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Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche, by Haruki Murakami
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In this haunting work of journalistic investigation, Haruki Murakami tells the story of the horrific terrorist attack on Japanese soil that shook the entire world.
On a clear spring day in 1995, five members of a religious cult unleashed poison gas on the Tokyo subway system. In attempt to discover why, Haruki Murakmi talks to the people who lived through the catastrophe, and in so doing lays bare the Japanese psyche. As he discerns the fundamental issues that led to the attack, Murakami paints a clear vision of an event that could occur anytime, anywhere.
- Sales Rank: #114455 in Books
- Brand: Murakami, Haruki/ Birnbaum, Alfred (TRN)/ Gabriel, Philip (TRN)/ Birnbaum, Alfred/ Gabriel, J. Phili
- Published on: 2001-04-10
- Released on: 2001-04-10
- Original language: Japanese
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x .92" w x 5.20" l, .70 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 366 pages
- Vintage Books USA
From Publishers Weekly
On March 20, 1995, followers of the religious cult Aum Shinrikyo unleashed lethal sarin gas into cars of the Tokyo subway system. Many died, many more were injured. This is acclaimed Japanese novelist Murakami's (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, etc.) nonfiction account of this episode. It is riveting. What he mostly does here, however, is listen to and record, in separate sections, the words of both victims, people who "just happened to be gassed on the way to work," and attackers. The victims are ordinary people bankers, businessmen, office workers, subway workers who reflect upon what happened to them, how they reacted at the time and how they have lived since. Some continue to suffer great physical disabilities, nearly all still suffer great psychic trauma. There is a Rashomon-like quality to some of the tales, as victims recount the same episodes in slightly different variations. Cumulatively, their tales fascinate, as small details weave together to create a complex narrative. The attackers are of less interest, for what they say is often similar, and most remain, or at least do not regret having been, members of Aum. As with the work of Studs Terkel, which Murakami acknowledges is a model for this present work, the author's voice, outside of a few prefatory comments, is seldom heard. He offers no grand explanation, no existential answer to what happened, and the book is better for it. This is, then, a compelling tale of how capriciously and easily tragedy can destroy the ordinary, and how we try to make sense of it all. (May 1)Forecast: Publication coincides with the release of a new novel by Murakami (Sputnik Sweetheart, Forecasts, Mar. 19), and several national magazines, including Newsweek and GQ, will be featuring this fine writer. This attention should help Murakami's growing literary reputation.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
The deadly Tokyo subway poison gas attack, perpetrated by members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult on March 20, 1995, was the fulfillment of every urban straphanger's nightmare. Through interviews with several dozen survivors and former members of Aum, novelist Murakami (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle) presents an utterly compelling work of reportage that lays bare the soul of contemporary Japan in all its contradictions. The sarin attack exposed Tokyo authorities' total lack of preparation to cope with such fiendish urban terrorism. More interesting, however, is the variety of reactions among the survivors, a cross-section of Japanese citizens. Their individual voices remind us of the great diversity within what is too often viewed from afar as a homogeneous society. What binds most of them is their curious lack of anger at Aum. Chilling, too, is the realization that so many Aum members were intelligent, well-educated persons who tried to fill voids in their lives by following Shoko Asahara, a mad guru who promised salvation through total subordination to his will. For all public and academic libraries. Steven I. Levine, Univ. of Montana, Missoula
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
After living abroad for eight years, novelist Murakami returned to Japan intent on gaining a deeper understanding of his homeland, a mission that took on an unexpected urgency in the aftermath of the Tokyo poison-gas attack in March 1995. Inspired by a letter to the editor from a woman whose husband survived the subway attack but suffered terrible aftereffects, Murakami set out to interview as many survivors as he could find who were capable of overcoming the Japanese reluctance to complain or criticize. With great sensitivity, insight, and respect, Murakami coaxed a remarkable group of people into describing their harrowing experiences aboard the five morning rush-hour trains on which members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult released deadly sarin gas. Unlike a journalist, Murakami doesn't force these searing narratives into tidy equations of cause and effect, good and evil, but rather allows contradictions and ambiguity to stand, thus presenting unadorned the shocking truth of the diabolical and brutal manner in which ordinary lives were derailed or destroyed. The most haunting aspect of these accounts is the eerie passivity of the passengers both during and after the assault, a phenomena echoed in Murakami's courageous interviews with Aum members, frank conversations that reveal the depth of these individuals' spiritual longings and the horror of their betrayal at the hands of their corrupt and insane leader. Shaped by his fascination with alternative worlds and humanity's capacity for both compassion and abomination, Murakami's masterful and empathic chronicle vividly articulates the lessons that should be learned from this tragic foray into chaos. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Most helpful customer reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Fascinating Modern History and Look into the Mind of Murakami
By queenhobart
I read this because I love Murakami. I had never heard of the Tokyo gas attacks, and now am frankly pretty surprised it had never come up in the US.
Anyhow, Murakami mostly stays out of his subjects' ways in the first portion of the book. He lets survivors speak for themselves and neither he nor the translator make many intrusions, unless it's to clarify some detail (usually the translator notes are for people like me who don't have any background knowledge about the attacks).
It's really interesting to see how people viewed the same situation differently--there are several times when one survivor will describe a person that later tells their own story of the event, and both are pretty different. Despite this being a really cool perspective, it can get a tiny bit repetitive, but it's worth it to stick it out and finish the book.
The last section of the book is Murakami's reflections on what the gas attacks meant in the broader context of Japanese society and interviews with ex and current Aum members. During this, he waxes philosophical about his own complex relationship with his home country.As a western fan who has never visited Japan I found this fascinating. It's easy to pick up on themes feeling isolated or like something is wrong in your society (or the way you relate to it) in his other books, but it was very interesting to see him speak directly about these thoughts.
He's more intrustive in the Aum section, which I actually appreciate--his anger at the naive beleifs that led to so many deaths is palpable, and most of his interviewees don't shrink back from it.
Overall, a really good read if you're interested in Japan, terrorism, cults or just Haruki Murakami.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Worth reading and contemplating
By Prossion
First of all, considering who the author is, I should note that interest in Murakami's (wondrous) novels is not going to necessarily going to equal interest in this book. While some of the persistent themes of Murakami's novels are present - alienation, yearning, etc. - this book is less about Murakami and more about Japanese post-war society. In analyzing the Aum and Shoko Asahara phenomenon (particularly the March 20 1995 Sarin gas attacks), Murakami hopes to delve deeper into the underlying circumstances.
Part 1 of the book - the titular "Underground" - consists of Murakami's interviews with approximately 40 victims/survivors (as one self-described survivor notes in one of the interviews, victimization is a self-defeating subject). These interviews tend to last anywhere between two and five pages, and admittedly, they can be a little monotonous. But I think that's the point. Some have complained about how "boring" it is, but each of those interviewed add a little more substance to the reader's conception of the Japanese psyche. I myself was fascinated with every single one of them. Although many of them had similar things to say, each perspective was in one way or another unique...call it individuality in multiplicity, or unity in individuality, whatever.
However, out of all of the interviews, some in particular stick out - both for the reader and for Murakami as well. One of these regards the death of Eiji Wada, an outgoing husband who unfortunately passed away months before the birth of his daughter, Asuka. Murakami interviews not only the late Eiji's wife, but his mother and father. He thus paints a sorrowful picture of a man who lived a kind, wonderful life, before having it senselessly torn away by something as simple as a poke of an umbrella. Even more poignant was the lamentable fate of "Shizuko Akashi" (a pseudonym was used to avoid the media), who became a vegetable as a result of the sarin. Although she is (was) undergoing extensive therapy to regain her faculties of speech and memory, such a tragedy imprints itself on the mind of the reader.
After a section in which Murakami discusses his own perspective on the events, he launches into a series of interviews - less numerous but more extensive (with more editorializing) than those affected by the sarin - with members of Aum (this second part is called "The Place That Was Promised"). Some of these members had left; others remained in the organization. The last 100 pages of the book thus attempt to paint the other side of the picture - to truly see if the Aum novitiates were as sinister and foreign as the media believed them to be.
But I think the truly important message of the book - one that Murakami touches on occasionally - is that one cannot understand the senseless tragedy that occurred on that day without attempting to understand the perspectives of all involved. The survivors of the attacks are not extraordinary people who have expert opinions - they simply espoused their own beliefs. They just happened to pick the short straws in the jaw, and were thus affected in the train. Many of them noted that they wouldn't have even normally been on the train that day if not for it being the end of the fiscal year, or because of a sudden meeting, or because they were early/late getting out the door, etc.
But because of the distinct ordinariness of those affected, the interviews with the Aum initiates complete the picture. The initiates, it is shown, were not fanatical, militaristic, or really at all violent; they simply felt spiritually impoverished, or foreign to their own land. That's a feeling most of us can sympathize with. More importantly, it's a feeling that many of the survivors mention at one point or another - but fleetingly. The survivors, who we can assume are more at home in society than the initiates, are able to change their jobs, to take time off, to forget themselves in the twilit respite between obligations. Those who fled to Aum were, in large measure, those who could not - who fled into self-absorption and solipsism in search of a rigid, permanent purity.
If we subtract the Buddhist esoterica and other elements peculiar to Japan, it's easy to see that this sort of phenomenon is by no means unique. It is the result of marginalization, and if marginalization is tolerated, or if it is spurred on with a lack of understanding, it reacts and in turn grows. In the end, Aum Shinrikyo, rather than embodying the religious tenets that it based itself around, fell into the old pattern of revolutionary conservatism. Such a thing is happening, in smaller or larger examples, around the world - with or without the religious patina. One of my favorite authors, Herman Hesse, struggled with this similar issue - maintaining one's spiritual dignity without subsuming yourself to the tyranny of the majority. That question, in my opinion, is really the undercurrent of this book.
After "The Place We Were Promised" ends, in an Afterword (Murakami's perspective on the trials and crisis as a whole, the impetus for which was Ikuo Hayashi's - one of the assailants - memoir), Murakami notes that we shouldn't be so staunchly critical of the Aum terrorists because of the fact that their malaise is the result of a social condition that we share. This is perhaps true. I know that I myself could certainly see myself in a similar situation had my life taken a slightly different turn. For that reason, I think it is an important book.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Wonderful read, but don't expect to find Murakami's lighter
By Junglebird
Harrowing. Wonderful read, but don't expect to find Murakami's lighter, more surreal style. The subject matter is treated with the respect and gravitas it deserves.
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