Underground:The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche

Well I am back after a month and a half hiatus, having lost the 3 readers of this blog in the process. Well why was I away, loads of work, no time to write and no time to read also. And also no peace of mind, no particular reason to be cranky and that made recovery even harder. Finally the clouds lifted last Sunday, nothing had changed except I decided to smile (of course the husband’s tickling helped). While I was not writing I was constantly thinking about this blog and should I even come back to it especially after I am so so behind. With peace of mind, skip in the step and song on my lips restored not coming back seemed like a moronic option. I mean who cares about how far behind I am on the challenge, I read a book and I shall inflict the review on the greater world.

So what’s the book : Underground by Haruki Marukami. Picked it up from Chennai airport, the book is about the 1995 Tokyo Gas Attack and the affect it had on the nation’s psyche. The book originally written in Japanese is a compilation of interviews of survivors of the tragedy and family of the victims. The author sites putting a face to victims rather than hide the pain behind figures as the reason of wanting to write the book. Also the long lasting effect that the tragedy has had on people who were ill fated to be on that train that Monday morning.

The book is not lyrical in its style of writing. The beauty of the book does not lie in its beautiful prose but in the way it brings together the truth of many lives, both the victims and the perpetuators of the violent act. It is journalistic in the way it presents points of view and facts without interpretation and judgment. It allows the reader to absorb and interpret the tragedy and its manifestations without being weighed down by the judgment of the author. The first part has many accounts of the victims, each different in the extent of damage and method of coping with it. What stays behind and totally flips your view of such disasters is that its quantum cannot be measured by the number of lives lost (13 people died that day), even one death is one too many. The heartbreaking story of the expecting widow or the dutiful brother stays behind even as you finish the book. For me it was also a sneak peak into the Japanese people and their way of life. Their commitment to work was evident in the number of people reporting back to work despite signs of discomfort (arguably increasing the damage caused by Sarin), also the number of hours people work and the general sense of propriety towards work was well almost intriguing. As in the case of individuals’, a people’s reaction to a tragedy is a true reflection of its personality and in this case everyone reacted methodically with calm, without hysteria. People seemed to act more out of duty not empathy, the reactions specially as in the accounts recorded nearly 2 years after the tragedy were so measured and to my melodramatic Indian soul almost cold. The hatred however, towards the perpetuators of the crime, the Aum Shrinkyo is unequivocal and intense.
The fear of the unknown haunts these victims, the simplicity of the crime and the extent of damage it caused (measured by the thousands of people who complain of headache, nausea, loss of sight etc etc) and the potential damage is infact chilling. Though the world has moved on since 1995 and in these 15 years terrorism is in everyone’s backyard, the fact that a few demented minds can wreck so many lives without any effort still manages to shock me. Finally what clearly runs as a common theme through all these accounts is the “Us vs. Them”, most victims and indeed Japanese post the attacj refused to recognize the members of the Aum cult as part of their very own society. Even with no demographic, socio economic or linguistic definitions separating the Aum members from the rest of the society no one acknowledged that they were infact part of the same social fabric. Imagine how hard it is to share the burden of the crime when nationalities, religions and languages create a barrier.
And this brings me to the second part of the book, titled appropriately “The Place That was Promised”. With this part, the book completes itself making it a must read for having presented both sides of the coin in the most unbiased way it is possible. This is a collection of the interviews of members from the Aum. Marukami delivers on the job when he presents the human side of people you hate in the first part. Most interviewees have lives similar to that of the victims, they could have been neighbours for all you know. What sets them apart is their uni-dimensional pursuit of what they think is the “Truth”, their inability to fit into society and their supreme faith in the logic of their beliefs. Their loneliness forcing them to seek solace in the “guru’s” wisdom, wisdom that slowly takes away all their sense of reality. There is no room for grey in their minds and anyone who does not comply with their school of thought is wrong. A thread that runs so commonly across all right wing and left wing terrorists. It is when you do not allow a little room for a little doubt that being inhumane does not seem wrong. All Aum followers were by products of the same society that they sought to destroy. Harukami establishes his craft, while interviewing the Aum followers, probing a little deeper, forcing them to share insights far bigger than they initially intended to. The second part of the book is an addendum, but a befitting one that completes the book for me. You end up hating the perpetrators of the crime in the first part but at the end of the second one you are not so sure.
The criminals are nothing but victims themselves.