Underground

Underground combines two collection of interviews. Part one is a grouping of interviews with victims of the sarin gas attack. Part two is a collection of interviews with former and current members of the religious sect that perpetuated the attack. The author, Murakami Haruki, took up the assignment in part to understand his own cultural identity after almost a decade of living abroad. While the book is made up of narratives from individuals of widely varying backgrounds, the stories share common themes, and together, they reveal many intriguing aspects of the Japanese psyche and the values of Japanese society and culture as a whole.

Ie (家), Gakkō (学校), and Shigoto (仕事) means family, school, and work, all which are important to Japanese society and culture. One of the most prominent theme was the value and importance which the interviewees placed on their jobs. Education is an important key in order to getting a good job and that graduating from a top-ranking university is regarded as an essential requirement for a high-level position. Working extra time appeared to be typical for the

One interviewee, on a Marunouchi Line bounded for the Destination Ogikubo on Train A777, Mitsuo Arima, was age 41, assessed the situation, saying, “we’ve lost any sense of crisis and material things are all that matters. The idea that it’s wrong to harm other has gradually disappeared” (65). Another interviewee Toshiaki Toyoda, a subway worker, who was 52 at the time, caught the Chiyoda Line on Train A725K, said, “I already knew society had gotten to the point where something like Aum had to happen … It’s a question of morals” (38). A few interviewees likewise voiced criticism of the media, specifically because of the way it misrepresented and sensationalized the sarin