Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche (アンダーグラウンド, Andāguraundo?, 1997–1998) is a book by Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami about the 1995 Aum Shinrikyo sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway. The book is made up of a series of interviews with individuals who were affected by the attacks, and the English translation also includes interviews with members of Aum, the religious cult responsible for the attacks. Murakami hoped that through these interviews, he could capture a side of the attacks which the sensationalist Japanese media had ignored—the way it had affected average citizens. The interviews were conducted over nearly a year, starting in January 1996 and ending in December of that same year.
The interviews highlight many intriguing aspects of the Japanese psyche. Work was a high, if not central, priority for most of the interviewees. Isolation, individualism, and lack of communication were also strong themes which were common throughout many accounts of the attacks. Many of the interviewees expressed disillusionment with the materialism in Japanese society and the sensationalistic media, as well as the inefficiency of the emergency response system in dealing with the attack.
The book also includes Murakami's personal essay on the attacks, "Blind Nightmare: Where Are We Japanese Going?" In this essay, he criticizes the failure of the Japanese to learn from the attacks, preferring to dismiss it as the extreme act by a group of lunatics rather than analyze the true causes and prevent similar events from occurring in the future.
Both the Japanese original and the English translation were well-received, despite the former being criticized as being "one-sided," and the latter being severely abridged.
Read more about Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack And The Japanese Psyche: History, Motivations, Method, Conclusions, Reception, Common Themes
Famous quotes containing the words tokyo, gas, attack, japanese and/or psyche:
“Eclecticism is the degree zero of contemporary general culture: one listens to reggae, watches a western, eats McDonald’s food for lunch and local cuisine for dinner, wears Paris perfume in Tokyo and “retro” clothes in Hong Kong; knowledge is a matter for TV games. It is easy to find a public for eclectic works.”
—Jean François Lyotard (b. 1924)
“... when I awake in the middle of the night, since I knew not where I was, I did not even know at first who I was; I only had in the first simplicity the feeling of existing as it must quiver in an animal.... I spent one second above the centuries of civilization, and the confused glimpse of the gas lamps, then of the shirts with turned-down collars, recomposed, little by little, the original lines of my self.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“A great deal of unnecessary worry is indulged in by theatregoers trying to understand what Bernard Shaw means. They are not satisfied to listen to a pleasantly written scene in which three or four clever people say clever things, but they need to purse their lips and scowl a little and debate as to whether Shaw meant the lines to be an attack on monogamy as an institution or a plea for manual training in the public school system.”
—Robert Benchley (1889–1945)
“The Japanese say, “If the flower is to be beautiful, it must be cultivated.””
—Lester Cole, U.S. screenwriter, Nathaniel Curtis, and Frank Lloyd. Nick Condon (James Cagney)
“Celestial Cupid her fam’d son advanc’t,
Holds his dear Psyche sweet intranc’t
After her wandring labours long,
Till free consent the gods among
Make her his eternal Bride,
And from her fair unspotted side
Two blissful twins are to be born,
Youth and Joy; so Jove hath sworn,”
—John Milton (1608–1674)