Tsukuru Tazaki is a 36-year-old man whose defining features are his love of train stations and that his childhood friends collectively decided to end their friendship with him during his second year at university.
As he explains to her over dinner, back in Nagoya his high-school friends were called Ao, Aka, Shiro, and Kuro (Japanese for Blue, Red, White, and Black), nicknamed after a color in their surname, unlike his "colorless" one.
One day, he received a phone call from his friends where they announced that they no longer wanted to see him or be associated with him, leaving him emotionally crushed.
One evening, Haida told him a strange story about his father: when he was a college student, he took a leave from his studies and worked in a secluded hot-springs inn where he met man who called himself Midorikawa (whose name contains "Green"), a jazz pianist from Tokyo who was incredibly talented.
This near-death experience opened for him "the doors of perception", making his last weeks more wonderful than the decades he was giving up, and it also made him able to see people's color auras.
After using Google and Facebook to locate these former friends, she updates Tsukuru on their current whereabouts and even arranges for his travel tickets.
Tsukuru first travels to his hometown of Nagoya and meets Ao, the former football jock who is now a successful Lexus dealer.
Shiro eventually became a successful piano teacher, but six years ago she was found strangled in an unsolved murder case.
Aka himself has issues, having belatedly realized after a failed marriage that he is gay, and feeling rejection from the people of Nagoya, including Ao, who dislike his somewhat shady business, which uses some psychological methods used by the Nazis.
Back at work in Tokyo, Tsukuru and his colleague Sakamoto visit a stationmaster whose strange tale reminds him of Haida's story.
Eri reveals that she was in love with Tsukuru, which could have played a role in the accusation, but also that Shiro was actually raped and had a miscarriage, then developed anorexia as a way of never being pregnant again.
He wonders whether Shiro had turned against him, as he was the one who first left the group of five friends, as a preemptive strike because she could not bear the thought that its members would inevitably drift apart anyway.
They could thus sell the new book at 0:01 a.m. to pre-order customers ranging from dozens to hundreds, lined in the streets or gathered at evening events (such as film projections, quiz games, raffles, or karaoke contests);[17][18][19] other stores chose early openings with free coffee at 8 a.m.;[17] in Australia and New Zealand, an online competition in the preceding weeks offered to win a $3000 travel voucher[19] (to go on a "pilgrimage" of one's own).
[57] Kirkus Reviews included the novel in its list of best books of 2014, describing it as "Another tour de force from Japan’s greatest living novelist.
"[60] In The Los Angeles Times, David L. Ulin said that "There is a rawness, a vulnerability, to these characters, a sense that the surface of the world is thin, and the border between inner and outer life, between existence as we know it and something far more elusive, is easily effaced.
"[61] In The Independent, Boyd Tonkin compared Murakami's writing to music, stating: "This author's signature tune, an almost child-like naivety harmonised with riddling sophistication, sounds throughout.
Like a jazz standard customised by a master improviser, or a Romantic piano piece that skips from nursery to cemetery, Murakami's prose seamlessly fuses folksiness and profundity.
"[63] In the review of the novel for The Washington Post, Marie Arana called it "a deeply affecting novel, not only for the dark nooks and crannies it explores, but for the magic that seeps into its characters’ subconsciouses, for the lengths to which they will go to protect or damage one another, for the brilliant characterizations it delivers along the way ... Murakami can herd the troubles of a very large world and still mind a few precious details.
The Guardian concluded: "Although as adept as ever at setting up Kafkaesque ambiguity and atmosphere, he disappointingly chooses to leave most of the mysteries unresolved.
"[65] In the first episode of season 2 of FX series The Bear, the character Richie has read the novel and describes its plot in his speech about searching for purpose.