Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche

Murakami did THE best coverage of the Tokyo gas attacks. In depth and with his awesome writing skills it moved along like one of his novels. This cult and its members was a surprise to me and the book is definitely worth a read!

This was a gripping book. There were five trains that the Aum gassed, and hundreds of people were affected or killed by the sarin gas. The stories were from some the people who were on the trains or platforms or relatives of people who were affected or killed by the gas were moving. The conclusions Murakami came to after those interviews were thought provoking. The interviews of people who had been (or still are) with the Aum cult were eerie. Some of them made sense, some not so much, but there were horrifying aspects within the organization even before the Sarin attacks. I loved the Afterward after the interviews with members and former members of Aum (now Aleph). There was one thing Murakami would have liked to convey to someone who was leaning toward a cult like Aum that really struck me, and I would like to quote: "Reality is created out of confusion and contradiction, and if you exclude those elements, you're no longer talking about reality. You might think that-by following language and a logic that appears consistent-you're able to exclude that aspect of reality, but it will always be lying in wait for you, ready to take its revenge." Further on there was another passage that was even more to the point: "...who would ever think, 'I'm an unimportant little person, and if I end up just a cog in society's system, gradually worn down until I die, hey-that's okay'? More or less all of us want answers to the reasons why we're living on this earth, and why we die and disappear. We shouldn't criticize a sincere attempt to find answers. Still, this is precisely the point where a kind of fatal mistake can be made." Murakami wrote this book as a possible an antidote to the possibility of other "Aum-like" groups forming and repeating history.

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.

So well-written that it is easy to follow the facts of history. Each individual who experienced the trauma of this event went through their own personal hell. The writing style encourages caring for each victim presented, with a thorough and horrifying description of how it occurred.

Murakami is famous for his post-modern fiction exploring the zitergeist of modern Japan. In this book, he reapplys his human insight into the tragedy that broke the belief in Japan's safe society - the Japanese sarin gas attack. One guesses that Murakami goes through a transformation in writing the book, from one who writes aparts from the typical Japanese, to one who feels them as his own people.The book covers the tragedy from many points of views - the victims surviving the crisis, the train station workers both coping with the problem and exacerbating it, the police attempting to solve the problem, and even the members of the cult. It is interesting that in the second edition of the book, we are treated to a post-mortem of the members of the cult who somehow still believe. In many ways, they are the most interesting characters, similar to doomsday adherants whose belief strengthens even after the event never materializes.The book ultimately is a tough one to classify. Is it cultural? Psychological? Historical? With certainty, it is a very powerful book that testifies to Murakami's latent power as a writer across multiple genres.

Haruki Murakami's works of fiction are wild rides into alternate realities filled with ordinary people, strange and hard to stop once you start reading. The interviews of those affected and those within the group that carried out the attack are challenging to get through but chilling to the soul to see that once inside a cult a person's ability to reason for themselves is removed and how close ordinary life can be to that as well.

It's strange to say that I enjoyed reading about a terrible attack, but I did. There are interviews from victims in the first part, and interviews from cult members in the second part. The first part left me feeling sorry for the victims, and at times incredibly frustrated. I'm honestly surprised that there weren't more deaths considering what happened.The second part was just as interesting. I'd had no idea what the cult was like so reading a bit about their practices and some of the other issues they had within was a surprise.

Fantastic book

Covers every angle, answers every question

Un libro interesante como literatura infantil juvenil. Gracias.

Este livro não é para todos os gostos: Imagine uma biografia mas que foi criada para explicar uma série de eventos do ponto de vista daqueles que vivenciaram o evento. Além disso, o escritor também investiga o outro lado do evento (a parte mais interessante do livro) ao entrevistar aqueles que participaram do culto, seus sonhos, medos e questões sobre o que ocorreu e sobre o que se sucedeu ao evento.Este livro não contém entrevista dos líderes e atores principais dos atentados, sendo assim necessário que o leitor procure mais informações para compreender a figura geral do ataque. Entretanto, os sentimentos que as entrevistas evocam não necessitam de leitura complementar para que possamos observar um lado que não é escrito nos jornais, enciclopédias ou em livros de história.