Underground

The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche

By: Haruki Murakami

Narrated by: Feodor Chin, Ian Anthony Dale, Janet Song

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.

Critic reviews

“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

A Potrait of a Day

What did you love best about Underground?

That Murakami was able to step back and let the stories tell themselves.

If you could give Underground a new subtitle, what would it be?

20 March 1995

Humans

Murakami is my favorite author of stories that pry at the subconscious and touch upon human experiences that few others can capture in words. I’ve read most of his fiction and this was only my second of his non-fiction works (the other being The Reason I Jump). Before listening to this, ‘sarin gas on the Tokyo subway by cultists’ was about all I could dredge up from my memories of tv and radio news here in the U.S. back in the mid-90’s. Now I view it as a dark crux of a society in transition, which could really be any society at any point in human history. Getting the keen perspective of Haruki Murakami through his interactions with a whole spectrum of people involved in the event worked wonders for me. Studs Turkel would be proud and probably deeply moved too.

I’m class reading

I was assigned to read some of this book for a class but I ended up reading the whole thing. I think we really are taken on a journey by Murakami as the guide. But everything is left for us to decide.

Compelling

This is everything a great oral history of an inexplicable but significant event should be.

Insight …

An insight into the Japanese psyche. Mr. Murakami patiently sits outside the story with an occasional interjection @ the precise moment!