Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche (Vintage International) by Haruki Murakami (EPUB)

Description

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.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Haruki Murakami’s Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche is not a classic beach read nor a typical Murakami magic realism novel. It is a history of terrorism, mistaken belief and innocents assaulted. It is not a book one can review as enjoyable. This is the first-person accounts of survivors, a few family members and of such of those Murakami could reach who conducted or had direct contact with the perpetrators within the Aum religious sect. Senior members of this known to be dangerous group engaged in a deliberate release of highly poisonous sarin gas on six Tokyo underground subway cars on March 20, 1995. The attacks were coordinated and executed in the early part of Monday morning rush hour.Murakami is not acting as a reporter. He was acting as a writer seeking to understand the attack as it was experienced by those on the scene and to attempt to related this attack to some aspect of modern Japanese psyche. There is minimal editing of each interviewee statement, some indication of how he guided each interview and additional sessions with members of Aum sect.From this Murakami attempts to make some conclusions. His conclusions are not the strongest part of the book and may not pass the question: to what degree are his musings not applicable to any other nation suffering a terrorist attack? This may be the most personal part of the book, but it is not clear that he comes to any conclusion, nor that there are any conclusions that must be particular to the Japanese. It may be that victim is a status that has no borders or culture. It may be that terrorists tend to resemble each other more than their hosting or native culture.I remember when this tragedy of the Serin attack were made public. My initial thought was that this was not something one expects to happen in Japan. That is was an attack by a Buddhist sect was at once more confusing, because one does not immediately associate Buddhism with poison gas, and explanatory because there are always those claiming a right from God to perform evil. As an American, from Jamestown, to Waco to the Trade Towers there are ample examples of murder excused if ordered by God.In this case there does not seem to be any specifically Buddhist aspect beyond a tradition of passivity towards a Sensei, even should that master drifts into delusional extremes. It should be noted that the Aum sect was reborn after the gas attack, maintains many of the same membership and all believe that the attack was an aberration from the core teaching of the movement. Japanese law enforcement maintains an intrusive oversight, but there have been no more attacks.In structure each attack forms its own narrative. Murakami tells us a much as can be known about the persons who released the gas. They are surprisingly well educated. There could be no excuse that they did not know sarin to be deadly. Exactly how each justified their actions Murikami make few assumptions or excuses. Statements from Aum members who conducted any part of the attack seem to believe they we doing what they were told, and that that was enough. Shades of Just following orders, but with something besides. The is the cult of personality and organization mind writ large and in poison.What follows are the interviews with any of the survivors who were willing to be interviewed. Surviving can also mean finding ways to cope. It is hard to call these interviewee as exactly typical. They allowed themselves to be interviewed, this makes them different. All were riding early rush hour subways. Many expressed a heightened need to get to work early out of a particular sense of loyalty to their employers. This could be over interpreted as proof of a higher work ethic among Japanese salary men, but these people ex[ress a [articular respect for this image. In this they may not have been typical.It is easy to say that Japan was not ready for a terrorist attack. The harder fact is that in the initial minutes ‘being ready’ is not an absolute term. Japan had a core group of station attendants with a very high resolve to serve their post. It is hard to imagine just any country having like minded motivated people working their metro stations.Citizen reaction was as you might expect, mixed. Their seemed to be a general effort to help each other.Even where the term” help” could not be properly defined. Take the injured to cover or take them outside, or leave them alone until professionals can attend to them? Any of these might be right. Any of these also has to tie to who you want to see the next day in your mirror.

⭐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.

⭐Haruki Kurayama does Svetlana Alexievich*, brilliantly.Not an easy read: An island nation, whose inhabitants would rather walk past, than help?Been there… but if you have the capacity to help?I have been there too,And I have helped.A dark exploration of the Japanese Psyche (although I doubt that it is a unique ‘psyche).* If you have read ‘Underground’, and want to find more (It is hard to say ‘enjoyed’, as there is little joy, in ‘Underground’) read Chernobyl Prayer/Voices from Chernobyl, by Svetlana Alexievich: Short stories spoken by those who were there.

⭐This was something of a struggle to read, Murakami is an excellent novelist and his talent with words is impressive so I was disappointed to find that the majority of the text is uninterrupted testimony from the victims of the Tokyo Gas Attack. While it was noble of Murakami to give a voice to these victims and family members of victims, it does become a tad repetitive, each chapter essentially being a variation of the same story. It’s only towards the end when he speaks to medical practitioners and family members that the stories vary and the book becomes more interesting.Murakami received criticism for Underground that he only really took the perspective of the victims and missed out the perpetrators altogether. In the second part he makes up for it by interviewing members of the Aum cult responsible for the Gas attack, but not the ones directly involved. It makes for a fascinating portrait of how people get caught up in new religions and become trapped while escaping one society by another (that’s not too dissimilar to the one most of us inhabit. The testimonies vary significantly and as a result this makes a much more interesting read than Underground.

⭐The first section is a compilation of accounts of witnesses of the underground Sarin gas attack. Murakami carried out the interviews himself. The interviews shed light on the Tokyoite character. More often then not, even when it was clear there was a problem, commuters chose to do nothing because other people were not reacting – a disturbing form of denial. Accounts of the different ways people suffered after the event, both mentally and physically was also fascinating.Accounts did become repetitive. I absolutely understand that after carrying out interviews with witnesses and editing content Murakami possibly didn’t feel he could simply dispose of some of the less compelling stories. Or maybe he simply didn’t want to.I absolutely enjoyed the second section the most: interviews with Aum Shinrikyo, and the various reasons these members joined the cult. It becomes possible to catch a glimpse of life within the cult, and how people were used by leaders: for sex, for prestige, for manual labor and to carry out the attack.

⭐This book is a good book, and a noble project: Murakami wanted to hear the stories of those affected by the 1995 sarin gas attacks, not just the stories of the perpetrators, widely reported in the news.Part I of the book contains interviews with those survivors. If you are looking for something to read for diversion, some of the accounts are repetitive. Read to understand the human cost of a cult’s desire to do whatever it was trying to do, though, this may be part of the point: the survivors, in one capacity or another, form a real chorus. I was conscious that the voice that allowed me to conjure up a person behind it most clearly was the Irish jockey trainer’s: was he actually speaking differently, was he untranslated, or is it just that my Anglophone familiarity makes conjuring him easier for me?Part II, written a few years later, contains interviews with people who were members of Aum in 1995. In contrast to Part I, Murakami interjects more in these interviews, challenging his subjects. In doing so, I felt that he was betraying his premise, somewhat, or trying to understand how Aum held a darkened mirror to the rest of Japanese society: his preface to this section emphasises the unsettling relationship between Aum and Japanese society, but then drifts into general assertions rather than careful analysis. Thus, I found myself wishing for more of Louis Theroux’ approach to these interviews, disarming his subjects – most of whom do seem genuinely sympathetic.

⭐A really interesting read. Fascinating to hear about the everyday preoccupations of commuters, unexpectedly disrupted by being attacked with nerve gas on their way to work. Chilling. I don’t know much about Japan, but it was interesting to compare and contrast what I imagine would have been the reactions and descriptions of Westerners in a similar situation. Is there something intrinsically different about the Japanese psyche, which Murakami seeks to uncover here? Some of the victims made a point of phoning into work to say “sorry, I’ve breathed in a lot of sarin and have to go to hospital now. I may be slightly late for work.” – would Londoners have done that?The victim interviews are set against the interviews with people involved in the cult which committed the atrocity. That was really chilling, how thoughtful and intelligent but perhaps socially inept and isolated young men can get involved with a nutty belief system like Aum Shinrikyo, believing it be the answer to everything. This event from 1990s Japan seemed very relevant today. I was reading this book when the Islamist bomb attacks of 22nd March 2016 occurred in Brussels, and the book really opened a new perspective for me. Clearly the terrorists are to blame for their actions, but is there something about our society which invites attack by its own citizens who’ve been influenced by a death cult?

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