Haida had come from Akita to Tokyo that spring and was living in a student dorm near campus, but had not yet made any friends. When the two of them discovered that they got along so well, they started to spend time together, and Haida began dropping by Tsukuru’s apartment.

“How can a student afford such an expensive condo?” Haida asked in wonder the first time he visited Tsukuru’s place.

“My father runs a real estate business in Nagoya and owns some properties in Tokyo,” Tsukuru explained. “This one happened to be vacant, so they let me live here. My second sister used to live here, but after she graduated from college she moved out and I moved in. The place is in the company’s name.”

“Your family must be pretty well off?”

“You know, I’m not really sure. Maybe—I have no idea. I don’t think even my father would know unless he assembled his accountant, lawyer, tax consultant, and investment consultant together in one room. It seems like we’re not so badly off now, which is why I can live in this kind of place. Believe me, I’m grateful.”

“But you’re not interested in the sort of business your father does?”

“No, not at all. In his line of work you’re constantly shifting capital around—from one side to another and back again. The whole thing’s way too restless for me. I’m not like him. I much prefer plugging away at building stations, even if it isn’t very profitable.”

“Your one set interest,” Haida commented, a big smile on his face.

Tsukuru ended up staying in that one-bedroom condo in Jiyugaoka even after he graduated from college and began working for a railway company headquartered in Shinjuku. When he was thirty, his father died and the condo officially became his. His father had apparently intended to give it to Tsukuru all along and unbeknownst to him had previously transferred the deed to his name. Tsukuru’s eldest sister’s husband took over his father’s company, and Tsukuru continued his work in Tokyo building railroad stations, without much contact with his family. His visits to Nagoya remained few and far between.

When he was back in his hometown for his father’s funeral, he half expected his four friends to show up to pay their condolences. He wondered how he should greet them if they did. But none of them showed up. Tsukuru felt relieved, but at the same time a little sad, and it hit him all over again: what they had had really was over. They could never go back again. All five of them were already, at this point, thirty years old—no longer the age when one dreamed of an ordered, harmonious community of friends.

About half the people in the world dislike their own name. Tsukuru happened to run across this statistic in a newspaper or magazine. He himself was in the other half—or, at least, he didn’t dislike his name. Perhaps it was more accurate to say he couldn’t imagine having a different name, or the kind of life he’d lead if he did.

The first name “Tsukuru” was officially written with a single Chinese character, though usually he spelled it out phonetically in hiragana, and his friends all thought that was how his name was written. His mother and two sisters used an alternate reading of the same character for Tsukuru, calling him Saku or Saku-chan, which they found easier.

His father had been the one who named him. Well before Tsukuru was born, his father had already decided on his name. Why was unclear. Maybe it was because his father had spent many years of his own life far removed from anything having to do with making things. Or maybe at some point he’d received something akin to a revelation—a bolt of unseen lightning, accompanied by soundless thunder, searing the name Tsukuru in his brain. But his father never spoke of where he’d gotten the idea for the name. Not to Tsukuru, and not to anybody else.

When it came to which Chinese character he would choose to write out “Tsukuru,” however—the character that meant “create,” or the simpler one that meant “make” or “build”—his father couldn’t make up his mind for the longest time. The characters might read the same way, but the nuances were very different. His mother had assumed it would be written with the character that meant “create,” but in the end his father had opted for the more basic meaning.

After his father’s funeral, Tsukuru’s mother recalled the discussion that had taken place when her husband had chosen the name. “Your father felt that giving you the character for ‘create’ would be a burden to you,” she told Tsukuru. “The simpler character was also read as ‘Tsukuru,’ and he thought it was a more easygoing, comfortable sort of name. You should know, at least, that your father thought long and hard about it. You were his first son, after all.”

Tsukuru had almost no memories of being close to his father, but when it came to his father’s choice of name, Tsukuru had to agree. The plainer, simpler form of tsukuru indeed fit him better, for he barely had a creative or original bone in his body. But did any of this lighten the burdens of his life? Maybe because of his name, these burdens took on a different form. But whether that made them lighter, Tsukuru couldn’t say.

That’s how he became the person known as Tsukuru Tazaki. Before that, he’d been nothing—dark, nameless chaos and nothing more. A less-than-seven-pound pink lump of flesh barely able to breathe in the darkness, or cry out. First he was given a name. Then consciousness and memory developed, and, finally, ego. But everything began with his name.

His father’s name was Toshio Tazaki—“Toshio” spelled out in characters that meant “man who profits,” “Tazaki” literally meaning “many peninsulas.” The perfect name for a man who indeed profited handsomely in many fields. He’d gone from poverty to a distinguished career, had devoted himself to the real estate business and ridden the era of high growth in Japan to brilliant success, then suffered from lung cancer and died at age sixty-four. But this came later. When Tsukuru met Haida, his father was still in good health, tirelessly and aggressively buying and selling high-end Tokyo residential properties as he puffed his way through fifty unfiltered cigarettes a day. The real estate bubble had already burst, but he had anticipated this risk and had diversified his holdings to lessen the financial effects on his bottom line. And the ominous shadow on his lungs still lay hidden away, yet to be discovered.

“My father teaches philosophy at a public university in Akita,” Haida told Tsukuru. “Like me, his favorite thing is mulling over abstract ideas. He’s always listening to classical music, and devouring books that no one else ever reads. He has zero ability to earn money, and any money he does earn goes to pay for books or records.

He rarely thinks about his family, or savings. His mind is always off in the clouds. I was only able to study in Tokyo because my college has pretty low tuition, and I’m in a dorm so I can keep my living expenses down.”

“Is it better, financially, to go to the physics department than the philosophy department?” Tsukuru asked.

“When it comes to their graduates not earning anything, they’re about even. Unless you win the Nobel Prize or something,” Haida said, flashing his usual winning smile.

Haida was an only child. He’d never had many friends, and relied on his dog and classical music to keep him company. The dorm he lived in wasn’t exactly the best place to listen to classical music (and of course you couldn’t keep a dog there), so he’d come over to Tsukuru’s apartment with a few CDs and listen to them there. Most of them he’d borrowed from the university library. Occasionally he’d bring over some old LPs of his own. Tsukuru had a fairly decent stereo system in his apartment, but the only records his sister had left behind were of the Barry Manilow and Pet Shop Boys variety, so Tsukuru had hardly ever touched the record player.