Haruki Murakami - Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

“I’m sorry to barge in on you like this in the morning,” Tsukuru said. “I was afraid if I didn’t, you might not see me.”

“No way,” Aka said. He held out his hand and shook Tsukuru’s. Unlike Ao’s, his hand was small and soft, his grip gentle. It was not a perfunctory handshake, though, but full of warmth. “How could I ever say no? I’m happy to see you anytime.”

“But you’re pretty busy, I imagine?”

“Work keeps me busy, for sure. But this is my company, and I make the ultimate decisions. My schedule can be pretty flexible, if I want it to be. I can take more time with some things, or shorten others. In the end, obviously, the accounts have to balance, and I can’t change the ultimate amount of time we get, of course—only God can do that—but I can make some partial adjustments.”

“If it’s okay with you, I’d like to talk about some personal things,” Tsukuru said. “But if you’re busy right now, I can come back whenever’s convenient.”

“Don’t worry about the time. You’ve come all this way. We can take our time and talk here, right now.”

Tsukuru sat down on the two-person black leather sofa, and Aka sat on the facing chair. Between them was a small oval table with a heavy-looking glass ashtray. Aka picked up Tsukuru’s business card again and studied it, his eyes narrowed.

“I see. So Tsukuru Tazaki’s dream of building railroad stations came true.”

“I’d like to say that’s true, but unfortunately I don’t get many opportunities to actually construct a new station,” Tsukuru said. “They rarely build new train lines in Tokyo, so most of the time we rebuild and refurbish existing stations. Making them barrier-free, creating more multifunction restrooms, constructing safety fences, building more shops within the stations, coordinating things so other rail lines can share the tracks…. The social function of stations is changing, so they keep us pretty busy.”

“But still, your job has something to do with railway stations.”

“True.”

“Are you married?”

“No, I’m still single.”

Aka crossed his legs and brushed away a thread on the cuff of his chinos. “I was married once, when I was twenty-seven. But I got divorced after a year and a half. I’ve been alone ever since. It’s easier being single. You don’t waste a lot of time. Are you the same way?”

“No, not really. I’d like to get married. I actually have too much spare time on my hands. I’ve just never met the right person.”

Tsukuru thought of Sara. If it were her, maybe he would feel like marrying. But they both needed to know more about each other first. Both of them needed a little more time.

“Your business seems to be doing well,” Tsukuru said, glancing around the tidy office.

Back when they were teenagers, Ao, Aka, and Tsukuru had used the rough, masculine pronouns ore and omae —“I” and “you”—when they talked to each other, but Tsukuru realized now, seeing them sixteen years later, that this form of address no longer felt right. Ao and Aka still called him omae , and referred to themselves as ore , but this casual way of speaking no longer came so easily to Tsukuru.

“Yes, business is going well at the moment,” Aka said. He cleared his throat. “You know what we do here?”

“Pretty much. If what’s online is accurate.”

Aka laughed. “It’s not lies. That’s what we do. The most important part, of course, is all in here.” Aka tapped his temple. “Like with a chef. The most critical ingredient isn’t in the recipe.”

“The way I understand it, what you mainly do is educate and train human resources for companies.”

“Exactly. We educate new employees and reeducate mid-level employees. We offer that service to other companies. We create programs tailored to the clients’ wishes, and carry them out efficiently and professionally. It saves companies time and effort.”

“Outsourcing employee education.”

“Correct. The business all started with an idea I had. You know, like in a comic book, where a light bulb goes off over the character’s head? Startup funding came from the president of a consumer finance company who believed in me and fronted me the money. It just happened that’s where the original funds came from.”

“So how did you come up with the idea?”

Aka laughed. “It’s not all that exciting a story. After I graduated from college I worked in a large bank, but the job was boring. The people above me were incompetent. They only thought about what was right in front of them, never thought long term, and only cared about covering their asses. I figured if a top bank was like this, then Japan’s future looked pretty bleak. I put up with it for three years, but nothing improved. If anything, it got worse. So I switched jobs and went to work for a consumer finance company. The president of the company liked me a lot and had asked me to work for him. In a job like that you have much more freedom to maneuver, and the work itself was interesting. But there, too, my opinions didn’t exactly conform with those of the higher-ups, and I quit after a little over two years. I apologized to the president, but there it was.”

Aka took out a packet of Marlboro Reds. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

“Not at all,” Tsukuru said. Aka put a cigarette in his mouth and lit it with a small gold lighter. His eyes narrowed and he slowly inhaled, then exhaled. “I tried quitting, but just couldn’t. If I can’t smoke, I can’t work. Have you ever tried giving up smoking?”

Tsukuru had never smoked a cigarette in his life.

Aka continued. “I’m more of a lone-wolf type. I might not look like it, and I didn’t understand that part of my personality until I’d graduated from college and started work. But it’s true. Whenever some moron ordered me to do something stupid, I’d blow my top. It was like you could actually hear my brain explode. No way a person like that can work for a company. So I made up my mind. I had to go out on my own.”

Aka paused and gazed at the purplish smoke rising up from his hand, as if tracing a far-off memory.

“One other thing I learned from working in a company was that the majority of people in the world have no problem following orders. They’re actually happy to be told what to do. They might complain, but that’s not how they really feel. They just grumble out of habit. If you told them to think for themselves, and make their own decisions and take responsibility for them, they’d be clueless. So I decided I could turn that into a business. It’s simple. I hope this makes sense?”

Tsukuru said nothing. It was a rhetorical question.

“I compiled a list of things I dislike, things I don’t like to do, and things I don’t want others to do. And based on that list, I came up with a program to train people who follow orders from above, so that they could work more systematically. I guess you could call it an original idea, but in part I ripped off elements from elsewhere. The experience I had myself, the training I received as a newly hired bank clerk, was extremely valuable. I added methods taken from religious cults and personal development seminars, to spice things up. I researched companies in the U.S. that had been successful in the same sort of business. I read a lot of books on psychology as well. I included elements from manuals for new recruits in the Nazi SS and the Marines. In the half year after I quit my job, I literally immersed myself in developing this program. I’ve always been good at focusing on one particular task.”

“It helps that you’re so bright.”

Aka grinned. “Thanks. I couldn’t very well come right out and say that about myself.”

He took a puff on his cigarette and flicked the ash into the ashtray. He raised his head and looked at Tsukuru.