is a book by Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami

is a Japanese writer and translator. His works of fiction and non-fiction have garnered him critical acclaim and numerous awards, including the Franz Kafka Prize and Jerusalem Prize among others.He is considered an important figure in postmodern literature...

 about the 1995 Aum Shinrikyo

Aum Shinrikyo

Aum Shinrikyo was a Japanese new religious movement. The group was founded by Shoko Asahara in 1984. The group gained international notoriety in 1995, when it carried out the Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway....

 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway

Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway

The Sarin attack on the Tokyo subway, usually referred to in the Japanese media as the , was an act of domestic terrorism perpetrated by members of Aum Shinrikyo on March 20, 1995....

. Described as a work of "journalistic literature," it collects a series of separate interviews Murakami conducted with 60 victims of the attacks and 8 members of Aum, descriptions of how the attacks were carried out, and his essay "Blind Nightmare: Where are we Japanese going?"

Underground was originally published in Japan without the interviews of Aum members – they were published in the magazine Bungei Shunju before being collected in a separate volume, The Place That Was Promised. The English translation combines both books into a single volume, but has been abridged. Underground was translated by Alfred Birnbaum

Alfred Birnbaum

Alfred Birnbaum is an American translator.Alfred Birnbaum was born in the United States and raised in Japan from age five. He studied at Waseda University, Tokyo, under a Japanese Ministry of Education scholarship, and has been a freelance literary and cultural translator since 1980.From March...

; The Place That Was Promised, by Philip Gabriel

Philip Gabriel

J. Philip Gabriel is a full professor and department chair of the University of Arizona's Department of East Asian Studies and is one of the major translators into English of the works of the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami....

.

Motivations

In his introduction to the book, Murakami describes his motivations for writing it:

The Japanese media had bombarded us with so many in-depth profiles of the Aum cult perpetrators—the ‘attackers’—forming such a slick, seductive narrative that the average citizen—the ‘victim’—was an afterthought … which is why I wanted, if at all possible, to get away from any formula; to recognise that each person on the subway that morning had a face, a life, a family, hopes and fears, contradictions and dilemmas—and that all these factors had a place in the drama …
Furthermore, I had a hunch that we needed to see a true picture of
all the survivors, whether they were severely traumatized or not, in
order to better grasp the whole incident.

Jay Rubin

Jay Rubin

Jay Rubin is an American academic and translator. He is most notable for being one of the main translators into English of the works of the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami. He has also written a guide to Japanese, Making Sense of Japanese , and a biographical literary analysis of Murakami.He has...

 holds that Murakami also had highly personal reasons for wanting to write Underground, notably that he wished to learn more about Japan after living almost entirely abroad for nine years and that he wanted to fulfill a responsibility he felt towards Japan's society.

Method

The interviews in Underground were conducted throughout 1996. They were taped, transcribed, and then edited. Draft interviews were then sent to the interviewees before publication for fact-checking and to allow them to cut any parts they did not want published.

At the start of each interview, Murakami asked general questions about the subject's life, allowing him to build a background picture of them that is included before each interview. He did this to "give them a face," thus avoiding creating "a collection of disembodied voices." His interviews with victims have been seen as similar in style to those of Studs Terkel

Studs Terkel

Louis "Studs" Terkel was an American author, historian, actor, and broadcaster. He received the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1985 for The Good War, and is best remembered for his oral histories of common Americans, and for hosting a long-running radio show in Chicago.-Early...

's Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do, an influence that Murakami admits along with that of Bob Greene

Bob Greene

Robert Bernard Greene, Jr. is an American journalist. He worked for 24 years for the Chicago Tribune newspaper, where he was an award-winning columnist. Greene has written books on subjects varying from Michael Jordan, to small towns, to U.S. presidents. His Hang Time: Days and Dreams with Michael...

. His interviews with Aum members are intentionally more combative.

Conclusions

Murakami concludes the victim-interviews with the essay "Blind Nightmare." In it he strongly criticises the Japanese response to the gas attacks, calling their crisis management

Crisis management

Crisis management is the process by which an organization deals with a major event that threatens to harm the organization, its stakeholders, or the general public. The study of crisis management originated with the large scale industrial and environmental disasters in the 1980's.Shrivastava, P....

 system, "erratic and sorely inadequate." He further worries that the government's lack of openness about its failings may lead to their repetition. He also talks about one factor that led to the attacks – the handing over of personal responsibility by cult members to Aum leader Shoko Asahara

Shoko Asahara

, born on March 2, 1955, is a founder of the controversial Japanese new religious group Aum Shinrikyo. He was convicted of masterminding the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway and several other crimes, for which he was sentenced to death...

 – a trait that irritated him during interviews with Aum members.

Reception

The original Underground (sans Aum interviews) was seen by some critics as being "one-sided," a view that Murakami himself shared, leading to his publishing The Place That Was Promised. Despite this possible bias, the original Underground sold 270,000 copies within two months of its Japanese release.

Reviews of the English translation were largely positive and enthusiastic, despite a severe cut in the number of commuter interviews included in the work—from 62 in the original to 34 in the translation.

Common themes

The stories of those interviewed in the book share many common themes:

• Working overtime seems to be normal for the interviewees – many talk of waking up early so they could arrive at work up to 90 minutes before it officially began.
• Almost half of the female interviewees mentioned being regular victims of chikan – groping of women by fellow commuters on the subway (none ever attempted to report this to the authorities).
• Despite the noticeable discomfort caused by the gas, not a single interviewee asked other passengers what was going on, preferring to wait until the next stop to change trains.
• Passengers that lost consciousness remained lying on the floor for some time. Commuters, with a few notable exceptions, did not attempt to help them, but instead waited for employees whose authority allowed them to intervene.
• Although suffering from extreme physical symptoms from inhaling sarin
  Sarin
  Sarin, or GB, is an organophosphorus compound with the formula [2CHO]CH3PF. It is a colorless, odorless liquid, which is used as a chemical weapon. It has been classified as a weapon of mass destruction in UN Resolution 687...
  
  , most of the victims continued with their planned activities. For many this included going to work – some only went reluctantly to a hospital for treatment, when their superiors insisted.