Haruki Murakami Can’t End Books To Save His Life

So far, I have read 1Q84 and more recently Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and his Years of Pilgrimage by Haruki Murakami. And one thing that has bothered me about both books is that they don’t end in a satisfying way. (This will be focusing on Colorless Tsukuru.) In both books, Murakami starts out with an interesting idea, in this case it’s a man whose high school friends mysteriously abandon him one day, but they don’t resolve satisfactorily. 1Q84 flat out didn’t solve anything, and it felt like he was leaving it open ended for kicks and giggles or the hype or something. Colorless Tsukuru is similar, it ends on a cliffhanger and leaves a few other aspects open.

The cliffhanger at the end isn’t a big problem for me, my issue is with the one friend that Tsukuru makes in college: Haida. Where he goes is never explained, and the bag from the story he tells Tsukuru is never elaborated on either. And this should be important since the one friend that Tsukuru made since high school leaving him has left scars as well. Not explaining this undermines the closure that Tsukuru kind of gets by the end.

I don’t have a problem with ambiguity in most novels, the murder mystery that pops up I thought was fine leaving (visiting the grave or something would have been nice, but that’s unrelated), and Sara’s choice at the end was also fine. But when it seems like the author forgets that the ambiguity is there (in Haida’s case) or when the main character’s quest is to solve this ambiguity (and it’s literally the purpose of the novel) we should end with something more substantial.

Also this might be nitpicky, but it’s a really short book for “years of pilgrimage.” Which is a little disappointing.

I found Tsukuru pretty easy to relate to, the only aspect that surprised me was that he managed to get a girlfriend, but other than that he’s believable. (Speaking as someone in college, this fear of losing my high school friends is pretty real.)

Then there’s the other classic Murakami issue: the women. The women here are either plain or gorgeous, with no in between. And of course, there’s always a shoutout to their breasts whenever they come into contact with anything.

He also seems to really enjoy keeping detailed notes on what everyone’s penis is doing throughout the story, which tends to drive me up the wall, I don’t know about everyone else.

Other than that, there are a few nice artistic touches, like the number 4 in the page numbers is always white in my version. And the cover art is also well done, the colors and a train map are arranged like a hand (Tsukuru is the map while his four high school friends are the colors, hence the “colorless”).

I suspect that there might be a connection between the color nicknames and train lines (this is mostly influenced by the cover art) but I know nothing about Japanese trains so I can’t really speak to that.

So that’s all I wanted to rant about Murakami, maybe his other books are better, but this seems like a trend more than anything else.