettling images and urges he has discovered in his dreams, Tsukuru finds himself
confused. He even wonders whether he could have been capable of the crime of which he
was accused. Sara urges him to continue his efforts to try to understand his past, so that
he can release the obstruction that is impeding the natural flow of his emotions. As he
persists in these efforts, he begins to realize that it is loss that is blocking him, not only
the loss of his childhood friends but also the loss of his friend, Haida. It is not until he sees
Sara with another man that he feels the full extent of his emotions, in a searing pain that
then subsides into a quiet sorrow. Most painful to Tsukuru was how happy she had looked.
He had never seen her that happy when they were together. He feels hollow and wonders
if his friendships had arisen precisely because of that hollowness, offering his wounded
friends a refuge.
When Tsukuru finally meets his old friend Kuro once again, she is caught by the
intrusion of past into present that this meeting brings and remarks on the ineluctable
interconnections between all things. She muses over how complicated life can be, such
that one can cause harm in spite of one’s best intentions. In paying attention to Shiro’s
difficulties, she had neglected her other friend, Tsukuru, causing complications she could
 S144 CHARLES

never have anticipated. The unseen problems then multiply, and it is not an easy challenge
to free oneself from them, laments Kuro.
Tsukuru tells Kuro, now called Eri, of the toll that the rejection had taken on him, how
he had teetered at the edge of an abyss but had somehow managed to regain his balance
and find his way back into living. The quality of his living, however, had remained
impeded by the traumatic impact of the rejection by his friends in ways he had not even
been able to recognize until Sara made them visible. Because he had not known what
happened, he remained haunted by the fear that it could happen again, that he could
be suddenly cut off and left adrift, without moorings or even any external recognition
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that anything was awry. He describes the intense, recurrent fear that he has not been
able to overcome that overtakes him at times, that “suddenly my very existence will
be denied and, through no fault of my own, I’ll be hurled into the night sea once more”
(pp. 304 –305). He suspects that this fear undergirds the distance he has always kept
between himself and others, a distance that has impeded his ability to build deep or
enduring relationships with others.
Eri tells Tsukuru that she cut him off because it was the only way she had of protecting
Shiro. Because Shiro had offered a forced choice, Kuro felt that she had to completely
accept Shiro and her story and reject her other friend entirely. As the two old friends
search for answers to the mystery of why Shiro had devised this story, Eri conjectures that
it was because she had known that Eri was in love with Tsukuru. Whatever the reason, for
Shiro, the rape had been the truth, a truth she clung to. Evoking in the reader the memory
of Tsukuru’s dream experience, Eri affirms her belief that “sometimes a certain kind of
dream can be even stronger than reality” (p. 310). That, suggests Eri, is the type of dream
that Shiro had been caught up in. In relation to her friend’s certainty, Eri had felt that she
had no choice, that the only thing she could do at the time was to cut Tsukuru off, knowing
all the while of her cruelty and betrayal. And yet, given the choices before her, she had
done the best she could, acting mindfully in spite of feeling as though she was “being
ripped apart . . . the only thing I could do was make you swim alone through the cold night
sea” (pp. 311–312).
When Tsukuru meets his old friend, she asks Tsukuru to call her and Shiro, not by the
color names they had been known by as children, but rather by their given names, Eri and
Yuzu. Like Ako, Eri describes the profound change that had happened to Shiro and how
painful it had been to see her in that state, in which it was as though “everything had
drained out of her heart” (p. 312). The group had largely dissolved. Cutting off Tsukuru
had taken an unforeseen toll on the group and the friends had drifted apart. Accepting the
lie had made the friends increasingly complicit in an ongoing betrayal in ways that cut
them off from one another, as well.
In addition, for Kiru, the intense focus on Shiro and her needs began to jeopardize her
own well-being. Increasingly, she could recognize that she could not save her friend, could
not stop the relentless retreat from reality in which Shiro had become embroiled. She also
began to realize that her life was no longer her own, that she had lost touch with her own
desires. When a friend happened to invite Eri to a pottery class, she was able to once again
get in touch with her own creative desires. She became utterly absorbed in this new
activity and it was through her pottery that Eri met the man who would become her
husband. She moved to Finland, leaving Shiro/Yuzu behind. Yuzu’s death remained a
mystery, though to Eri it seemed somewhat inevitable, “an evil spirit possessed her . . . It
clung to her, breathing coldly on her neck, slowly driving her in a corner” (p. 319).
Listening with Eri to the music that their friend, Shiro, had played so beautifully at one
time, Tsukuru is grasped by memory and also by an acceptance that he feels deep down,
 YEARS OF PILGRIMAGE S145

as though it touches his soul. In that moment, he realizes that it is not through harmony
alone that hearts may be connected but rather that they might also be “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” (p. 322).
Eri feels this profound sense of connection as well, describing her sense that their
friend lives on through “all the echoes that surround us, in the light, in shapes” (p. 322),
in all the nonverbal aspects of meaning that affect us so profoundly, each having their own
pattern. Much as Tsukuru can see ways in which he is implicated in the events that
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previously had felt merely imposed upon him, Eri can recognize her own complicity in the
traumatic events that had so affected her friend. She speaks of her lack of courage and
faith in herself that enabled her to abandon her friend and had also kept her from
apologizing to him.
In considering the complex ways in which his life and psyche had become intertwined
with those of his friends, Tsukuru is able to recognize the part of himself that might have
been able to cross the boundaries that had seemed impossible to traverse. In his dreams,
in particular, he can find the complicated motives, desires, and drives that his conscious
waking mind might previously have rejected out of hand. He can also imagine the desires
that might have motivated Shiro to want to die. He begins to be more aware of how
complicated emotions are, and the ambiguity and ambivalence of desire. In contrast to
having always thought of himself as a victim, he begins to recognize the possibility that
he might have victimized others, as well, hurting them without realizing it and, perhaps,
in that way, wounding himself as a result. He and Eri can acknowledge ways in which we
can each find ourselves implicated in the suffering of others, the at-times subtle ways in
which we can contribute to distress.
Together, they also recognize the importance of survival, of going on being, which Eri
describes as a duty, an ethical responsibility. As the two old friends talk, Tsukuru
confesses his lack of confidence, his sense of being colorless and therefore empty, with no
value. Even if he is an empty vessel, Eri says, he can be a beautiful vessel. She reminds
him that vessels have a purpose, that there are vessels that matter to people, to which they
might entrust those possessions they hold most dear. The crucial thing, she says, is to be
honest, to be willing to reveal himself to those he loves.
When Tsukuru returns home, he gently confronts Sara, asking her if there is someone
else in her life. She promises to answer him in a few days. That evening, Tsukuru has a
strange dream in which he is seated at a piano. A woman stands beside him. In the dream,
all is black and white with no other colors. There is intense pleasure in being able to play
the music, an experience he finds transformative, “dazzling . . . accurately decoding this
sea of ciphers more quickly than anyone else, and instantaneously giving them form and
substance” (p. 353). The audience however, seems bored, unable to appreciate the music.
As their noise grows, he is increasingly unable to hear the music he is playing. The noise
from the audience seems grotesque, and he suddenly realizes that the woman who is
turning the pages of the music has a sixth finger. He wonders if he knows her but dares
not look away from the music. Then he awakens. He thinks about Sara and wonders if he
will lose her. He also thinks about Eri and the Years of Pilgrimage Suite, pondering “the
lost possibilities, all the time that was never to return” (p. 356). In his musings, Tsukuru
relates the complexity of life to a musical score.

Filled with all sorts of cryptic writing, sixteenth and thirty-second notes and other strange
signs. It’s next to impossible to correctly interpret these, and even if you could, and then could
 S146 CHARLES

transpose them into the correct sounds, there’s no guarantee that people would correctly
understand, or appreciate, the meaning therein. No guarantee it would make people happy.
(p. 356)

Tsukuru has spent his adult life building train stations, places where people can begin
and end their journeys. He decides that declaring his love to Sara is like building a train
station. “If there’s no station, no train will stop there,” he tells her (p. 358). The book ends
with Tsukuru sitting in a train station reflecting on his life. Early on, he had felt as though
there was something he had to do, somewhere he had to be. He had felt compelled by his
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desire to design train stations, much as he had felt compelled by the need to be with his
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friends. With that tie broken, there had been no home to return to and he was no longer
the person his family imagined. Tokyo had never truly been home, it was merely a placed
where he resided. Afraid of being hurt again, he had not built close relationships. At this
current juncture, Tsukuru finds himself at a crossroads at which, if Sara chooses him, he
will once again know where he is going.
In retrospect, Tsukuru imagines that Shiro had chosen him to exorcise from the group
because of her sense that he would survive. In his fantasy, he wonders if she had
anticipated the inevitable unraveling of the friendship and so had forced the group’s
ending, in that way desperately holding on to what she could of the bonds that had tied
them all together. Tsukuru finally seems to have attained sufficient perspective to be able
to find his own place in the story and decides that his gift, perhaps, is being able to find
and regain his balance.
As he waits to find out what Sara’s answer will be, he encounters his own urgency but
is also able to attenuate it. He listens to the Years of Pilgrimage Suite and memories waft
through. In these moments, he can recognize the pain that accompanies his desire for Sara
and his fear of losing her without feeling overwhelmed or closing it off. Although the
possibility of losing Sara in some ways feels like death to him, he knows that he has
survived a living death before and can likely do so once again. His confidence is bolstered
by his recognition that the type of faith that had been present in his little group of friends
never entirely vanishes but rather can be called upon to help sustain him.
In contrast to Murakami’s use of musical metaphors to organize an understanding of
the complex interrelationships between people, events, and meanings, in The Four
Fundamentals of Psychoanalysis, Lacan (1978) uses visual metaphors to point to ideas
that he had previously articulated through an algebraic system of notation. I find these
visual metaphors extremely useful because they speak directly to my experience of sitting
with another person and trying to make sense of what they are telling me, what they are
saying and unsaying, whether through words, or through actions or other nonverbal
means. Much as Freud (1900/1971) highlights the importance of metaphor and the
relationships between elements in his explorations of dreams, it is useful to be able to
recognize ways in which the other person might be stumbling over something they have
not yet been able to understand or, perhaps, even put into words.
Symptoms and other types of repetition also point toward the intersecting themes that
can be found at the core of our dilemmas. Following Freud’s (1900/1971) recognition of
the knot or nodal point at the core of a dream, Lacan (1978) suggests that there is
something impenetrable at the core of being human. He refers in various ways to this point
we stumble over that marks our particularity and, with it, our limits. This recognition of
limits in some ways sets us free to make use of whatever resources we have, and yet, for
many individuals the lack becomes the mark of shame. Although it may seem self-evident
that no one can be outstanding in every way, the place of limit can focus our gaze such
 YEARS OF PILGRIMAGE S147

that nothing else matters. That type of relationship with limit can be so intractable that the
psychoanalyst is experienced as a threat when she begins to approach that territory. In that
way, precisely what is most important to uncover and unpack is least accessible to scrutiny
or reflection.
The consulting room becomes a place where these types of elusive and impossible
meanings can be lodged to be unpacked over time. Whatever cannot be faced— but must
be known— becomes an obstacle to further development, much as happened with Tsukuru
Tazaki. The analyst, then, must be able to recognize those meanings as they begin to take
shape without imposing that understanding on the patient, but rather waiting for them to
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come to their own awareness, to not, as Winnicott (1971) terms it, steal the patient’s
creativity by knowing too much, too soon. The displacement can be a crucial means for
working at something that cannot yet quite be faced. In my work with one young woman,
for example, I came to have the sense of a rectangular object that seemed to lodge
somewhere in the periphery of my vision (Charles, 2015). Over time, that object began to
take the shape of the coffin of the brother she had lost when she was 12 years old, a loss
that had remained unmourned to that point in time. That absence had become an internal
emptiness she could neither make sense of nor move beyond. My capacity to allow the
object to take shape without imposing it on her was crucial to her ability to recognize and
engage with this loss in her own way, in her own time.
In similar fashion, Tsukuru encounters a gap in his own experience that he cannot
make sense of. He uses his idea of himself as colorless and valueless as a means for
marking this emptiness. Viewing himself in this way, however, asserts a point of
impossibility, lodged in some ineluctable fact of his being rather than in conditions that
might be subject to change. Because his view of himself is so different than the view of
those who know him well, neither he nor they are able to encounter the mismatch and
remark on it until he meets Sara, who invites him to break open the hard surface of his
misunderstanding and dive more deeply into the facts of his life as they had happened.
This ability, to reflect on oneself from another perspective that is outside of oneself,
is crucial to the ability to consider alternate meanings. In many ways, this is precisely the
opportunity offered by psychoanalysis, where one may come seeking answers from
someone who is supposed to have them but, optimally, learns to discover those answers
inside of oneself. In encountering an alternative view that is merely a further vantage point
rather than some overarching truth, one is invited to recognize the value of one’s own
privileged position in terms of knowing something from the inside about one’s own
experience. Being able to recognize one’s position in relation to others’ perspectives
makes it possible to find one’s way with greater ease. Difference then becomes, not a point
of impossibility, as though one person must be right and one wrong, but rather an
affirmation of the particularity and responsibility of individual choice.
That is the end point to which we come with Tsukuru Tazaki, the point at which he
encounters his own choice and recognizes that Sara, too, will have to choose. Recognition
of her freedom leaves him free to wait for her answer without feeling impossibly pressured
by not knowing. That freedom, to accept the limits of what one can and cannot do, leaves
one more free to live in the present moment rather than losing that moment under the
weight of an impossible desire or regret. Regret can be like a string of rosary beads,
fingered lovingly, our only tie with a past we can neither retrieve nor return to. The
process of mourning entails coming to grips with these limits, which also enables us to
hold on to the good parts of our memories without being overwhelmed by the pain of loss.
Tsukuru had lost the safe haven of his childhood friendships and had been unable to
reclaim his place. Because his sense of himself had been built on that acceptance, he was
 S148 CHARLES

utterly lost. There is a transition that occurs in the passage into adulthood through which
one finds one’s place. To use Murakami’s metaphor, one discovers one’s color. Lacan
(1977b) locates the place of the subject in relation to how one is named within the social
environment. The Name of the Father marks one’s place within a social structure in which
the very limits that close off certain possibilities also mark one’s particularity and
potential. Moving beyond the seemingly limitless possibilities of childhood, one can begin
to build a life based upon one’s own individual needs, desires, and talents. Lodged within
the concrete mindset of childhood, Tsukuru had believed that the lack of color in his name
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designated him as colorless. His father, in contrast, had given him a name that marked him
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as someone who might build something, who might create the life that would signify or
exemplify his own unique color. Although Tsukuru had not been able to see that color, he
had, indeed, built upon his own talents a life that was in line with his interests and his
desires.
The lack in himself that had been marked by his rejection at the hand of his friends,
however, had left Tsukuru feeling utterly unworthy in ways that kept him from building
relationships or otherwise enjoying his life. He felt empty, dead inside. Being cut off from
those he loved, those who gave his life meaning, left him adrift. Because his sense of value
had been predicated on being valued by others, when they turned a blind eye to him, it was
as though he did not exist. His inability to value himself sufficiently to make a demand
kept him from encountering their perspective as different, and separate and apart from his
own. That was the crucial juncture at which he might have been able to establish his own
particularity and begin the next stage of his journey.
Without sufficient sense of himself as the subject in his own life story, however,
Tsukuru was dependent on the other to define him. The lack of explanation offered by the
friends upon whom his well-being and very identity had depended left him without a
means for putting a story together that made sense. In Murakami’s novels, there is often
a character who plays a role similar in function to the psychoanalyst. In this novel, it is
Sara who, much like the psychoanalyst, provides Tsukuru, not with the story but rather
with a frame within which his story could be constructed. First and foremost, she
presumes that he matters. She asserts that the story must have meaning and that it matters
to be able to discover that meaning for oneself. She provides a frame within which that
meaning might be found but it is then left to Tsukuru to travel his own path and discover
whatever meanings might await.
Notably, in the book, we can see that Tsukuru is the only person who can, ultimately,
make meaning from his experience because he is the only person who has access to it. In
daring to confront those who rejected him, he gains access to their perspectives. From
these dual vantage points of inside and outside, he can begin to construct a narrative that
makes sense, one that includes the bits and fragments as he begins to piece them together.
From that perspective, one can trace both the story of his exclusion that centers around a
lack that for him had always defined his essence, versus an alternative story of a desire run
rampant, that destroyed and snuffed out the creative potential that had existed in his friend
and also, in the process, denied Tsukuro the very place he could not claim. Notably,
Murakami reminds us, there will be meanings culled from the variousness of our
experience that will be important in making sense of the past in ways we might not have
had access to at the time. In offering bits and fragments from various perspectives, from
dream and fantasy, present and past, the reader can begin to see how meanings coalesce
and cohere around signs that become symbols as the interpreter gains greater facility in
reading them.
 YEARS OF PILGRIMAGE S149

In life, it is often what is hidden but held onto, and therefore hides in plain sight, that
becomes significant in ways we can intuit but perhaps not entirely specify. These
intuitions tend to be based on nonverbal rhythms and patterns that speak to us subcon-
sciously, inviting us to discover their meanings (Charles, 2002). In this novel, the allure
and perils of transcending the limits of human consciousness is played like a musical
theme running through the work. Much like the traumatic narrative, that points to the
problems without entirely revealing them, there is a musicality to the text that also points
to elusive meanings, as themes are played in one register and then another. These themes
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play upon the mind and heart of the reader in an evolving and illuminating fashion, such
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that the meanings begin to cohere and have greater presence and substance as the work
evolves.
That type of evolutionary process is similar to what is described in the psychoanalytic
literature in terms of the meanings that begin to evolve and coalesce between the mind of
the analyst and the mind of the analysand as the work proceeds. We find these evolving
meanings most particularly in the dreams of the analysand and the reverie of the analyst,
in those places in which the unconscious is able to speak most freely. These less conscious
meanings often seem odd and even irrelevant but, to the extent that we can hold them in
mind without imposing meaning on them, there is greater freedom for them to evolve and
configure themselves over time.
The process of development, of becoming more fully ourselves, can be seen in some
ways as a transformation of the preoccupation with the gaze and values of the other, as we
move toward a greater recognition and ability to take stands regarding our own needs,
values, and desires. Lacan (1978) refers to the gaze in terms of a transference through
which we view ourselves and also miss ourselves, as the gaze slips from moment to
moment, from scene to scene. In this metaphor, we see lodged the general propensity and
intentionality of the viewer that colors everything he sees, including his fantasies about
how he is seen. In Tsukuru’s gaze, he, himself, had been colorless and without value. It
was perhaps no accident that his friends had, therefore, been able to make of him the
scapegoat in a story in which he was both implicated and excluded.
We encounter this dilemma with many of our patients, who find themselves both
implicated and excluded, as the gaze in which they feel caught by others constrains and
circumscribes their becoming. For those caught in such a snare, psychoanalysis offers an
opportunity to break open that closed system, so that, perhaps, the individual can catch
himself in the act of circling around inside his cage. In such a moment, one might
recognize the shape of the internalized meanings and the force of one’s fears that keep
one’s eyes closed such that one continues to circle around, as though desperately paddling
with one oar. Recognizing the potential value of holding that shape in mind, in spite of
whatever defenses also come to bear in opposition, becomes an important part of the
working through.
In describing ways in which we are both caught and oppressed by our attributions
regarding what is desired in us by the other, Lacan (1978) elaborates on the difficulties of
the gaze that does not only look but also shows. The gaze points to something essential
in our identity, which also means that it threatens to reveal something about our lack and
our limits. In adapting to that gaze, in trying to avoid something that might be terribly
revealed, we disappear into “that point of vanishing . . . with which the subject confuses
his own failure” (p. 83). Although that vanishing provides a certain relief, it also leaves
a shadow. We play hide and seek with whatever is excluded from view, increasing our
preoccupation and, with it, our oppression. At best, sublimation enables us to play with the
 S150 CHARLES

preoccupation in ways that are creative and productive, whereas, at worst, we can become
caught in destructive entanglements.
Tsukuru Tazaki, for example, is utterly caught by the refusal of his friends that
becomes both a condemnation and seeming annihilation of his very being. In this way, he
excludes not the gaze of the other but rather the possibility of formulating his own
perspective, his own view that might include his limits and also his possibilities. If we
think of one of the functions of psychoanalysis as to point to the limits of consciousness,
it is precisely what we cannot see that we need to discover. In condensing the other’s view
with the feared gaze that we imagine, we paradoxically privilege that view in ways that
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keep us seeking and hiding, hoping for a misrecognition in relation to what we fear will
be revealed.
In trying to more clearly articulate the relationship between ourselves and the gaze,
Lacan (1978) says “if I am anything in the picture, it is always in the form of the screen,”
which he also terms “the stain, the spot” (p. 97). Lacan seems to be referring to the process
of taking something in that is, of essence, shaped by the person who absorbs the image.
In this way, precisely what we turn to for camouflage also reveals something essential
about us. From Lacan’s perspective, paradox is everywhere, and likely is at the core of our
difficulties in becoming. “You never look at me from the place from which I see you,” he
writes. “Conversely, what I look at is never what I wish to see” (p. 103). We become
caught by the desire to fit some fantasied conception of being rather than more truly
learning to be.
Psychoanalysis provides a space within which we might be able to learn to more
lovingly catch ourselves in motion and so better tolerate recognizing our essential
humanity, so that we might learn to live from the place where we are. From Lacan’s
(1978) perspective, one needs to be able to impose one’s gaze at an angle, to look awry,
so that one might, perhaps catch oneself in motion. He talks about transference in terms
of a repetition of a missed encounter that is also “the enactment of the reality of the
unconscious” (p. 146). By inference, that miss is guided by our intention to turn to the
side, to not-see precisely what might be too painful to see. But, given that the unconscious
is unconscious, if we are to proceed beyond that point of impasse, we need some way of
recognizing the signs or signals that might tell us that something is missing in a way that
invites our attention and reveals something further.
For Lacan, desire does not proceed from a lack, desire is the lack that can be discerned
running below the surface of discernable meanings, leaving “a metonymic remainder that
runs under it” (Lacan, 1978, p. 154). From that framework, metonymy encloses the subject
in a tautology, whereas metaphor leaves open possibilities, and in that way enables a
“coming into being” (Lacan, 1977c, p. 166). Metonymy confuses the attribute with the
totality, thereby pointing to something other than what is there. Metonymy focuses the
gaze on an aspect, something specific, but in thus pinpointing one thing, something else
becomes less visible. In contrast, metaphor, in saying “and,” enables the resemblance to
emerge without obscuring whatever remains. The and leaves us within the signifying
chain of an associative process through which meanings can be built and gaps can be
noted. In speech, Lacan reminds us, something stumbles. There is a meaning that nudges
us without speaking clearly, something we can glimpse but not quite capture. In met-
onymically naming the thing, we highlight one aspect, obscuring the remainder. It is that
remainder that is kept out of view because of where the gaze is directed.
Through this juxtaposition of the forces of metaphor (condensation) and metonymy
(displacement), Lacan (1978) highlights the importance of being able to recognize duality,
the existence of double meanings, one of which can hide behind the other such that if one
 YEARS OF PILGRIMAGE S151

looks from one perspective at one face of this meaning, the other disappears. He considers
the paradox in which the being of the subject can become hidden behind meaning, such
that wherever we focus our gaze there is something that disappears. “If we choose being,
the subject disappears, it eludes us, it falls into non-meaning” (p. 211). On the other hand,
if we focus on meaning, we only grasp the more conscious aspects, denuded of the less
conscious reverberations. Because of this dilemma, we can never find our focus by
approaching it directly. Rather, “interpretation is directed not so much at the meaning as
towards reducing the non-meaning of the signifiers, so that we may discover the deter-
minants of the subject’s entire behavior” (p. 212).
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There is a paradox in our preoccupation with a lack in ourselves that we hope to evade
through the other, while also having to deal with the lack in the other that does not fill the
gap. For Lacan, it is the lack in the other that invites speech, as we are called to illuminate
whatever is unknown. Linking this dilemma to that of the child who recognizes that
something unknown is wanted from him, Lacan (1978) suggests that

there emerges something in the experience of the child that is radically mappable, namely, He
is saying this to me but what does he want? In this interval intersecting the signifiers, which
forms part of the structure of the signifier, is the locus of what, in other registers of my
exposition, I have called metonymy. It is there that what we call desire crawls, slips, escapes,
like the ferret. The desire of the Other is apprehended by the subject in that which does not
work, in the lacks of the discourse of the Other, and all the child’s whys reveal . . . a testing
of the adult, a Why are you telling me this? Ever-resuscitated from its base, which is the
enigma of the adult’s desire. (p. 214)

Consistent with Lacan’s distinction between metonymy as dead end, and metaphor as
potentially enlivening, Winnicott distinguishes between the type of fantasying that pro-
vides a dead end because it entails an empty avoidance of meaning, versus the dream that
contains possibilities. The dream, for Winnicott, has “poetic value . . . that is to say, layer
upon layer of meaning related to past, present, and future, and to inner and outer, and
always fundamentally about [oneself]” (p. 35). In Tsukuro Tazaki’s dreams, we can see
the type of metonymic desire that captures his attention and shows him something of what
lies underneath the surface of his conscious mind.
Tsukuro Tazaki lamented that he had not been given a color by his parents through
which he could be named and located. It is, in some ways, through this lack, through not
having been already named, that Tsukuro is finally able to make use of the freedom
afforded by the name his father had offered. It is through his ability to recognize the
potential value of the meanings hidden in dream, and to struggle with their compelling
reality, that Tsukuro Tazaki eventually recognizes another level of meaning that seems to
profoundly structure the reality of daily life. In this way, Murakami shows the importance
of being able to encounter this type of duality, through which a becoming may emerge. It
is only as Tsukuo Tazaki allows the various possibilities to emerge, that he begins to be
able to put together the bits and fragments. In this way, mirroring the psychoanalytic
journey, begins to build sufficient foundation to sustain him as he waits to discover what
direction the next stage of his journey will take.

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