Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche - Haruki Murakami (2000)
NUMBER: 68
Genre: Non-fiction; Origin: Japan; Pages: 350
Satisfaction rating: 10.0
OVERVIEW:
In March of 1995, agents of a Japanese religious cult attacked the Tokyo subway system with sarin, a gas twenty-six times as deadly as cyanide. It left 12 people dead and thousands were injured, many with serious after-effects. Attempting to discover why, Murakami conducted hundreds of interviews with the people involved, from the survivors to members and former members of the doomsday cult to the relatives of those who died, and Underground is their story in their own voices. Concerned with the fundamental issues that led to the attack as well as these personal accounts, Underground is a document of what happened in Tokyo as well as a warning of what could happen anywhere.
MATTHEW’S COMMENTS:
I was wondering when I would read a perfect Murakami book (in my humble opinion that is), and I must say that I didn’t expect it to be his only non-fiction work from his large catalogue. Underground is remarkable, nothing less. Originally published as two books this English translation combines both the first edition of ‘Underground’ and its follow-up ‘The Place That Was Promise’, the first being 35 interviews with survivors and victims from the subway and the second being 8 long interviews with members and former members of Aum, the cult responsible for the attack.
As Murakami discusses in his essay-like passages, this is a vehicle to explore the stories of those that experience this crime, from many perspectives. Although filtered through Murakami’s questioning he did give each interviewee final edit of their comments prior to publication. Never is the book so interesting as when multiple survivors discuss a single event, jumping from contradictions to consensus, but this book does not aim to present a single narrative, this is how people remember the day, their personal stories. This is ‘witness literature’.
The interviews follow a slightly different structure when Murakami turns to the second part. Here his questioning is more involved, but rarely judgemental. I believe that it is in this section that we learn much about Murakami and his motivations as a writer. Sure there are insightful passages that provide clarity on the human instinct to follow religion, but for a Murakami fan one can take a lot away from this section on the man himself and his approach to his craft. In particular, toward the end when Murakami suggests that ‘reality is made out of confusion and contradiction’, surely a theme evident in his fiction.
Nevertheless, this book is not the departure for Murakami one might think. His introduction to each interviewee allows for trademark observations to character development seen in his other work. In particular, if fans of his fiction read no other chapter, then they should read the one entitled ‘Disneyland’, where Murakami interviews a survivor who can no longer talk, or at least is illegible without estimated translation.
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