Off The Bookshelf UK - Books Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche New & Used Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche

Search Books - select a category

Buy Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche online at Discounted New and Used prices. Delivered to your door with Off-The-Bookshelf.

Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche
by: Haruki Murakami

List Price: £8.99

Off The Bookshelf's Price: £5.99

You Save: £3.00 (33%)
Prices subject to change.

Used Price: £2.99
Third Party New Price: £3.58

Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 364
EAN: 9780099461098
ISBN: 0099461099
Label: Vintage
Manufacturer: Vintage
Number Of Pages: 320
Publication Date: September 04, 2003
Publisher: Vintage
Studio: Vintage
Sales Rank: 43519

Related Items:

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Editorial Review:

Amazon.co.uk Review:
On Monday 20 March 1995 the Japanese Aum cult released a deadly cloud of Sarin nerve gas into the Tokyo underground. 12 people were killed and an estimated 3,800 suffered serious after-effects. Haruki Murakami, one of Japan's leading novelists (considered by many to be one of the most important writers now writing), was both shocked and fascinated by the awful event. Murakami's response was to interview as many of those affected as he could (only 60 victims were willing to be questioned), interested as he was in the stories created by this one awful event on so many lives. He also interviewed a number of members of the Aum cult: "I'm sure each member of the Science and Technology elite had his own personal reasons for renouncing the world and joining Aum. What they all had in common, though, was a desire to put the technical skill and knowledge they'd acquired in the service of a more meaningful goal ... that might very well be me. It might be you". The result is Underground his first work of non-fiction. Murakami writes complex, sometimes overbearing and dense novels but he here makes very little intervention into his text, simply presenting a background sketch of each before allowing the victims and cult-members to speak freely for themselves through the transcripts. They present an intricate, rounded and cinematic view of day that none of us should ever forget. --Mark Thwaite

Customer Reviews

Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- Excellent account of one of the key events in Japanese history since the end of World War II
Even though this volume, an abridged collection of two closely related works published in Japanese, published in English back in 2000, I have only just read it, having read all the other English Murakami works beforehand.

I love Murakami's fiction. This book looked a bit too gritty, a bit too realistic, for my tastes. However, I found it compulsive reading and got through it very quickly.

Murakami gets a lot out of his interviewees - an assortment of 60 victims of the gas attack - in Part 1 and an assortment of Aum members and ex-Aum members (Aum was the cult religious organisation that perpetrated the attack) in Part Two. Both parts are equally fascinating.

The Tokyo gas attack is one of the key events ... Read More:

Rating:

- A highly personalized perspective.
Documentation of the event & the aftermath from a highly personalized perspective. Very sensitive handling of his material. Well researched, with much persistence in some cases in getting the victims to come forward to talk. Second Murakami book I read after 'Kafka On The Shore' and pleasantly surprised by his none fiction writing.

Rating:

- Fascinating
I love Murakami's fiction and doing a college project on New Religious Movements gave me the excuse I needed to read this book. Murakami became interested in the events surrounding the gas attack on the Tokyo subway by the Aum cult and decided to interview both those who perpetrated the attack and the victims of the attack. He explains in his preface that he was interested in the peculiarities of the Japanese mindset concerning the attack, particularly those of the victims, many of whom felt guilty or ashamed of their involvement, despite being the injured party. He handles the interviews with dignity and the multiple narratives of the same event, give a fascinating and multilayered perspective on what happened. There is no sense of voyeurism ... Read More:

Rating:

- March 20, 1995
On a cloudless spring morning in 1995, Aum Shinrikyo unleashed hell in the crowded Japanese subway network. Sarin nerve gas was released in various underground trains, poisoning thousands of commuters and killing twelve. Nobel-prize candidate Haruki Murakami tells the tale of dozens of survivors, relatives of the victims, and Aum followers. "Underground" is a compilation of interviews and personal profiles, reporting the tragic events of that March morning from a multitude of angles. This work aspires to be journalistic in nature, but is emotional in tone. The publication is well researched and respectful of the victims and their privacy. The quality of the translation however is disappointing, reducing what could have been an impressive documentary ... Read More:

Rating:

- A portrait of survivors, henchmen and Japan
On March 20 1995 members of the Japanese sect Aum dispensed the nerve gas sarin in the Tokyo underground railway system. “Underground” is an extremely interesting tale by Nobel prize-candidate Haruki Murakami about the survivors’ experience. Unfortunately Al-Quaeda’s attacks have made the book even more topical than before. The book provides readers from abroad with a very fascinating view of the Japanese psyche – the very modest author didn’t exaggerate, when he chose the ambitious subtitle “The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche”.

Murakami acknowledges his debt to the American writer Studs Terkel, but Murakami writes in a style of his own. Like an antropologist he painstakingly describes how he and his two assistants ... Read More:

Books : Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche