Haruki Murakami - Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

“Religious cults and personal development seminars mainly try to get money from people. To do that, they perform a rather crude form of brainwashing. We’re different. If we did something that questionable, top corporations wouldn’t agree to work with us. Using drastic measures, forcing people to do things—we’re not into any of that. You might get impressive results for a while, but they won’t last. Driving the idea of discipline into people’s heads is important, but the program you use to do it has to be totally scientific, practical, and sophisticated. It has to be something society can accept. And the results need to be long lasting. We’re not aiming at producing zombies. We want to create a workforce that does what their company wants them to do, yet still believes they’re independent thinkers.”

“That’s a pretty cynical worldview,” Tsukuru said.

“I suppose you could see it that way.”

“I can’t imagine that everyone who attends your seminars allows themselves to be disciplined like that.”

“No, of course not. There are quite a few people who reject the program. You can divide them into two groups. The first is antisocial. In English you’d call them ‘outcasts.’ They just can’t accept any form of constructive criticism, no matter what it is. They reject any kind of group discipline. It’s a waste of time to deal with people like that, so we ask them to withdraw. The other group is comprised of people who actually think on their own. Those it’s best to leave alone. Don’t fool with them. Every system needs elite people like them. If things go well, they’ll eventually be in leadership positions. In the middle, between those two groups, are those who take orders from above and just do what they’re told. That’s the vast majority of people. By my rough estimate, 85 percent of the total. I developed this business to target the 85 percent.”

“And your business is doing as well as you hoped it would?”

Aka nodded. “Things are working out now pretty much as I calculated. It was a small company at first, with just a couple of employees, but now it’s grown larger, as you can see. Our brand’s become pretty well known.”

“You’ve assessed the tasks that you don’t like to do, or the things that you don’t like to have done to you, analyzed them, and used this to launch your business. That was the starting point?”

Aka nodded. “Exactly. It’s not hard to think about what you don’t want to do or have done to you. Just like it’s not hard to think about what you would like to do. It’s a difference between the positive and the negative. A question of emphasis.”

I’m not too fond of what he’s doing . Tsukuru recalled Ao’s words.

“Aren’t you doing this, in part, to get personal revenge on society? As one of the elites, someone who thinks like an outcast.”

“You could be right,” Aka said. He laughed happily and snapped his fingers. “Great serve. Advantage Tsukuru Tazaki.”

“Are you the organizer of these programs? Do you do the presentations yourself?”

“In the beginning I did. I was the only person I could count on at that point. Can you picture me doing that?”

“No, not really,” Tsukuru replied honestly.

Aka laughed. “For some reason, though, I turned out to be really good at it. I shouldn’t brag, but I was well suited for it. Of course, it’s all an act, but I was good at seeming real and convincing. I don’t do it anymore, though. I’m not a guru, but more of a manager. And I keep plenty busy. What I do now is train our instructors, and leave the practical side of things to them. These days I’ve been giving a lot of outside lectures. Corporations invite me to their meetings, and I give talks at university employment seminars. A publisher asked me to write a book, too, which I’m working on.”

Aka crushed out his cigarette in the ashtray.

“Once you get the knack, this kind of business isn’t so hard. Just print up a glossy pamphlet, string together some high-blown self-advertising language, and get some smart office space in a high-end part of town. Purchase attractive furnishings, hire capable, sophisticated staff members, and pay them very well. Image is everything. You don’t spare any expense to create the right image. And word of mouth is critical. Once you get a good reputation, momentum will carry you. But I’m not planning to expand beyond what we do now. We’ll continue to focus solely on companies in the greater Nagoya area. Unless I can keep an eye on things myself, I can’t ensure the level of quality.”

Aka gazed searchingly into Tsukuru’s eyes.

“Come on, you’re not all that interested in what I do, are you?”

“It just feels strange. I never would have thought, back when you were a teenager, that you would open this kind of business someday.”

“Me either,” Aka said, and laughed. “I was sure I would stay in a university and become a professor. But once I got to college I realized I wasn’t cut out for academic life. It’s a stagnant, crushingly dull world, and I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life there. Then when I graduated, I found out that working for a company wasn’t for me, either. It was all trial and error, and eventually, I was able to find my own niche. But what about you? Are you satisfied with your job?”

“Not really. But I’m not particularly dissatisfied with it, either,” Tsukuru said.

“Because you can do work related to railroad stations?”

“That’s right. As you put it, I’m able to stay on the positive side.”

“Have you ever had doubts about your job?”

“Every day I just build things you can see. I have no time for doubts.”

Aka smiled. “That’s wonderful. And so very like you.”

Silence descended on them. Aka toyed with the gold lighter in his hand but didn’t light another cigarette. He probably had a set number of cigarettes he smoked every day.

“You came here because there was something you wanted to talk about, right?” Aka said.

“I’d like to ask about the past,” Tsukuru said.

“Sure. Let’s talk about the past.”

“It’s about Shiro.”

Aka’s eyes narrowed behind his glasses, and he stroked his beard. “I was kind of expecting that. After my secretary handed me your business card.”

Tsukuru didn’t reply.

“I feel sorry for Shiro,” Aka said quietly. “Her life wasn’t very happy. She was so beautiful, so musically talented, yet she died so horribly.”

Tsukuru felt uncomfortable at the way Aka summed up her life in just a couple of lines. But a time difference was at work here, he understood. Tsukuru had only recently learned of Shiro’s death, while Aka had lived with the knowledge for six years.

“Maybe there’s not much point in doing this now, but I wanted to clear up a misunderstanding,” Tsukuru said. “I don’t know what Shiro told you, but I never raped her. I never had a relationship like that with her of any kind.”

“The truth sometimes reminds me of a city buried in sand,” Aka said. “As time passes, the sand piles up even thicker, and occasionally it’s blown away and what’s below is revealed. In this case it’s definitely the latter. Whether the misunderstanding is cleared up or it isn’t, you aren’t the type of person to do something like that. I know that very well.”

“You know that?” Tsukuru repeated the words.

“ Now I do, is what I mean.”

“Because the sand has blown away?”

Aka nodded. “That’s about the size of it.”

“It’s like we’re discussing history.”

“In a way, we are.”

Tsukuru gazed at the face of his old friend seated across from him, but couldn’t read anything resembling an emotion in Aka’s expression.