Underground

Underground
Haruki Murakami
309pp
Alfred Birnbaum, Philip Gabriel (Translators)

A little switch-up. A non-fiction from our man Murakami.

And so here we dive into Murakami's look at the Aum Shinrikyo's terrorist gas attack on the Tokyo subways 23 years ago.

For anyone unfamiliar, the Aum Shinrikyo was a cult which had, as often seems to happen, appealed to some rather intelligent, or at least highly educated people. So, with so many scientists, doctors and researchers, of course you set about curing cancer... oh no, of course not, you attempt to murder as many people in the subways of Tokyo by releasing poisonous sarin gas.

This book is made up of a mix of interviews with victims, their families and cult members. 

The most interesting parts within this work were the little tidbits of insight into humans. In one section a man remembers that no-one would open a window even as people began to feel sick, as if the shame of doing something that was almost never done (windows are very seldom opened on trains in Japan) was heavier than the pain of being poisoned. 

Or another time when a cult member attempts to explain his reasons for joining by explaining:

It was just that, no matter where I found myself, I felt like there was a hole inside me, with the wind rushing through. I never felt satisfied. From the outside you wouldn’t imagine I had any troubles.

This all adds up to an interesting read, but not as neatly tied together as Murakami appeared to hope for. I wanted much more factual information, not simple biased first person accounts, to feel that a proper picture of what happened and what this cult was. However, accepting this book as what it is and using google for the rest, its a rather powerful piece of work. 

Recommend if you enjoy learning about doomsday cults, etc, or want to specifically understand these attacks in depth.