Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche [Paperback]

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.

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!).