Review of Haruki Murakami’s Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche

Haruki Murakami first made a name for himself as a fiction author.  Knowing that he had already published thirteen fiction novels and received the Franz Kafka Prize from the Czech Republic in 2006, the Kiriyama Prize for Fiction in 2007, the Jerusalem Prize in 2009, and the International Catalunya Prize in 2011, I believed he could tell a story. I was delighted at the prospect of seeing how a fiction writer would manage to get people to provide him with accurate and realistic depictions of the five separate terrorist attacks which were simultaneously carried out on different subway lines of the Japanese underground by members of the Japanese New Religious group, Aum Shinrikyo. The results of hours of interviews were Murakami’s first non-fiction book, Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche. 

Underground was first published in Japan in 1997 and then translated to be released in Great Britain in 2000. Murakami admits in a footnote on the first of two prefaces that he was inspired to cover the terrorist attack which shocked Japan in 1995 after reading an article in Ladies Home Journal. The second footnote explains the toxicity of Sarin gas, the biological weapon 25 times stronger than cyanide, which was used on the unsuspecting Japanese public. Murakami’s prose is formal, but flows as if he is dictating his thoughts rather than committing pen to paper. His introductions of each survivor of the attacks are descriptive and empathetic. What makes the story, however, are the various points of view the story shifts from. Murakami’s narration is subtle and honest, however, the first person narration provided by the accounts given to him provide the reader with a much deeper connection to the incident when they feel as if they are being told the recollection personally. 

The piece is initially organized in sections of survivor testimonials by subway line, with vivid first person descriptions of both a self diagnosis of sarin poisoning by a doctor on a train car and the gripping horror of going from coughing spasms to fits of blindness and overwhelming sickness which lasted months in certain cases. I was also shocked at the diversity of people Murakami found to interview. Doctors, an executive director of a building, a towel/rubber cord manufacturer (on his birthday!), fish salesman, and a Scottish jockey turned riding coach are only a few of those whose lives were deeply impacted by the terrorist attack on the train. Oddly enough, an overwhelming majority of those directly afflicted by the attacks still considered Japan to be one of the safest countries in the world. Their hatred was directed towards those who perpetrated the attack. The members of Aum Shinrikyo, however, were not concerned with the thoughts of the temporal world at the time, rather, they were focused on the positive end results prophecised to them by Aum’s leader, Shoko Asahara. 

Mr. Haruki Murakami went back to his publishers sometime after Underground was published with the intention of unveiling the mystery which surrounded Aum Shinrikyo. Little is understood about the group’s affiliation with the attacks as a whole. It is understood that they were planned by the highest members of Aum, but the organization has since changed it’s name to Aleph in the attempts to foster a newer, more positive identity. Part two of Underground , “The Place That Was Promised”, is Murakami’s attempt to uncover the depth of Shoko Asahara’s influence on the religion which was based around him. Asahara routinely gave his followers LSD, slept with the women of Aum he found attractive, and had brainwashed his followers to a point where “when Asahara was going anywhere follows would lay down their clothes for him to walk on”. While Murakami does his absolute best to shield his bias from the events described , he confesses to the degree of difficulty he encounters when doing so. 

Hakuri Murakami set out to document the events which occurred in the Japanese Underground system on March 20th, 1995. When the story didn’t seem finished, he went back and dug deeper into the Japanese New Religion that was Aum Shinrikyo. His delicate presentation of the traumatic incidents which unfolded in a matter of less than two hours and affected over five thousand people were brought to life through the vibrant memories of the hell on earth the survivors he spent time with relayed to him. 

Terrorist groups have the tendency to fascinate us. Acts of terrorism committed on members of the group’s own society are especially unique. The cultural differences between Japan and America make for an additional delight as one turns the pages of this story. However, I believe this story should be read slowly and in parts. The perspectives of each person are so vivid that they deserve our full attention. Attention I will be paying much more of when I re-read Haruki Murakami’s Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche.