Underground is a book by Haruki Murakami about the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway by Aum Shinrikyo in 1995.
Described as a work of "journalistic literature," Underground was originally written in Japanese and was translated into English by Alfred Birnbaum and Philip Gabriel. Underground combines essays by the author with personal interviews with 60 survivors. The English edition includes interviews with 8 former and current Aum members which were originally published in Japanese as Post-Underground.
In his Introduction (p 6-8), Murakami writes:
What I did not want was a collection of disembodied voices. Perhaps
it's an occupational hazard of the novelist's profession, but I am
less interested in the 'big picture,' as it were, than in the
concrete, irreducible humanity of each individual . . .
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.
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