This is, then, a compelling tale of how capriciously and easily tragedy can destroy the ordinary, and how we try to make sense of it all. In spite of the perpetrators intentions, the Tokyo gas attack left only twelve people dead, but thousands were injured and. He offers no grand explanation, no existential answer to what happened, and the book is better for it. As with the work of Studs Terkel, which Murakami acknowledges is a model for this present work, the author's voice, outside of a few prefatory comments, is seldom heard. Haruki Murakami Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche Kindle Edition by Haruki Murakami (Author) Format: Kindle Edition 611 ratings See all formats and editions Kindle 14.99 Read with Our Free App Audiobook 0. The attackers are of less interest, for what they say is often similar, and most remain, or at least do not regret having been, members of Aum. Cumulatively, their tales fascinate, as small details weave together to create a complex narrative.

There is a Rashomon-like quality to some of the tales, as victims recount the same episodes in slightly different variations. Some continue to suffer great physical disabilities, nearly all still suffer great psychic trauma.

The victims are ordinary people bankers, businessmen, office workers, subway workers who reflect upon what happened to them, how they reacted at the time and how they have lived since. What he mostly does here, however, is listen to and record, in separate sections, the words of both victims, people who 'just happened to be gassed on the way to work,' and attackers. Underground consists largely of interviews of victims of the gas attacks in the Tokyo subway system. Covers the 1995 Tokyo Gas Attack, during which agents of a Japanese cult released a gas deadlier than cyanide into the subway system, as documented in. This is acclaimed Japanese novelist Murakami's (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, etc.) nonfiction account of this episode. On March 20, 1995, followers of the religious cult Aum Shinrikyo unleashed lethal sarin gas into cars of the Tokyo subway system.

Underground by Haruki Murakami