Czarne, 2021 / Kodansha, 1997
Underground, as usually released outside of Japan, are Murakami's interviews with victims of sarin gas attack in Tokyo Metro on 20th March 1995, commited by sect Aum Shinrikyo. It consists of two parts, first called Undeground is interviews with the victims and Murakami's essay on the attacks. Second part, A Place that was Promised compiles interviews with Aum members, which first were serialized in a Japanese magazine called Bungei Shunju. I read it in full, un-abridged verion, although translated from full text of English translation (which in the US and UK was cut significantly).
Each chapter of first part starts with brief introduction of each duo of Aum members who commited attacks on each of 5 trains attacked and description of attack itself, before moving onto interviews with the victims. Each person is introduced first by the author, then victims speak out - Murakami didn't inject anything into the transcribed text from himself. I like this approach as it allowed these people to scream out things that they hid inside of themselves since the attacks, the scream that was unheard by Japanese media which loved to sensationalize Aum's activities and ran pieces about members of the sect. It's more compassionate approach... people could say what they had to say, Murakami respected their wishes and let them edit out certain parts that they didn't want to publish. Every one had the victim talk about their life before the attacks, the attack itself and their feelings on Aum.
I liked how in the first chapter, about events on the Chiyoda line train A725K as first few interviews were arranged in a way that flown well, the few perspectives about this event - the station workers, passengers and even people who helped out - like driver for one of japanese TV stations who drove vitcims to the hospital, as the emergency services were late and did react too late, repeating the mistakes from Kobe earthquake earlier that year. It was weird to see that mistakes were repeated with sudden emergency situation. Just after the earthquake there should be some attempt to build an emergency proceeding guidelines, some sort of structure but it didn't happen.
Murakami had hard time tracking down the victims, many didn't want to speak, some declined because of their families but those who decided to speak were all different, some suffered more, some less but there was one thing that connected many of them - they didn't try to take their time to get back to health again, they jumped to work again and taking overtime as it's customary in Japan. It was the Japanese society excepting them to go back, became a productive employee again.
There were two victims whose stories stood out the most, as either became severely disabled or died and couldn't speak for themselves. First one was a woman, who in the book was reffered by a pseudonym, who became severely disabled due to the attacks, sarin caused her to be in vegetative state she didn't come out from until her death in 2020. Murakami first spoke to her brother, who deeply cares about her and attacks were a huge tragedy for entire family. Then author did actually visit this lady at the hospital to met her, entire sub-chapter was written in really compassionate way and despite everything this woman with proper speech theraphy, physioterapy started to make a progress. Her brother visited her as much he could despite it being a sacrifice of his family wife, not seeing his children as often... it was such a strong bond between two of them. There was also an interview both with wife and parents one of fatal victims of the attack, Eiji Wada. Media presented her as a totally different person, they intruded into her life and they didn't care about hard time she's going through on top of being pregnant with her daughter. They totally disregarded her feelings, her loss in search of some sensation. His parents were nagged all the time by the journos too. It truly shown how the victims and their families were treated, as a cheap thrill for the masses, ignored or outright ridiculed in some cases.
Additionaly Murakami talked to two physicians who were involved in the medical response to the attack, one was working directly with affected people and other one was a professor of medicine who ended up faxing the study on Matsumoto attacks in 1994, also commited by Aum, to spread information about the treatment. They both described the situation they found themselves at the day of the attacks and the effects of the sarin on humans, which were described in very approachable way.
Underground, the part, was concluded with author's essays on the effects of the attacks on japanese society as a whole, how it resonated on it and additionally why he did write this book. Murakami just came back to Japan after quite few years of living both in Europe and the US, he wanted to get to know the country he left years before, how it changed. There was one interesting comparision that he made, comparing Aum to Ted Kaczynski but I felt it wasn't a good one - most of Aum's cultists who joined and wanted to became part of collective "me", get rid of "me" and fullfill orders from top figures which took their personal decisions off them when Ted was a lone wolf who did the job himself for his ideals, he had a strong sense of "me". Murakami is right about how japanese society wanted to instantly move on and forget about the attacks, without challenging itself or reflecting on what caused these people to join Aum - disillusionment with modern japanese society, the consumerism and general detachment from other people, especially in time of economic bubble. General public operated on us vs. them logic, no one wanted to admit that Aum indeed was a part of Japan's social fabric and certain factors caused that it grew that much. A cult that made people dropped their jobs, left universities, forgot about their families and joined a new, dangerous religion.
The second part, The Place that Was Promised, the interviews with people who were Aum members or were affilated with the sect some way is different. Murakami decided to involve himself in the interviews more, they are reminescent of classic interview more than ones featured in the first part of the book. People involved were all different and brought in different stories about various facets of Aum's activities, which was refreshment after first part talking about same events, but from different perspectives. They all had different views on Aum, some still were in the cult, some left, one never really joined at all.
Despite all of them having different backgrounds few things connected all of them. Many were very philosophical types and all were tired of modern japanese society, they wanted to break away from it and live their own life. Lots of members were lured by promises of curing them. Some wanted to follow Buddhist traditions on which lots of Aum's doctrine was based on.
People did actually enjoy the Aum lifestyle - no matter if they are critical of the sect or still defend them, lots of them admitted the ascetic monastic lifestyle made them mature and change as a person. Despite this they were exploited under guise of gathering good karma, they often were releagted to tasks that were outside of scope of their skills - as one member who worked on the Aum anime got moved to "Ministry of Tech" where he was a welder and made tanks, without knowledge of it, meant to store sarin. So many of them also did claim that atmosphere in lower ranks of the cult was less dense than media claimed, which I don't really buy. Maybe it was that they didn't have to be their own masters, having their fate in their hands and just following a preset orders for supposed spiritual practice that helped them find themselves? We'll never know.
Japan didn't want to do anything to help people break away from Aum, media and police did play part in it. The story of one cultist who before made sacrificial meals, who then left the sect and tried to found her own bakery exactly showed this. She had to go door to door to show that she's a normal person just wanting to make living after leaving. Like it was a separate entity, the denial that there was an issue.
I learned about some interesting facts about Aum while reading it, like how rising in the ranks was dependable not only on the money, but for men it was being a graduate of a good university and for women... it was looks. Asahara did force female cult members into sleeping with him. The ex-member who talked about it doesn't remember what happened after his offers, she has been repeatedly tortured by electrocution because of getting close with another male member (sexual relationships between sexes were banned in cult, but guru was above the rules, as usual) and lost most of memory about her life as an Aum monk. She later on cut off all ties with it, but unfortunately police did harass her at new workplace, she was a victim herself after being literally tortured for not toeing the line.
I enjoyed the second part more, as it wasn't so repeatitive compared to Undergound. It was interesting to read how things probably looked like, but also more of Murakami's involvement in the process, his attempts to challenge beliefs especially of those who still were on Aum's side made it different, less passive. I liked it a lot. My only issue with the book istself is the sheer volume of the first part, I suppose it was cut in original English language due to it mostly. Translation from English doesn't flow as nicely as most Murakami translations do as it wasn't translated directly from Japanese. I still wonder why publishing house who published almost every of his book in my country didn't get to translate it and release it...