The Hole in My (and Your) Heart
(Reflection on Haruki Murakami’s Novel: Tsukuru Tazaki and His Year of Pilgrimage)
Feeling empty or void is both the privilege and an examination. Not everyone can experience it and not everyone can get through it and eventually become a stronger than before. Lots of people fail and get stuck there forever.
Romanticizing such a mental condition is bad for our mental state. The body and mind can remember and internalize it then turn it into a reality. The more we stay there, the more our body and mind provide a way back there. That’s how simple it is.
We can still take a distance and not have to dive in directly. We can borrow the ‘eyes, soul, and experiences’ of the fictional characters as an anticipation in case we are in in that condition one day all at once without any warning sign.
Haruki Murakami is one of the novelists who specializes in creating characters with such mental conditions.
His novels revolve around the themes of loneliness, emptiness, and alienation as the main topic.
Lots of Murakami’s fictional characters, both male and female, from the elderly to teenagers, are lonely due to being trapped in Japan’s individualistic culture. From there, we can compare it to our real-life conditions for emerging country like Indonesia.
On one hand we might be thankful for living in a village that maintains interaction with other people. On the other hand, we understand that there are always consequences from interaction: limited individual freedom, reduced privacy, the necessity to always pretend to be an ideal person and the emergence of social control.
For those living in big cities, on one side we might be grateful for the individual freedom and minimizing the energy wasted from pretending when interacting with neighbors and society. But on the other side, we have to face the potential of feeling empty and alienated.
From these various sides, we might be able to find a balance point. And that is the function of reading: adding information to our brain, hoping for a combination of information, understanding values, and getting new perspectives for looking at the world in different style.
My first intense meet with Murakami’s works happened when I subscribed to the online newspaper called The New Yorker. It’s unlike most people who discovered Murakami through novels and short story collections.
In his essays and memoirs, we will see him as a person just like other people, not as a god in literature.
I found his essays about the Boston Marathon. From there I went on to essays such as “Abandoning Cat”, “Jazz Messenger” and others. I even translated them to preserve the impression and to share the feeling after reading it to others.
Gradually, I interested into his novels. Starting from “Hear the Wind Sing,” “The Wind-up Bird Chronicle,” “Kafka on the Shore,” “A Wild Sheep Chase,” “Colourless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage” and the latest “Killing Commendatore”.
You’ve to be extra patience if you wanna read Haruki Murakami novels. Thank God, I have the ability to do something that requires endurance like running marathons, playing soccer, karate, swimming, walking across the county, writing novels, writing lecture notes and reading thick novels. It’s like that my body and my mind were created for reading Murakami’s novels.
As a gratitude to God for this blessing (or curse?), I will share it through the express lane. I am the courier.
Well, let’s get a little more serious.
What distinguishes Murakami’s novels is only in the dose and packaging. There are those with large doses that bring the topic of loneliness and emptiness very deeply, there are those that are medium and there are only on the surface. There are those wrapped in surreal worlds, there are those that are popular. Well, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, in my opinion, is one of two Murakami novels that have the right dose and packaging for beginners.
This novel can be read by everyone. No need for ‘special sciences’ like psychoanalysis, evolutionary psychology, urban culture, sign interpretation, semiotics or other technical matters. Just take the time, find your own comfortable place, start opening the pages, read it just like when reading teenage novels or popular novels.
I read Haruki Murakami’s novel Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Year of Pilgrimage since a few years ago because of the hype. Throughout my life, I have always been driven by the hype or virality. My standard is all about American things, from the way of thinking, culture or even dark humor. At that time, in the early 2010s in America, Murakami’s novels were receiving far more public attention than in previous years. Perhaps because of technological advances, social and political conditions, changes in consumption patterns and the logical consequences of changing era that created a feeling of alienation from each other.
In Indonesia, reading Haruki Murakami has become a symbol of the middle class, the special group of new generation in society. I also want to join this stereotype because I don’t want to be left behind or seen as not up to date. I have fear of missing out (FOMO).
From my experience as a reader and Head of the Penghayat Sumur (Harukist Chapter Sulselbar) community which initiated an online discussion, I can conclude that the Novel Tsukuru Tazaki is much friendlier than Norwegian Wood or The Wind-up Bird Chronicles.
In this novel, we are immediately presented with the conflict without various descriptions. We are taken to the effect of the conflict, accompanying the main character from his downfall to his rise. We are just invited to look into the character’s inner self and without us realizing it, we are actually looking into our own inner self.
This novel tells the story of Tsukuru Tazaki who experiences emptiness and loneliness after he was removed from his group (a friendship group since high school). He was not given any explanation.
His life after that moment was passed without meaning. He was like an empty vessel without soul. Everything he did seemed to have no use. Maybe it doesn’t matter if Tsukuru is good at socializing. But he is not that type of person.
The main problem may be easy to solve for many people. But for people who have the same frequency as him, it’s a different matter.
My case may be far different from Tsukuru but some things have similarities. Being dumped or leaving on their own from a group of people considered part of ourselves is definitely not pleasant. Indeed. I can assure you that.
We are like organs that have been separated from the body and then transplanted onto another. We can survive if we’re suitable, and we can also cause damage to one body if it’s not suitable.
Tsukuru experienced all those negative emotions, tried to escape, look for other way to solve his problem, fail to adapt, try again and fail again.
His meetings with new people (Sara and Haida) indirectly encouraged him to look back the past. And then after the time has flown, he was ready to face his old wounds, meet those who had abandoned him, find out what had happened in the past and accept all without judgment.
He finally knew what had caused him to be kicked out of his group and the background of his friends’ attitudes. Knowing all of this was enough to be relieved. Although his group had been broken up for a long time and it was impossible to go back in time, at least he was able to move the nail that was stuck in his life’s wheel. He already knew where the specific position to get the reparation.
For some people, time may help them become stronger. But for someone like Tsukuru, time can also make him feel more suffering.
Tsukuru managed to get through it and grew into a new, tougher person because of his resources and tools: a support system, bodily memories of hormonal production (which affects one’s moods), a talent for happiness, genetics, knowledge, reflective sensitivity, and luck. But there was one character, the source of conflict in this novel (Shiro), who didn’t make it. Time was actually the poison that spread from within and slowly ate away at her until the death coming.
From Tsukuru perspective, we learn that humans have to move forward on the path of reality, accepting suffering as a normal part of life. He managed to find a new home for his reborn soul and self. Maybe the time he needed was a little bit longer than what other people needed. Nevertheless, he still got there with new scars that had just begun to heal.
Others have already finished their life crises at the age of 23–28. Whereas Tsukuru needed to live until almost 40 to realize the best way to accept and reconcile with his past.
Isn’t that how our mindset should be?
Our lives are not a sprint, but a marathon. And most importantly, for ordinary citizens like us, the main aim is not to be a champion or the first one, but to finish it as best as we can.
In evolutionary biological terms, we have a tendency to want to be accepted into a group. This is a the result of adaptation from our ancestors seeking the best way to survive.
In the Stone Age, it was safer for our ancestors to live in groups to protect each other from wild animals and other tribes and to cooperate in hunting. Being accepted into a group meant safety. Being rejected meant a high percetage of death.
This information is ingrained in our bodies and brains. Its effects might have changed since our ancestors due to adjustments and such, but at the core, it stays the same: we need to feel connected to others, to feel accepted, to feel meaningful and to be acknowledged for our presence or absence.
Negative feelings are thus just hormonal mechanisms we express as a feeling of emptiness, isolation, loneliness, and void to urge humans to seek a new safe, comfortable and stable point. Those feelings are another form of stress to prompt us to reach an ideal condition to survive.
Interpreting a novel this way is no fun. This writing will turn into an academic paper. And because I hate the rigid academic world, I will review it as an ordinary reader without any ‘analytical tools’.
The emptiness and loneliness are virus for our brain. In that moment, all logic fails to function properly.
Our perception cannot be trusted. We feel alone, unimportant and disposable. We cannot feel the attention of family and others. This is also experienced by the character Tsukuru.
All kinds of negative emotions come and imprison him in his own perception. He lives in his interpretation, in a world full of pain and rejection. As if the world was created just to make people suffer, fall and break.
Tsukuru actually can represent modern people who are very bound not only by their group, but also by their perception of their group or anything related to their group.
We are no longer accustomed to trying to be independent and limiting our attachment to public perception, whether it is an natural social construction (grown without any intervenetion) or built by political interests.
Not always do we have to suppress our own individual freedom for the sake of the group and vice versa. There is always a middle, a compromise, an optimal point that we can reach with contemplation and trial and error. You can reflect on real life in your own way, with your own knowledge.
That is the function of a good novel: to stimulate us to rethink a value, to take its basic concept to become a new telescope to see reality in a far distance.
This novel is worth being a bridge to new meanings.
Happy reading.
