Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche (Vintage International) - Softcover

Murakami, Haruki

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0375725806 ISBN 13: 9780375725807

Publisher: Vintage Books, 2001

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review:

On Monday 20 March 1995 the Japanese Aum cult released a deadly cloud of Sarin nerve gas into the Tokyo underground. 12 people were killed and an estimated 3,800 suffered serious after-effects. Haruki Murakami, one of Japan's leading novelists (considered by many to be one of the most important writers now writing), was both shocked and fascinated by the awful event. Murakami's response was to interview as many of those affected as he could (only 60 victims were willing to be questioned), interested as he was in the stories created by this one awful event on so many lives. He also interviewed a number of members of the Aum cult: "I'm sure each member of the Science and Technology elite had his own personal reasons for renouncing the world and joining Aum. What they all had in common, though, was a desire to put the technical skill and knowledge they'd acquired in the service of a more meaningful goal ... that might very well be me. It might be you". The result is Underground his first work of non-fiction. Murakami writes complex, sometimes overbearing and dense novels but he here makes very little intervention into his text, simply presenting a background sketch of each before allowing the victims and cult-members to speak freely for themselves through the transcripts. They present an intricate, rounded and cinematic view of day that none of us should ever forget. --Mark Thwaite

Review:

"Powerful. . . . Candid and often emotional." --San Francisco Chronicle

"Both a literary memorial and a frank examination of a society in search of its bearings." --A.V. Club

"Impressive." --The Independent

"Chilling. . . . Murakami weaves a compelling true tale of normal lives faced with abnormal realities." --Sunday Tribune

"Powerfully observed. . . . A rattling chronicle of violence and terror." --Kirkus Reviews

"Through Murakami's sensitive yet relentless questioning, it emerges that the people who joined Aum felt just as adrift in the world as Murakami's own [fictional] characters do." --The Guardian

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Books
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0375725806
• ISBN 13: 9780375725807
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384