Mr. Tatsuya Koyasu: The Ghostly Librarian of Z**

Overview

Mr. Tatsuya Koyasu is the deceased former head librarian of the Z** library, a small private institution in a remote Fukushima mountain town. He died a year before the story begins, yet he appears to the narrator as a ghost—wearing his characteristic navy-blue beret, checked skirt, tweed jacket, and white tennis shoes. Koyasu is one of the most enigmatic figures in Haruki Murakami’s The City and Its Uncertain Walls, acting as a mentor, a repository of hidden personal tragedy, and a bridge between the living world and the walled town of the narrator’s past. The text explicitly states that Koyasu’s face was paler than usual after death, and his form seemed less substantial, implying that his ghostly presence is gradually fading.

Plot Role

Koyasu first appears in Chapter 30 when the narrator travels to Z** for a job interview. He greets the narrator in his unusual attire, announces that the position is already offered, and explains that he will retire and serve as an informal adviser. After Koyasu’s death, his ghost continues to appear to the narrator in the library’s basement room, where the two hold long conversations. These scenes provide crucial backstory about Koyasu’s life and, in turn, help the narrator understand his own quest. The ghost also reveals information about Yellow Submarine Boy, a mute teenager who has a special connection to the walled town. Koyasu’s role is that of a spiritual guide: he chose the narrator as his successor because he sensed a “special place that takes in lost hearts.”

Motivations and Traits Shown Through Actions

Koyasu’s actions reveal a man driven by unresolved love, duty, and a quiet rebellion against societal expectations.

• Reserved and guarded: While alive, he kept a distance from others. Mrs. Soeda observes that he avoided eye contact and seemed uninterested in reality. After death, his personality becomes livelier and more sincere, as if a hard shell was removed.
• Nonconformist: Wearing a skirt in a conservative rural town is a deliberate act. Koyasu tells the narrator that he started wearing skirts after his wife’s death, knowing it would discourage matchmaking. This shows his rejection of social pressure to remarry and his embrace of a personal code.
• Deeply loving and grieving: His marriage to a Tokyo woman ten years younger was a commuter arrangement. He loved her intensely, but she committed suicide after their son died. Koyasu never got over the loss; he describes a “deep wound gouged out in my heart” that left him half-dead.
• Dutiful and responsible: He could not abandon the family brewery or his bedridden father. He stayed in Z** even though his true desire was to live in Tokyo with his wife. This sense of duty shaped his entire adult life.
• Mentor and seeker of understanding: Koyasu takes the narrator under his wing, shares his own painful story, and gives advice: “Never give up believing.” He clearly wants the narrator to avoid his own mistakes.

Chronological Arc

The evidence, primarily from Mrs. Soeda’s account and Koyasu’s ghostly confessions, traces his life in stages:

1. Youth and education: Eldest son of a wealthy sake-brewing family, he studied economics in Tokyo against his will, wanting to be a writer. He started a literary magazine and published a short story but never succeeded as a novelist.
2. Return to Z:** His father cut off his allowance; he came back to train as heir. He found the work unfulfilling. He remained a bachelor into his thirties.
3. Love and marriage: At thirty-five, he met a beautiful woman ten years younger, a Tokyoite fluent in French who worked at an embassy. They married after compromise: a commuter marriage. They had a son.
4. Tragedy: Their son died. His wife then committed suicide, leaving nothing but two scallions on her bed. Koyasu never understood why. After her death, he began wearing skirts.
5. Librarian and death: He ran the library in later years. He died a year before the narrator arrives, but his ghost is granted a “special grace period” to continue guiding.
6. Ghostly appearances: The ghost meets the narrator several times, growing fainter each time. He warns that he may soon disappear entirely.

Relationships

• With his wife: The central relationship of his life. He loved her “with an immeasurably deep and powerful” feeling. Their commuter marriage was imperfect, but he treasured their limited time together. Her suicide without explanation left him with permanent trauma.
• With his son: Little is said except that the son’s death precipitated the wife’s suicide.
• With the narrator: Koyasu recognizes a kindred spirit. He chooses the narrator as successor because he senses that the narrator also carries a lost-heart wound. Their ghostly conversations are marked by mutual respect and shared understanding of love and loss.
• With Yellow Submarine Boy (M)**: Koyasu was the only person the boy trusted. The boy would only communicate through silent gestures and written messages with him. After Koyasu’s death, the boy gradually opens up to the narrator, suggesting Koyasu paved the way.

Key Decisions and Consequences

Theme and Symbol Connections

Koyasu’s character is tightly woven into the novel’s major themes.

• Love and Loss: His story is a mirror of the narrator’s. Both experienced pure, adolescent love that was severed suddenly. Koyasu tells the narrator that once you taste that kind of love, a part of your heart is “burned out.”
• Reality vs. Illusion: As a ghost, Koyasu exists between worlds. He can be seen only by the narrator, and his form becomes transparent. He says he has no substance, and the narrator sometimes wonders if he imagined the encounters. This blurs the line between the real and the spectral.
• Identity and the Shadow: Koyasu tells the narrator that the real self and its shadow are two sides of the same coin, and that sometimes they can change roles. This directly echoes the walled-town theme of shadows replacing selves.
• Isolation and Connection: Koyasu lived a deeply isolated life despite his social position—a bachelor until marriage, a commuter husband, a widower who refused to remarry, a man whose only true friend was a mute boy. His ghostly guidance becomes a tenuous connection for the narrator.
• Memory and Forgetting: Koyasu’s memory is dominated by the image of two scallions left by his wife—a riddle he can never solve. He remarks that even in the afterlife he is “totally alone and the riddle remains.” This unyielding memory prevents him from moving on, just as the narrator cannot forget the girl.

Symbols

• The beret and skirt: Koyasu’s distinctive clothing sets him apart. The beret matches one in the narrator’s dream, linking him to the walled town. The skirt is his own personal rebellion and statement of grief.
• Wristwatch without hands: Koyasu wears a watch that shows no time, symbolizing his existence outside normal time—dead, yet lingering. The narrator notices it in their first meeting.
• Scallions: The two white scallions left by his wife are an unsolvable symbol. The text does not explain them; they remain unsettling and enigmatic. They represent the incomprehensible loss and the impossibility of closure.

Five Book-Specific Questions and Answers

1. Why does Mr. Koyasu wear a skirt in a conservative town?

The text states that after his wife’s death, Koyasu began wearing a skirt. He explains to the narrator that in a conservative rural town, no one would try to set up a woman with a man who dresses so weirdly. This was his way of refusing remarriage after losing the only woman he truly loved. It can be inferred that the skirt also served as a personal badge of mourning and nonconformity.

2. What happened to Koyasu’s wife and son?

According to the ghost’s account, Koyasu’s son died first. Then his wife committed suicide, leaving no note or explanation. The only thing she left behind on her bedcover was two long, white scallions. The text explicitly says that the meaning of those scallions remains unknown, and Koyasu still wonders about it in the afterlife.

3. Why does Koyasu appear as a ghost after death, and why does he fade?

Koyasu tells the narrator that he has been granted a “special grace period” to remain on earth. However, it is becoming harder for him to take on human form, and he fears the time is approaching for him to leave this earth entirely. The text describes his form as becoming transparent, like the first stage of a movie fade-out. This is not fully explained, but it implies that his connection to the living world is temporary and weakening.

4. How does Koyasu know the narrator is the right successor for the library?

When the narrator asks this question directly, Koyasu replies that the first time he laid eyes on the narrator, he knew. He explains that this is no ordinary library; it must be “a special place that takes in lost hearts.” The ghost recognizes in the narrator a kindred spirit carrying a similar wound from lost love. This is a stated fact in the dialogue.

5. What is the significance of the boy’s map of the walled town in relation to Koyasu?

The boy, M**, drew a detailed map of the walled town without ever having been there. The narrator speculates that the boy must have hidden in the cemetery and overheard the narrator speaking to Koyasu’s grave about the town. The narrator had visited the grave multiple times and recounted his memories out loud. Therefore, Koyasu’s grave served as an accidental conduit, and the boy’s map is a product of his extraordinary auditory and visual memory. The excerpt explicitly mentions that the narrator wondered if the boy had pieced together fragments from those one-sided conversations.

Conclusion

Mr. Tatsuya Koyasu is far more than a quirky ghost in a skirt. He is the emotional and thematic anchor of the library setting, a character whose life of compromised dreams, profound grief, and quiet rebellion illuminates the narrator’s own journey. Through Koyasu, the novel meditates on the nature of love that is “pure, unadulterated” and the curse it can become when severed. His presence—and his eventual fading—remind the reader that even between worlds, some questions remain unanswered, and some losses are permanent.

For further exploration of related themes, see the analysis of love and loss, reality vs illusion, identity and the shadow, memory and forgetting, and isolation and connection. You may also find helpful the full book summary and the ending explained.