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"It was a clear spring day, Monday, March 20, 1995, when five members of the religious cult Aum Shinrikyo conducted chemical warfare on the Tokyo subway system using sarin, a poison gas twenty-six times as deadly as cyanide. The unthinkable had happened, a major urban transit system had become the target of a terrorist attack.

In an attempt to discover why, Haruki Murakami, internationally acclaimed author of 'The Wind-up Bird Chronicle' and arguably Japan's most important contemporary novelist, talked to the people who lived through the catastrophe--from a Subway Authority employee with survivor guilt, to a fashion salesman with more venom for the media than for the perpetrators, to a young cult member who vehemently condemns the attack though he has not quit Aum. Through these and many other voices, Murakami exposes intriguing aspects of the Japanese psyche. And as he discerns the fundamental issues leading to the attack, we achieve a clear vision of an event that could occur anytime, anywhere. Hauntingly compelling and inescapably important, 'Underground' is a powerful work of journalistic literature from one of the world's most perceptive writers.




I have a lot to talks about this book. Not only because the author, Haruki Murakami, is my favorite but this book revealing an unknown issue about Japan to me. All we know Japan is a safe place, besides its earthquake and volcano of course, but on 20th of March in 1995 there was a terrorist attack taking place at the most crowded place in Japan, Tokyo subway. The terrorist didn't use guns, bombs, or took any hostages. They simply released a dangerous chemical gas as a weapon. They released sarin (the effect of this gas is similar to poisoning due to pesticides, but the dominant of sarin poisoning is the contracted of pupil) in five trains at the peak of the morning rush hour.

In five coordinated attacks, the perpetrators released sarin on several lines of the Tokyo subway, killing 12 people, severely injuring 50 and causing temporary vision problems for nearly 1,000 others.


What makes this Tokyo sarin gas attack really phenomenal is the villain of this terrorist act is a cult grows in Japan named Aum Shinrikyo and its master named Shoko Asahara. This cult originally based on idiosyncratic interpretations of Yoga and their lifestyle mostly like any Buddhism or Shinto (I don't know any about religion or this kind of thing, so correct me if I am wrong).

In this book Haruki Murakami doing a great hard work collecting as many as he could the victims of the Tokyo sarin gas attack, interviewing them, and gathered as much information about how was their doing on that day of the attack, how did they feel now, and how was their feeling toward Aum as the mastermind behind this frightening incident.

As he never wanted to judge anything, Haruki Murakami also gathered the opinion from Aum follower's side (mostly are those who are already out from this cult and now lives a secular world) about how did they do inside the cults, did they have any idea about the terrorist act inside Aum, and how did they fell knowing that Aum and their master Shoko Asahara was behind the Tokyo sarin gas attack.

With the stories from both sides, Haruki Murakami wants the readers to judge by themselves about this terrifying incident, the side-effects of sarin that suffered by the victims, and also the motives of Aum released this act of terror.


As the following reader of Haruki Murakami, I enjoy his serious kind of book as much as his novels and this is my second book of his non-fiction stories after he talked about running in 'What I Talk When I Talk About Running'. The reason why he wanted to write the stories of the victims of Tokyo sarin gas attack and reviewed this incident is simply because this incident took a place in a subway. Something underground always attracts him (yes, he is one of a kind to love something dark and something that's very absurd and surreal) like he could sense a darkness inside the story of this sarin gas attack.

After reading this book, I realized that mostly terrorist act was taken because of dissatisfaction of the society/government/reign/regime. In this case, Aum or Shoko Asahara declared himself "Christ", and his purported mission was to take upon himself the sins of the world. Many cults or religions in this world has strong selfish doctrine which leads to acts of terrorism. It is a fact that mostly a terrorist attack was motivated by a religious/cult doctrine. But sometimes we cannot blame the doctrine, the human or the mastermind behind the act is the most guilt person that needs to be blame.

Looking back to the Tokyo sarin gas attack, it was in 1995. At that time I was still five years old preparing for elementary school to be at the following year. I have no idea what was happening in Tokyo, Japan. I don't know where in the world the Tokyo, Japan is but yet some people were suffering from sarin and its side-effect even until now some of them still carrying a trauma of that experience. By reading this book I can imagine how terrifying and scary it could be inside that train.