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Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche
 
 

Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche (Paperback)

by Haruki Murakami (Author), Alfred Birnbaum (Translator), Philip Gabriel (Translator)
4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (19 customer reviews)
RRP: £8.99
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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 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

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

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Customer Reviews

19 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.2 out of 5 stars (19 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating insight into ordinary lives disrupted, 8 Jan 2004
By A Customer
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.

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11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A portrait of survivors, henchmen and Japan, 22 Mar 2004
By syhob "syhob" (Copenhagen) - See all my reviews
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!).

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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Chilling, thought-provoking, 16 Mar 2001
By A Customer
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.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars photos please
The repetition is one of the fascinating aspects of the book-for me,this isn`t a problem. I'm slightly troubled by the reviewer who says the translation is somewhat lacking as the... Read more
Published 2 months ago by James Walters

4.0 out of 5 stars The second half is better! Why join Aum?
The first section is a compilation of accounts of witnesses of the underground Sarin gas attack. Murakami carried out the interviews himself. Read more
Published 3 months ago by J. Axup

4.0 out of 5 stars Well...
An interesting proposition - an attempt to unearth the mysteries surrounding the aum religion and the tokyo gas attack via what are first hand accounts of the victims and those... Read more
Published 5 months ago by N. S. Hartshorn

5.0 out of 5 stars Tales of quiet heroism
Murakami is best known for his book Norwegian Wood, but I chose Underground as my first Murakami book. It is only non-fiction work (at least to my knowledge). Read more
Published 10 months ago by Mr. G. Carroll

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent account of one of the key events in Japanese history since the end of World War II
Even though this volume, an abridged collection of two closely related works published in Japanese, published in English back in 2000, I have only just read it, having read all... Read more
Published 13 months ago by Greshon

5.0 out of 5 stars A highly personalized perspective.
Documentation of the event & the aftermath from a highly personalized perspective. Very sensitive handling of his material. Read more
Published 24 months ago by MYB74

4.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating
I love Murakami's fiction and doing a college project on New Religious Movements gave me the excuse I needed to read this book. Read more
Published on 27 Oct 2007 by Mrs. K. A. Wheatley

2.0 out of 5 stars March 20, 1995
On a cloudless spring morning in 1995, Aum Shinrikyo unleashed hell in the crowded Japanese subway network. Read more
Published on 18 Feb 2007 by KareNina

4.0 out of 5 stars Insightful and beautiful
Already being a big fan of Haruki Murakami, I was in no way disappointed with this work of non-fiction. Read more
Published on 30 July 2003 by Mandi Apple

3.0 out of 5 stars slightly repetitive, but still good
Having read a few murakami novels, i was curious to sample his attempt at non-fiction, and also to find out about the japanese people whose society seems rather alien to the west... Read more
Published on 20 Dec 2001

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