Product Description

In spite of the perpetrators' intentions, the Tokyo gas attack left only twelve people dead, but thousands were injured and many suffered serious after-effects. The novelist Haruki Murakami interviews the victims to try and establish precisely what happened on the subway that day. He also interviews members and ex-members of the doomsdays cult responsible, in the hope that they might be able to explain the reason for the attack and how it was that their guru instilled such devotion in his followers.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #51518 in Books
• Published on: 2003-09-04
• Original language: Japanese
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
On Monday 20 March 1995 the Japanese Aum cult released a deadly cloud of Sarin nerve gas into the Tokyo underground. 12 people were killed and an estimated 3,800 suffered serious after-effects. Haruki Murakami, one of Japan's leading novelists (considered by many to be one of the most important writers now writing), was both shocked and fascinated by the awful event. Murakami's response was to interview as many of those affected as he could (only 60 victims were willing to be questioned), interested as he was in the stories created by this one awful event on so many lives. He also interviewed a number of members of the Aum cult: "I'm sure each member of the Science and Technology elite had his own personal reasons for renouncing the world and joining Aum. What they all had in common, though, was a desire to put the technical skill and knowledge they'd acquired in the service of a more meaningful goal ... that might very well be me. It might be you". The result is Underground his first work of non-fiction. Murakami writes complex, sometimes overbearing and dense novels but he here makes very little intervention into his text, simply presenting a background sketch of each before allowing the victims and cult-members to speak freely for themselves through the transcripts. They present an intricate, rounded and cinematic view of day that none of us should ever forget. --Mark Thwaite

Review
'Murakami shares with Alfred Hitchcock a fascination for ordinary people being suddenly plucked by extraordinary circumstances from their daily lives' Sunday Telegraph

About the Author
Haruki Murakami was born in Kyoto in 1949 and now lives near Tokyo.

Customer Reviews

Fascinating insight into ordinary lives disrupted
I have read three of Murakami’s fictional works so far, and have really enjoyed them all. It is partly because of him that I am interested in learning more about Japanese culture and society. I rarely read non-fiction, and thoroughly enjoyed this.

Of course, the content isn’t light, nor is it entertaining, but it’s a fantastic insight into ordinary people who were caught up in the Sarin attack on the Tokyo subway. I actually preferred the first half of the book – accounts by victims of the gas attack - which I have heard some people refer to as repetitive. I don’t find this to be the case at all. Though interviewees are all recounting their version of the same day, their stories are VERY different. Their lives, backgrounds, recollections, experiences of the attack, reasons for being there and experiences since the attack, vary dramatically. It is this that makes the book so striking and compelling. These people are all individuals, not the faceless crowds portrayed by the media. I was touched by all their stories. I was shocked at how many people wouldn’t have been on the train or in the subway on that day or at that time but for a string of unusual or unfortunate circumstances.

The details about the lives of these people is wonderful reading. I learnt a fair bit about Japanese culture. Many Japanese still count on a job for life, choosing a career at the start of their working life, something I find rare here in the UK. I was also surprised by the number of people who, experiencing odd symptoms after their train journey, even knowing there had been a gas attack, continued to the office. I really warmed to all these interviewees.

I enjoyed slightly less, the interviews with Aum members / ex members. Very interesting, but it was the ordinariness of the victims that gripped me so in the first part of the book. The cult interviews were very superb, I enjoyed Murakami’s interjections, and certainly the interviews demonstrated similarities in the backgrounds / perceptions whilst growing up, among those who later joined Aum. The book certainly gave an insight into the workings of the cult and those who had joined, for a range of reasons.

I sincerely recommend this book, even to readers who prefer fiction. The interviews even feel at times like exquisite works of short fiction, but all the more poignant for the fact that they are accounts by real people of their horribly disrupted lives.

A superb work of non-fiction by one of my favourite writers.

A portrait of survivors, henchmen and Japan
On March 20 1995 members of the Japanese sect Aum dispensed the nerve gas sarin in the Tokyo underground railway system. “Underground” is an extremely interesting tale by Nobel prize-candidate Haruki Murakami about the survivors’ experience. Unfortunately Al-Quaeda’s attacks have made the book even more topical than before. The book provides readers from abroad with a very fascinating view of the Japanese psyche – the very modest author didn’t exaggerate, when he chose the ambitious subtitle “The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche”.

Murakami acknowledges his debt to the American writer Studs Terkel, but Murakami writes in a style of his own. Like an antropologist he painstakingly describes how he and his two assistants found the persons he interviewed in 1996 and thoroughly discusses whether these persons are representative. It seems like Murakami sticks much closer to the interviews than Studs Terkel does, providing us with both his questions and the interviewees’ answers. Therefore “Underground” is not as fluent a read as Studs Terkel’s “The Good War”, but Murakami’s almost scientific approach makes it much easier to judge, whether the interviewees’ experiences were typical.

“Underground” contains interviews with 28 survivors of the gas attack, three relatives to people who died in the attack, two doctors who were involved in the treatment of the victims and eight former or actual members of Aum.

The interviews are very illuminating and moving in their descriptions of ordinary people’s reactions to a totally unexpected danger and their reactions afterwards. Fortunately Murakami remembered to interview relatives of survivors who are so disabled by the attack, that they usually wouldn’t be included in a study, and he didn’t forget to ask about relatives’, friends’, colleagues’ and employers’ reactions either. The interviews underscore how great the human costs of the attack were and presents the foreigner with an important account of “the Japanese psyche”. Don’t expect to read this book very quickly – the interviews provide too much food for thought to be read casually. For instance it is remarkable how long time it took for many survivors to accept that they were sick; how life went on as usual few meters away from the contaminated stations, the Japanese pride in “impossible” working conditions and that several survivors agree with Aum’s complaints that the Japanese have become too materialistic.

The Aum-members who participate come from Aum’s rank and file; they don’t belong to the top. It seems like many of Aum’s members were recruited among people with low self-worth, people who were unwilling to think for themselves and people who constantly felt cheated or misunderstood. Keeping Aum’s crimes in mind it is quite nauseating to read about some of the members’ self pity and denial.

This reviewer’s sole problem with “Underground” was the translation. Probably the two translators were very busy, stuck closely to the Japanese text or had a very limited vocabulary. In any case the translation is ridden with clichés and does not make for fluent reading (admittedly just like this reviewer’s reviews!).

Chilling, thought-provoking
Fans of Murakami's work may be surprised by this book - rather than his trademark weird and wondrous prose, this is a collection of interviews with survivors of the 1995 sarin gas attack on Tokyo's underground rail system. At first the interviews seem repetitive, a Rashomon-style collection of different views of the same story. But persevere, and what emerges is a complex exploration of the Japanese psyche - how people felt before, during and after the attack, and how the constrictive and conformist nature of mainstream Japanese society was profoundly shaken by the events of this one day. Murakami elegantly pulls the strands together, commenting and drawing conclusions, but he lets the survivors tell their own stories. More chilling are the interviews with Aum Shinrikyo members present and past - much as we don't understand their acts and their thoughts, we can see how Shoko Asahara and the Aum cult could exert such influence over its followers. As I say, it's not your average Murakami book. But then, as an author he often writes about ordinary people facing extraordinary situations - and that's exactly what this book is all about.