Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche in Read a book from each country

Aug 21, 2011 J rated it did not like it

Shelves: japanese-literature, sociological

While I enjoy Murakami's fiction, I'm not sure his style translates so well to straight up reporting. The interviews he's edited and put together here have a flat, uniform quality to them. The basic repetition of people's everyday details from the day of the attack, while occasionally unsettling, also tended to get pretty monotonous after the first three or four. While the witnesses all have their own stories to tell, they all seem to speak with the same, static voice. Even when he interviews th ...more

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Apr 01, 2014 Sage rated it liked it

Shelves: unfinished

Finished only half of the book. I don't plan on going further.

It wasn't particularly awful, but nonfiction can easily get boring, and the repetitive elements in the individual recollections featured in the book did little to help my short attention span. However, Murakami included every single detail because this was intended to be a record of the incident: the events before and afterwards, the train numbers, the media reception, the occupations of the interviewees, etc. So considering that, thi Finished only half of the book. I don't plan on going further.

It wasn't particularly awful, but nonfiction can easily get boring, and the repetitive elements in the individual recollections featured in the book did little to help my short attention span. However, Murakami included every single detail because this was intended to be a record of the incident: the events before and afterwards, the train numbers, the media reception, the occupations of the interviewees, etc. So considering that, this is not a bad book.

The strength of the book is how it is multifaceted and well-collected. The interviewees come from different backgrounds and were affected in variable degrees. Some lives were permanently altered, and some were hardly fazed.

Also, it claims to reflect the Japanese way of thinking. There were subtle differences from my own culture that I previously wasn't aware of. Particularly the Japanese attitude towards time and duty. Here in the Philippines we have this expression They'll arrive at Filipino time meaning someone's going to be late (often). Late is the casual standard here. In the book, the Japanese interviewees explained in detail how they prepared for work and majority of them show up an hour early before official working hours. One mentioned that for Western-managed companies, employees are expected to come 30 minutes early, and even earlier for local companies. We could learn a lot from this habit.

There were things I find hard to understand.
1 - A significant number of victims did not feel bad about the incident, as if they see it as an accident rather than a deliberate plan.
2 - The seemingly baseless philosophies of the Aum Cult.
3 - The people under Aum. Some were very successful and on their way to finish Ph.Ds until they joined the group.

There were two accounts that were intensely moving: the recollections of siblings Tatsuo and Shizuko Akashi (pseudonyms). The determination of these people stirred something in me.

Didn't think Murakami could stick to nonfiction... and he didn't. He included musings when his mind was wandering, and for an interviewer it may be considered unprofessional, but it made the book interesting.

3 stars. Probably more if I had the patience to finish it. ...more

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Jan 07, 2020 Peggy rated it liked it

As much as I love Murakami, this book is not totally a success. I understand the impulse to let the book’s content be unadorned “testimony” from victims of the Aum sarin gas attacks of 1994 in Tokyo’s subway system, as well as transcribed interviews with Aum members of that time. But reading one account after another, especially from individuals who are so amazingly restrained, becomes, quite frankly, monotonous. This seems like a horrible thing to say about those who survived, often with lastin ...more

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