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Underground

3.87 of 5 stars 3.87 · rating details · 4,878 ratings · 361 reviews

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. 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...more

Paperback, 309 pages

Published September 4th 2003 by Vintage (first published 1997)

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Dec 09, 2010 Alina rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, japanese

Amazing, thoughtful compilation of interviews conducted by Murakami. While the accounts of the gas attack itself are both shocking and fascinating, it also gives invaluable insight into what it means to be Japanese and the life that is expected of you. In fact, when reading the rigid and all-prevailing work ethic of the commuters on their way to work on the doomed trains, the sense of entrapping routine makes you wonder how 'crazy' the interviewed Aum members are for wanting to escape it. A cul...more

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May 25, 2011 AC rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: japan, fascism

This is actually two books. Part I (1-223), titled "Underground" (Andaguraundo) was published in 1997; Part II ("The Place that was Promised") was written and published separately the following year.

Part I consists of interviews with the victims (see updates; this section is too long and is tedious). Part II consists of interviews with members and former members of Aum Shinrikyo.

And this is where things get really weird....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aum_Shin...

The members of this cult -- who r...more This is actually two books. Part I (1-223), titled "Underground" (Andaguraundo) was published in 1997; Part II ("The Place that was Promised") was written and published separately the following year.

Part I consists of interviews with the victims (see updates; this section is too long and is tedious). Part II consists of interviews with members and former members of Aum Shinrikyo.

And this is where things get really weird....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aum_Shin...

The members of this cult -- who resemble a cross between the Moonies and Lyndon LaRouche -- are uniformly described as ordinary (read: "mediocre") Japanese who were nonetheless interested in the "deeper" problems of life. All of them describe feelings of alienation -- of feeling that there was "a hole in them", something "incomplete". Murakami points out, in one of these interviews, that adolescents who get interested in the question of meaning, usually start reading books -- philosophy, and so forth. But these individuals report that they were not readers. They simply relied on their intuitions....

Aum held to what is known as Vajrayana Buddhism -- which, inter alia, suggested that murder can, in the hands of the enlightened, be a "fast path" to salvation -- (that is, for the salvation of the murderer...)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vajrayana

Murakami's point in all this, is that we should study these individuals not to find out what "they" think -- but to cast a reflected light back upon "us" -- the society (Japan's) that produced them. As he says (229):

"Or rather, 'they' are the mirror of 'us'.... Now of course a mirror image is always darker and distorted. Convex and concave swap places... light and shadow play tricks. But take away these dark flaws and the two images are uncannily similar... Which is why we avoid looking directly at the image, why, consciously or not, we keep eliminating these dark elements from the face we want to see. These subconscious shadows are an 'underground' that we carry around within us, and the bitter aftertaste that continues to plague us long after the Tokyo gas attack comes seeping out from below."

A strange book.(less)

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Apr 09, 2012 Aryn rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: owned-by-evan, non-fiction, biography, history, short-story, multicultural

On March 20, 1995 a Japanese religious cult, called Aum Shinrikyo released sarin gas onto five subway trains during the morning rush hour. Cult members entered trains near the front with two or three newspaper-wrapped packets of sarin, piercing the packets with sharpened umbrellas the members were able to get off the train with minimal injury due to the gas.

In Japan, this book was published as two: the first being interviews with sarin survivors that had been affected in some way, even just havi...more On March 20, 1995 a Japanese religious cult, called Aum Shinrikyo released sarin gas onto five subway trains during the morning rush hour. Cult members entered trains near the front with two or three newspaper-wrapped packets of sarin, piercing the packets with sharpened umbrellas the members were able to get off the train with minimal injury due to the gas.

In Japan, this book was published as two: the first being interviews with sarin survivors that had been affected in some way, even just having their day disrupted; the second being interviews with members and ex-members of Aum that agreed to be interviewed. The first part of the book definitely deserves five stars. The second part of the book I found less intriguing, which surprised me. Maybe it's the way that the Aum talk about enlightenment that I really just had trouble with because it's so foreign to my western thought processes.

My lack of knowledge of this attack is pretty disgusting. But the thing is, that even spell check didn't recognize "sarin." Leads me to believe it's probably not just me that doesn't know enough about the attack. Hell, I didn't even know what sarin was or did until the last interviews in the first part of this book which were interviews with doctors who treated the sarin. The only thing I really knew about sarin, I learned from the introduction to the book, in a foot note.

Sarin is a nerve gas invented by German scientists in the 1930s as part of Adolf Hitler's preparations for World War II. During the 1980s it was used to lethal effects by Iraq, both in the war against Iran and against the Kurds. Twenty-six times as deadly as cyanide gas, a drop of sarin the size of a pinhead is sufficient to kill a person.

In the interview with the doctors, the most helpful part was this:

If you want to move a suckle the nerve endings send out an order to the muscle cells in the form of the chemical, acetylcholine. It's the messenger. When the muscle receives that they move, they contract. After the contraction, the enzyme cholinestrerase serves to neutralize the message sent by the acetylcholine, which prepares for the next action. Over and over again.

However when the cholinestrerase runs out, the acetylcholine message remains active and the muscle stays contracted. [...] when they stay contracted we get paralysis.

As I mentioned earlier, I enjoyed the first half of this book quite a bit more than the second half. What was really striking was how surreal the event felt to the people who were involved. None of them really seemed to know what was going on or how to handle it. Even if they did hear that it might be sarin gas, the the overwhelming response seemed to be: "well, it couldn't be me, better be off or else I'll be late for work!"

My favorite interviews were the ones with Tatsuo and Shizuko Akashi. Shizuko was on Marunouchi Line, towards Ogikubo. She was the one most affected by sarin that agreed to be interviewed for Murakami's book. She lost much of her memory, ability to speak and walk. At the time this book was published she was in the hospital doing therapies to attempt to help her regain her life. The two interviews felt, to me, to be the two most emotional, and therefore resonated best with me.(less)

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Aug 26, 2010 Jackie "the Librarian" rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: history, non-fiction

There was a terrorist attack in the Tokyo subway system carried out in 1995 by a religious cult called Aum. They released poison gas, called sarin, during rush hour on several different train lines, killing 13 people, and injuring hundreds of others.

This book contains interviews of people caught in the attack, as well as interviews of members of the Aum cult, although none of them were perpetrators of the attack.

As a reader from another country, I feel like I'm missing a lot. I read the book fe...more There was a terrorist attack in the Tokyo subway system carried out in 1995 by a religious cult called Aum. They released poison gas, called sarin, during rush hour on several different train lines, killing 13 people, and injuring hundreds of others.

This book contains interviews of people caught in the attack, as well as interviews of members of the Aum cult, although none of them were perpetrators of the attack.

As a reader from another country, I feel like I'm missing a lot. I read the book feeling like Murakami was assuming I already was familiar with both the gas attack, and the Aum group, and I'm not, so I was having to piece together a picture from the narratives, and I still don't think I have the whole story.

Also supposedly, it's a book about the Japanese psyche, and again, I felt like I was missing that background knowledge a Japanese reader would have. So, I'm having to infer a lot out of the interviews. Maybe that's the whole point. Murakami wants us to draw our own conclusions.

The picture I got was of people so dedicated to their work, so much seeing themselves as not individuals, but as workers in a larger community, that they tried to carry on, no matter that they weren't feeling well. If they can just hang on until the next stop, they'll be able to get off the train and go to work. Very few of them complained about the weird smell, or having trouble seeing, or even breathing. They themselves were not that important. Again, this was all unspoken, but just what I'm concluding from how the people behaved as reported in the interviews. I don't know how unusual people were behaving on the day of the attack, compared to any other day.

Murakami doesn't draw many conclusions, and he doesn't bring in any experts to explain how or why people behaved the way they did on the day of the gas attack. Sure, I can make some inferences, but I don't know how fair they are, given that we're only seeing the reports of people willing to talk to a reporter.

After the first section, which concentrated solely on victims of the attact, came the interviews with members of the Aum group. The contrast was fascinating. Compared to the first group, who didn't have much sense of themselves as individuals, everyone who Murakami talked to from Aum seemed preoccupied about the Self, what is the true Self. I got the sense that in Japan, people are not encouraged much to be themselves. Not like here! In Aum, there was special training to uncover that hidden Self, or possibly to eradicate it completely in service to the leader. I'm not entirely sure, and I don't think the Aum were, either.

The other attraction of the Aum group was getting to renounce all ties to the world, and how freeing that was to those in the group. Again, the underlying message seemed to be how high pressure and stressful the world must be for those living in Japan's consumerist society, but it was never stated outright.

So, don't read this book looking for answers as to why the Aum conducted the terror attack, or for a general overview of Japanese culture. Perhaps in a future edition, the publishers could include an introduction about the attacks for readers from other countries. I liked this book a lot, I just wanted more. (less)

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Dec 15, 2008 Anina Ertel rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction, biography, philosophy-religon

This was a re-read, probably one of my favorite books of all time. It contains interviews of victims of a sarin (like cyanide) gas attack in the Tokyo subway in 1995. It also contains interviews with members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult who carried out the attacks. If you are into cults, you will really find this book fascinating. The cult members are all people who feel alienated from society or reject society in some way, and in the end they are very relatable because many of us feel that way som...more

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Apr 17, 2013 Cărăşălu rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This a collection of interviews with the victims of the Tokyo subway gas attack, in the first part, and with some (ex)members of the cult that did carry out the attack. Although I did find the latter part more interesting, the first one is very revealing as well. Murakami sets out to show how the event was felt by those directly involved in it. What exactly happened that very morning? What did people do? Who reacted how? And the answers are very surprising, at times unbelievable. One of the most...more

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Apr 18, 2011 Mady rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: borrowed, 2011, non-fiction

This was not the typical Murakami. Because it's non-fiction. Because most words are not Murakami's. Regardless, it's a Murakami book. It took me a few pages to understand this, but then testimony by testimony I savoured it slowly.

Underground is a glimpse onto Japanese society in face of a major disaster, the sarin attack in Tokyo's metro. This was perpetrated by Japanese people, on a weekday during rush hour and inflicted onto Japanese people. Almost unthinkable on the days before it took place....more

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May 24, 2010 Ken Takel rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I started to read this book when it came out. After 130 pages I was bored and put it on my shelf where it laid for eight years. I don't like unfinished business and it was bothering me to have an unread book in my room, so I picked it up two weeks ago to finally finish what I started so long ago.

Underground is a series of separate interviews Murakami conducted with 60 victims of the gas attacks in the Tokyo subway and 8 members of the Aum-sect, descriptions of how the attacks were carried out....more

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Nov 18, 2007 Tosh rated it 5 of 5 stars

I know the subway line in Tokyo that the AUM attacked very well. It goes through the 'posh' or expensive areas of Tokyo - as well as some leading tourist sites - the Ginza, Roppongi. Then the unthinkable happened - especially in Tokyo. The gas attack.

Murakami and an assistant interviewed everyone who was on that train line that morning - so the reader gets slightly different versions what happened on the subway line. All the victims talk about their bad health after-affects of course, but what i...more

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Feb 11, 2012 Iris rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: adult

When I first started reading this book, I must admit: I was bored. However, I forced myself to keep going and keep reading, and I'm glad that I did. My favourite part is when Murakami interviewed the Aum followers. Reading about Aum, it really made me think about the media: and how it twists stories to whatever they like... it makes me feel differently about listening to the media all the time. Aum believers think of themselves as out of this world, when really in my opinion they are only feelin...more

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Jan 02, 2012 Aaron rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography, history

A birthday gift from wifey, and somewhat of a reality-horror novel as I read most of this book whilst commuting on the subway and train from the heart of manhattan to remote Syosset. This book, compiled as a organized transcribed collation of heartfelt interviews with victims and/or their surviving family, shows how each individual responds differently to tragedy and terror.

It is said to represent the Japanese Psyche: the urge to quietly and politely endure/withstand unpleasantness that allowed...more

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Aug 17, 2011 Faisal rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction, japanese, terrorism

Its difficult to discribe this book in any other terms then to say that Murakami sets out to interview all the people he could find who were in the tokyo subway that fateful day. We get a little background of each person along with a detailed account of how they ended up being a part of so extraordinary while they carried out their ordinary lives .[return][return]As you read the book it clarifies the way people think in japan and the reaction or lack there of in case something dreadful happens,...more

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Aug 07, 2011 Andrew Rosner added it · review of another edition

Over fifteen years ago, members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult stepped on to several subway trains in Tokyo, dropped packages of sarin liquid and punctured them with sharpened umbrella tips, resulting in the release of sarin gas. In the ensuing chaos, twelve people died and thousands more were injured, many of whom live with the effects of the gas to this day. In retrospect, it's rather remarkable more people didn't die as sarin is an unbelievably lethal substance. This truly seemed like an act of mi...more

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Apr 11, 2013 Nikolai Kim rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: If you enjoy the sound of your own voice

Recommended to Nikolai by: A Bookshelf in a Bookstore

Shelves: japan

You should read this book because the Pivot to the Pacific is going to bring the social and pyschic dynamics of Japan and Asia ex-Japan to America and Europe. You've enjoyed your Sony Playstation, your Wii and your Samsung SmartTV, now you may want to to know something about what modernization and the Age of Information have done to the Asian mindset over the past 150 years or so. These forces will begin to pervade the life of our planet in the coming decades.

I don't mean to suggest that gas att...more You should read this book because the Pivot to the Pacific is going to bring the social and pyschic dynamics of Japan and Asia ex-Japan to America and Europe. You've enjoyed your Sony Playstation, your Wii and your Samsung SmartTV, now you may want to to know something about what modernization and the Age of Information have done to the Asian mindset over the past 150 years or so. These forces will begin to pervade the life of our planet in the coming decades.

I don't mean to suggest that gas attacks and other Pacific varieties of terror will reach American and European shores. I also don't want to say that I believe that the Asian psyche has been tortured by modernization or that the vast Pacific today amounts to a collection of lost souls adrift in a sea of alienating electronics and other hyper-gadgets. This book is rather more subtle than that.

I thought that "terror" per se had little to do with the underlying substance of Murakami's reporting on the people on both sides of the sarin attack. "Underground" takes a sample of people from across the spectrum, both victims and perpetrators. It's a broad sample population, and Murakami seemingly asks whether the extremes of this statistical distribution of personality types in some way describe the mean: Do the terrorists of Aum Shinrikyo in some way explain some aspect of the "normal" condition of Japan? This line of inquiry is implied in the first few paragraphs of "Underground" in which he wonders aloud how it was that perfectly intelligent, highly-trained and well-educated people in Japan found their way into Aum Shinrikyo.

What Murakami discovers are varieties and levels of alienation. Without condoning the attack in any way, he suggests from time to time that the attacks seemed to have been designed to create an almost mystical introspection equivalent to the introspective frame of mind that characterized Shoko Asahara, the leader of Aum Shinrikyo, who is clinically blind. It is implied, though never stated explicitly, that mass murder was never the primary aim of the sarin gas attack. Again and again, Murakami notes that the principal symptom of the sarin gas was loss of vision, forcing its victims to look inward.

But of course there was loss of life and severe physical and neurological injury. The gas attack was aberrational in intent and result. However, it seemed to me that Murakami was suggesting that this aberration in the terrorist attack was parallel in some way to an aberration that runs deeply through the sociological condition of Japan in the present age.

I could go on about this, but ... I won't, at least not here. So, I'll try to wrap up briefly.

What this book suggested to me is that that there are deep tensions in the world beyond the borders of the West related to technology and modes of development. (Of course, there are deep tensions within the borders as well, but that would be a different book.) The approaches to economic development and technology that have become standard around the globe in fact run against some aspect of the traditional mindset of Japan and likely the rest of Asia. As we fall and topple deeper into the heart of the 21st Century, these tensions will ratchet higher and begin to alter approaches to commerce, technology and the administration of society generally. Failing that, the error rate of aberrations would of course increase.

The road to the near future apparently won't be linear. Some "jump" phenomenology seems likely.

A fascinating read.(less)

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Apr 07, 2013 hamptonenglish10 rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction-emmett

Wilson Leibering
04/07/13
Ms. Emmett
Ind. Reading

The plot of this book is extremely simply and very straight forward, a cult known as Aum planted several packages of sarin gas, an extremely potent and deadly gas with next to no cures, on several packed subway cars on the Tokyo metro on the morning of March 20, 1995. The book consists of a series of interviews of victims of this horrific event, asking them to recite the tragedy as it was experienced from their perspective. While all the interviews...more Wilson Leibering
04/07/13
Ms. Emmett
Ind. Reading

The plot of this book is extremely simply and very straight forward, a cult known as Aum planted several packages of sarin gas, an extremely potent and deadly gas with next to no cures, on several packed subway cars on the Tokyo metro on the morning of March 20, 1995. The book consists of a series of interviews of victims of this horrific event, asking them to recite the tragedy as it was experienced from their perspective. While all the interviews and retellings are roughly the same, one distinct difference they have are the overarching view of the event. While some people are scarred and feel great hatred towards Aum, others feel no emotions towards them, but rather accept that this event was meant to happen. A major note in most of the interviews is a feeling of remorse and internal sorrow that the affected were not able to help each other more, and instead focused on their own well being. As stated by several of the victims, “I saw the bodies lying there, I knew they needed help, but I was sure someone else would help them.” Interviews are also given to the perpetrators behind the attack, all elder Aum members. While two of the three criminals feel extreme depression because of their actions, the third does not. This causes the interviews and flow of events to be retold in very different fashions. The two in remorse talk of the extreme discomfort and weight they felt while trying to impress the Aum by killing and severely injuring hundreds of innocent citizens yet the third gloats on his accomplishment and the joy it brought him. Bringing everything together, this book is written extremely well and created an emotion connection I had never experienced from a book before.
This is one of those books that you’re constantly telling your friends to read, but when they ask why you can’t think of any distinct reason why. From an outside view, it sounds quite bland, nearly 50 interviews of victims of the same attack being asked the same questions, but it truly is not. I wouldn’t say this book goes far enough the change the way the reader lives their life, but it certainly causes them to stop and think about what they could have done but instead chose not to. It also reiterates how nice we have it living in the states. At one point, a group of about 20 people rush into one of three hospitals in Japan begging for help after being poisoned but were rejected because the doctors had no idea what sarin was. I would defiantly recommend this book to a friend.
(less)

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Feb 25, 2013 Jeanine rated it 4 of 5 stars

I've ridden a number of these train lines, well after the sarin attack. In fact, I doubt I thought about the attack once while in Tokyo. The victims are not so far away from this incident that we, the outsiders, still need to remember it happened and contribute some outrage in their honor. Murakami offers two collections of interviews. The first collection is of the victims or families in the case of death or severe injury post sarin. The interviews do tend to get a bit tedious as they are simil...more

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Jan 30, 2013 Zach rated it 4 of 5 stars

It's interesting in this book, written after Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, how a sense of detachment similar to that which Murakami explores in his fiction is echoed by the former Aum members he interviews. While most of the gas victims he talked to in the first half of the book share similar lifestyles, at least in terms of the (stereotypical) Japanese work ethic, the cult members actively shunned these values. What's surprising is that the former cult members don't seem so alien. An average American...more

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Aug 17, 2012 Kirstie rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Those interested in cults, terrorism, nonfiction, Japan

This book is really important to read both from the perspective of understanding the actual event in Japan's history when Sarin gas was released into the subway March 20th, 1995 and how the human faces behind the sarin gas's effects and from the perspective of trying to make sense of why Aum did what they did and why people would be part of this cult to begin with. I think Murakami does well in the first portion of the book where he's exploring the psyche of the victims to pick an interesting ra...more

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Aug 16, 2012 David added it · review of another edition

Shelves: justicenonfiction

I picked up this book because I love Haruki Marukami and the topic of a cult inspired terrorist attack in the Tokyo subway sounded intriguing. In 1995, the Aum Shinrikyo religious cult organized and perpetrated a sarin gas attack on three different subway lines in Tokyo, killing about 15 people and seriously injuring hundreds. In the introduction Marukami cites that he was inspired by Studs Terkel in the method of covering this strange incident. Marukami interviewed survivors of the attack in th...more I picked up this book because I love Haruki Marukami and the topic of a cult inspired terrorist attack in the Tokyo subway sounded intriguing. In 1995, the Aum Shinrikyo religious cult organized and perpetrated a sarin gas attack on three different subway lines in Tokyo, killing about 15 people and seriously injuring hundreds. In the introduction Marukami cites that he was inspired by Studs Terkel in the method of covering this strange incident. Marukami interviewed survivors of the attack in the first part of the book and then interviews members and former members of Aum Shinrikyo in the second part. Just as Terkel, he allows the people involved to tell their experiences and the conclusions or lessons are derived by the reader from the multiplicity of voices. However, Marukami adds a little more of his own voice with some short conclusions and reflections about interviews.

When reading the interviews of the survivors I was struck by the sense of duty. Many of the subway workers who cleaned up the sarin did it because that was their job and it appeared that they treated every incident within their profession with the same focus and intensity. And as many of the "salary-men" and "salary-women" began to go blind and fall over from the sarin gas, despite their strange health condition, their first drive was just to get to work. I related to the drive to complete the routine even if things get dangerous and weird. And to think their nine-to-five routine could be my nine-to-five routine, their commuting strategies apply to my commuting strategies. What would I have done in such a mysterious situation like this unknown gas attack?

Then when reading interviews of the members and former members of Aum Shinrikyo I was impressed and skeptical of their devotion and depth. They questioned their place in society and were seekers so their path to Aum was fascinating. Also hearing how they benefited from Aum Shinrikyo doctrine made sense e.g. yoga and a simple diet led to improved health. Aum also had a principle of accepting that the end of the world is coming soon so give up on materiality, which created a sense of peace in its members. But I think my skepticism grew as I learned about the hierarchy. The leaders corrupted the entire group by having large fees for joining and finally their desire to "liberate" the rest of society by stirring up a crisis was very destructive and disturbing. But it becomes clear how someone can get caught in such a system because they become increasingly more dependent on it for their well being (members abandoned their jobs in order to join the cult).

Altogether, this book covers the incident compassionately and by its structure avoids becoming sensational. It demonstrates how darkness can creep in to the average life either unwittingly with the survivors or insidiously with the cult members.(less)

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Jun 24, 2012 Nader rated it 4 of 5 stars

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 c...more 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.(less)

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Jun 26, 2011 Sandy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

if you have even a marginal interest in contemporary japan and the japanese psyche, this book is quintessential to your reading list. nothing brings out the character of a nation like deep tragedy, and murakami delves fearlessly into the oft-considered hive mind of the intensely private japanese people. it's a somewhat daunting book (most books with heavy subject matter are, at least to me), and it took me awhile to read (sort of how it took me a long time to read norwegian wood), but it's worth...more

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Mar 04, 2011 Moonit rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

This is nothing like any other Haruki Murakami book I've read. If you are a fan of his novels, you may or may not like this book. I don't know. It is totally dissimilar to them, so I have no way of predicting that. I would say it would be more up the alley of fans of the true crime genre.

The structure of this book was interesting to me. The first 2/3 consists of interviews with survivors of the Tokyo subway poison gas attacks. The interviews are fairly short, generally between 4 and 8 pages, and...more This is nothing like any other Haruki Murakami book I've read. If you are a fan of his novels, you may or may not like this book. I don't know. It is totally dissimilar to them, so I have no way of predicting that. I would say it would be more up the alley of fans of the true crime genre.

The structure of this book was interesting to me. The first 2/3 consists of interviews with survivors of the Tokyo subway poison gas attacks. The interviews are fairly short, generally between 4 and 8 pages, and they take up the first two hundred pages of the book. Each person talks about what they were doing the morning of the attack, how they experienced it, and what kind of after effects it has had on their lives. A lot of their stories are similar, and so you hear the same story from a lot of different perspectives. In that way, it reminds me a bit of Rashomon or Chronicle of a Death Foretold.

The last third of the book consists of interviews with current and former Aum members. It's an interesting look inside the life of a cult. Some of those interviewed are still members of Aum, and others have left and speak out against it, so you get quite a range of opinions.

Murakami explains that he tried to be as objective as possible in conducting the interviews, and to allow people to present themselves in the way that they wanted. He sent them proofs of the interviews and allowed them to add things in they had forgotten to mention, to remove things they didn't like, and to give the final ok, so that no one would be surprised or displeased by what they saw in print later. If the interviewees said things that were factually inaccurate, unless they were egregious, he left them in, in the interest of preserving their perspective. He did this for both the victims and the Aum cult members, so (particularly with the latter) at times you get a sense of there being a faulty narrator, which I think makes it even more intriguing.

The pacing of this book is kind of slow, though, and the repetitive nature of the beginning section may not be for everyone. Also, because a great amount of text is dedicated to describing physical effects of sarin poisoning (headaches, nausea, vomiting, loss of vision, etc), I would recommend against reading this book on public transportation, like I kept doing, if you are at all prone to motion sickness.(less)

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Oct 18, 2010 Seth Hahne rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Murakami's Underground was by turns devastating and intriguing. There were moments I wanted to abandon humanity in a wastebin behind an abortion clinic and others when I sat there dumbfounded, thinking Wow, humanity, you're like the most interesting people on earth. Love to hate to love to hate. Again and again.

That's what books about patent insanities do to me.

Underground chronicles the psychological aftermath of Aum Shinrikyo's 1995 deposit of Sarin nerve gas across several of the mass-transit...more Murakami's Underground was by turns devastating and intriguing. There were moments I wanted to abandon humanity in a wastebin behind an abortion clinic and others when I sat there dumbfounded, thinking Wow, humanity, you're like the most interesting people on earth. Love to hate to love to hate. Again and again.

That's what books about patent insanities do to me.

Underground chronicles the psychological aftermath of Aum Shinrikyo's 1995 deposit of Sarin nerve gas across several of the mass-transit trains that service the city of Tokyo. It does so primarily by way of interview with victims of the attack (and at times, family members of victims), followed both by an extended essay by Murakami himself and a post-published epilogue of interviews with members and former members of the Aum cult (none of whom were involved in or even aware of the attacks until much later).

Honestly, I found myself pretty well enthralled by each discreet portion of the book despite the fact they may as well have been their own separate books. There's little thematic crossover between the three parts beyond the obvious shared subject matter, so the reader must change gears as each section bears down to become the new asphalt of the road Murakami presents.

In the first section, we feel anger and fury and pain and anguish and maybe even a little terror as we read firsthand accounts of train passengers who gradually succumbed to the Sarin's effects. Murakami keeps each of his interviews in roughly identical form beginning with a healthy bit of background on the interviewee, so that we can get to know our protagonists before we watch them fall to the real-life effects of religious madness. Then subjects generally recall the day before the attack and follow up with the morning's events as they unfolded to their own particular perspective. Finally, each individual speaks about any lingering effects from the attack, whether physical or psychological, and Murakami caps the interview by asking after the victim's emotional response to Aum, to the government, to Japan. While the descriptions of the attack itself are certainly harrowing, I found the emotional response to Aum the most intriguing. Some individuals are furious (some of these going so far as to say that they would participate in the execution of Shoko Asahara if the opportunity presented itself). Some are beyond anger and strike the reader as just dynamically confused by the whole event. Others are far more detached, saying things like how they do not approve of Aum's actions but they don't understand how anger can solve anything now.

In the second section, Murakami takes us from knee-deep involvement to an almost wholly detached treatment, a kind of autopsy of both Aum's actions and Japan's inability to react to it in any helpful way. This section was well-proposed but would have been better received in the original work, functioning as a bit of epilogue to the whole endeavor. As it is, Murakami's words are sandwiched between the tragedy of the victims and the eerie logic of the cultists and so is kind of overwhelmed and, so, muffled.

The final section features The Other Side. Mostly. Almost to a person, the interviews in this section denounce outright the use of Sarin against the civilian population, so we don't get to hear from any of those who actually carried out Asahara's orders. Still, this final third of the book offers some powerful insights into the minds of those who would join an apocalyptic Buddhist splinter-group that would move from yoga-like practices and asceticism to hosting a militaristic, hunted paradigm. Murakami's questioning of these cult members is valuable because it demonstrates how adherence to any system of belief, whether fringe cultic, mainstream religion, or simply secular ideology can lead individuals into difficult and dangerous places.

[note: I should also express my disappointment upon discovering that a good two-thirds of the victim interviews were cut for the American release. Disappointing and anger-making. As if someone consciously decided that those victims' pain was not great enough to be valuable to an American audience.](less)

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Jun 14, 2010 Chelsea Szendi rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: japan, current-events

This book proves two things I've long suspected about Murakami Haruki. One is that he'd be a lot more interesting if he'd deny his own ego every once in a while, and the second is that he is not very skilled at analysis. This book of Murakami's is nonfiction and almost entirely the compiled testimonies of survivors of the March 20, 1995 sarin attack on the Tokyo subway.

At first the experiment is absolutely absorbing. In his prologue, Murakami promises to explore the kind of "double victimization...more

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Jan 04, 2010 Jan rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

Apparently, Mr. Murakami is a well-known novelist in Japan. However, in this non-fiction book, he covers the heavy topic of the 1995 sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway by Aum Shinkryo, a fringe religion. He does this largely through interviews with survivors of the attacks, family members of victims, doctors who treated victims, and members of Aum Shinkryo (although none of the ones who committed the attacks).

The book was a little dull in places. Many of the survivors' stories were surprising...more

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Sep 17, 2012 Tom rated it 3 of 5 stars

Murakami’s choice to place the victim narratives at the beginning and thus describe in such detail how Japan was going through a normal Japan today until it was gassed by sarin… is a brilliant tactic. The addition of the cult-member narratives at the end is also provocative and helps readers to not see the Aum cult so one-dimensionally, to see how this was a path to Nirvana for some people. Because it’s so heavily downsized from the original Japanese, I’m not sure how well I can judge “Undergrou...more

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Apr 16, 2012 Laurent rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011-books

One for the Murakami fans

Admittedly I have a hit and miss affair with Murakami; loves Sputnik Sweatheart, Norwegian Wood but found some of his more core work harder to access. This book is pretty easy to access but I think that anyone coming to Murakami for the first time may be disappointed.

As mentioned by other reviewers this is an ambitious and honourable book and full credit goes to Murakami for taking the time and effort to document a global event that is very hard to talk about with the ac...more

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Jan 18, 2010 Lobstergirl rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: those interested in cults

Recommended to Lobstergirl by: the library shelf

The bestselling novelist Haruki Murakami gives a Studs Terkelish treatment to the Tokyo sarin gas attacks of 1995 which killed 12 and injured hundreds. There's a great deal about Terkel's methods to like (when Terkel uses them), but they fall flat here. I don't think the oral history treatment works well in this instance, in which every victim is in the same location (the subway system) and is subjected to the same assault; the approximately 30 victim accounts are extremely repetitive, which bec...more The bestselling novelist Haruki Murakami gives a Studs Terkelish treatment to the Tokyo sarin gas attacks of 1995 which killed 12 and injured hundreds. There's a great deal about Terkel's methods to like (when Terkel uses them), but they fall flat here. I don't think the oral history treatment works well in this instance, in which every victim is in the same location (the subway system) and is subjected to the same assault; the approximately 30 victim accounts are extremely repetitive, which becomes numbing, and while horribly tragic, also boring. (On the upside, I am now familiar with all the symptoms of sarin gas and will know what's happening if I come under attack.) The same is largely true of the cult members' accounts. (None of the cult members he interviewed were involved in the attacks, and did not know about them in advance.) Not surprisingly, many people who join cults are having problems living "normal", well-adjusted lives; they tend to be society's misfits; they usually hated school. While they generally acknowledge that the gas attacks were wrong, some of them remained with the Aum Shinrikyo cult (which still exists, but under state surveillance).

Murakami had been living abroad for eight years in Europe and the U.S. when he decided to write Underground. He felt it was time "to probe deep into the heart of my estranged country." The Kobe earthquake and the sarin gas attack, occurring within three months of each other, helped focus his probe. He finds that passivity and unthinking deference to authority are part of the Japanese psyche, as evidenced by the slowness to take affected trains out of service, the inadequate emergency and medical response to the attack, and by the cult joiners. He tries to figure out why the Aum leadership, whose members were well educated professionals, could have participated in terrorism. He concludes that the real world, with its imperfections, contradictions and defects, dissatisfied them. They sought utopias, which gave them a sense of purity of purpose.

I'm a nuts-and-bolts kind of person. I want to know how the sarin was manufactured. How did they get it into plastic bags without poisoning themselves? How were the bags sealed - was it one of those vacuum-pack systems you can buy from an infomercial? Did they do a dry run to see if anyone would be suspicious of bags being dropped? Murakami presumably isn't motivated by these kinds of questions, which is why I'm often more interested in reading terrorist trial transcripts than psychological investigations.(less)

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Sep 13, 2010 Olivia rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: journalism

I found the review from Observer is the closest to express my sentiment about this book.

'There is no artifice or pretension in Underground. There is no need for cleverness. What Murakami describes happens to ordinary people in a frighteningly ordinary way. And it is all the more bizarre for that.'

What Murakami assembled gave me, as a reader, a multi perspective view to a horror that most people and media only saw as a good vs evil phenomenon. It's truly ordinary and honest. It shook me because a...more

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Aug 04, 2011 Jamin rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: everyone

Recommended to Jamin by: Fiona H

Shelves: non-fiction, murakami, tragedy, interview

The book is written in a way such that the reader can be brought to the scenes themselves and truly understand what the victims/survivors were going through. Each recount is written with care and emotion with frightening ordinance, as well as letting readers keep in mind that the event could have happened to absolutely anyone at all.

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About Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami (村上春樹) is a popular contemporary Japanese writer and translator. His work has been described as 'easily accessible, yet profoundly complex'.

Since childhood, Murakami has been heavily influenced by Western culture, particularly Western music and literature. He grew up reading a range of works by American writers, such as Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan, and he is often disting...more

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Quotes from Underground: The Tokyo...

“If you lose your ego, you lose the thread of that narrative you call your Self. Humans, however, can't live very long without some sense of a continuing story. Such stories go beyond the limited rational system (or the systematic rationality) with which you surround yourself; they are crucial keys to sharing time-experience with others.

Now a narrative is a story, not a logic, nor ethics, nor philosophy. It is a dream you keep having, whether you realize it or not. Just as surely as you breathe, you go on ceaselessly dreaming your story. And in these stories you wear two faces. You are simultaneously subject and object. You are a whole and you are a part. You are real and you are shadow. "Storyteller" and at the same time "character". It is through such multilayering of roles in our stories that we heal the loneliness of being an isolated individual in the world.

Yet without a proper ego nobody can create a personal narrative, any more than you can drive a car without an engine, or cast a shadow without a real physical object. But once you've consigned your ego to someone else, where on earth do you go from there?

At this point you receive a new narrative from the person to whom you have entrusted your ego. You've handed over the real thing, so what comes back is a shadow. And once your ego has merged with another ego, your narrative will necessarily take on the narrative created by that ego.

Just what kind of narrative?

It needn't be anything particularly fancy, nothing complicated or refined. You don't need to have literary ambitions. In fact, the sketchier and simpler the better. Junk, a leftover rehash will do. Anyway, most people are tired of complex, multilayered scenarios-they are a potential letdown. It's precisely because people can't find any fixed point within their own multilayered schemes that they're tossing aside their own self-identity.” — 6 people liked it

“The rain that fell on the city runs down the dark gutters and empties into the sea without even soaking the ground” — 3 people liked it

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