Underground

This was my fourth book in the Japanese Literature Challenge 2 and a very different style of read for me. During the Japanese reading challenge I got addicted to Haruki Murakami's fictional fantasies and picked up 'Underground' not really knowing much about it. I made a commitment earlier this year to read some non fiction, but secretly thought 'how boring?' Well this non fiction account of the Tokyo gas attacks on the underground was definitely not boring.

'Murakami shares with Alfred Hitchcock a fascination for ordinary people being suddenly plucked by extra ordinary circumstances from their daily lives' (Sunday Telegraph). This so aptly describes what Murakami has done in this book. In the first half of the book he sets out to locate as many individuals he can find who were affected by the Gas Attacks in 1995. He interviews individuals, and some their family members, who were travelling on the 5 subway lines affected by the terrorist attacks. Each interview is printed as it was recorded and double checked by the interviewee for accuracy. These are powerful stories of every day people being plucked from their daily lives. What surprised me most was the apparent equal mix of individuals who broke with routine to help, and those who did not willingly break with their routine. Some people were compelled by their routine to stay in the carriage with the gas fumes because that's were they always sit! Others were courageously moved to help, putting themselves in harms way (either knowingly or not) to help. One is moved to question - what would I do?

In the second part of the book, Murakami offers his own reflections on both the terrorist attacks and his experience researching it. from page 195 the chapter called 'blind nightmare'

For many months thereafter, the media overflowed with 'news' of all kinds about the cult. From morning til night Japanese TV was virtually non-stop Aum.....
none of which told me what I wanted to know. No, mine was a very simple questions: what actually happened in the Tokyo subway the morning of 20 March 1995?
or more correctly: what were the people in the subway carriages doing at the time? what did they see? what did they feel? what did they think?

In the third part of the book Murakami interviews present and ex members of the cult Aum. I have to say this was the most challenging bit for me to read. Murakami is courageous himself in that he accepted the challenge to document what happened on that day in march, and what lead to it from the cult members perspective.

Now a narrative is a story, not logic, nor ethics, nor philosophy. it is a dream you keep having, weather you realize it or not. just as surely as you breathe, you go on ceaselessly dreaming your story. And in these stories you wear two faces. You are simultaneously subject and object. You are the whole and you are a part. you are real and your are shadow. 'Storyteller' and at the same time 'character'. It is through such multi layering of roles in our stories that we heal the loneliness of being and isolated individual in the world.

Murakami hasn't disappointed me, he's challenged me. I have a professional interest in trauma and psychological wellbeing, and this was a true and honest account of many individuals different experiences of the same extra ordinary event that changed their lives and their views of the world.

Recommended reading!