“Usually it’s translated as ‘homesickness,’ or ‘melancholy.’ If you put a finer point on it, it’s more like a ‘groundless sadness called forth in a person’s heart by a pastoral landscape.’”
I picked up Murakami again after my encounter with 1Q84 two years ago was more of an assault than a pleasant reading experience. Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki was, thankfully, a welcome departure from the supernatural magical realism that guided the aforementioned three-volume tome, one that tended more in the vein of Norwegian Wood's personal investigation of self-discovery—there's a time and a place for both types, I think, but my hesitation in waiting so long to read it was admittedly because I wasn't sure how many more talking animals and creepy erotic encounters with deities I could take. But that limit went untested and my fears were unfounded, happy as I am to report, and Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki, though plot-wise slightly unambitious, was quiet and wonderful and fulfilling, a long talk with an old friend about the lives we used to lead.
I don't necessarily dwell on the plot (loosely: an emotionally detached man in his mid-thirties, quintessentially a Murakami character, is urged to dig into the whys of an event from adolescence that caused his closest friends to abandon him, leaving him mildly traumatized thereafter with dependency and relationship skepticisms), instead I fixate on the external devices Murakami chooses to deploy in triggering the purest and perfectly preserved depths of memory. Music, in this case. Adolescence is a place I revisit often, mostly to make sense of what I did in those strange and awkward years, and because I'm still no closer to knowing I still don't let go, and there's a special closeness I feel with people who are haunted by the same faraway things. Franz Liszt's Années de pèlerinage ("Years of Pilgrimage") was the narrator's time machine of choice. When I searched for an audio recording on the Internet I was led to a YouTube page whose comments section read "Murakami brought me here."
Sometimes I think it's no surprise that since coming to New York I've preferred spending time with friends from high school over others. Much has changed throughout the so-called official transition to adulthood (getting a job, signing a lease, knowing your credit score), and holding on to easier times is my main comfort in combating the acceleration of it all. I like talking about Japan, the little island and our long, laughing days, being naive and the confidence that resulted from not knowing any better.