Underground

Name: Underground
ISBN: 9787532781355

Haruki Murakami / Lin ShaohuaShanghai Translation Publishing House · ChinaMay 2019

4.3

Word count: 300K words
Chapters: 9
ISBN: 9787532781355

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Summary

On March 20, 1995, Japan was shaken by the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway, an event that stunned the world. In its aftermath, Haruki Murakami spent a year meeting with those who had lived through it, conducting recorded interviews and editing the transcripts as necessary, then gathering them into Underground. This work of documentary literature vividly portrays the subway sarin attack and is Murakami's first work of nonfiction, a book of great significance. Underground marks a turning point in Murakami's career: his first full-length work of documentary literature, and a profound reckoning with Japan's "closed, responsibility-avoiding society." 1Q84 is the ruin that grew from Underground. The conception of story that began with Underground and kept developing was pursued with effort in 1Q84, but never fully realized. In that sense, perhaps Underground is the more successful of the two.

Editor's review

Haruki Murakami's Underground is not a novel but an important nonfiction turn in his career, recording the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin gas attack, a historical moment that profoundly changed Japan's collective psychology. The book's value lies first in its distinctive method of record: over the course of a year, Murakami interviewed 62 people who lived through the event and the families of victims, weaving a microcosmic picture of individual experiences in calm, restrained prose. Unlike the media of the time, which focused on Aum Shinrikyo and Shoko Asahara in grand narrative terms, Murakami handed the microphone to ordinary office workers, subway employees, and housewives, recording the sudden terror they encountered on an ordinary morning, their physical suffering, and the long psychological trauma that followed.\n\nAs an editor, I see at least three levels of value in reading this book. First, its value as historical document: it preserves a first-hand oral history of the event, rich in human detail. Second, its literary value: with a novelist's sensitivity, Murakami preserved each narrator's distinctive tone and rhythm while editing the interviews, giving every account strong literary power and demonstrating the narrative force of nonfiction writing. Third, its value for social reflection: in the long afterword, "Blind Nightmare," Murakami analyzes how Japan's highly developed capitalist society fostered individual isolation and systemic fragility, and how Aum Shinrikyo could attract so many highly educated young people. This questioning of the relationship between "normal" and "abnormal," individual and system, transcends the event itself and retains lasting relevance.\n\nUnderground and its sequel, The Place That Was Promised, together form Murakami's complete reckoning with the event. Reading this book, we are not only learning about a tragedy but observing how a leading novelist brings all his craft to bear on approaching and bearing the real suffering of others, and tries to understand the deep fissures in modern society.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in modern Japanese history and social culture
Readers who appreciate nonfiction and the craft of oral history
Dedicated readers of Haruki Murakami who want to understand his full body of work
Those concerned with the relationship between traumatic memory, individual narrative, and collective history

Not a good fit for

Readers seeking only Murakami's typical fiction (e.g., fantasy, lonely urban love)
Readers with low tolerance for heavy historical subject matter and detailed descriptions of trauma

Reading tips

Readers may first read the interview sections in the main text to feel the direct power of individual accounts, then delve into the afterword, "Blind Nightmare," to understand Murakami's overall analysis
While reading, it may help to compare contemporary news media coverage and appreciate the distinctive value of the book's bottom-up perspective
For a fuller picture, readers are advised to follow up with its sequel, The Place That Was Promised, which focuses on interviews with former Aum Shinrikyo members and offers another side of the event

About the publisher

Shanghai Translation Publishing House China · Founded in 1978

Shanghai Translation Publishing House is a Chinese publisher oriented mainly toward translation and publishing. Its publications cover foreign literature, world classics and classic works, as well as social culture, folk literature and classical poetry. The database contains 2,618 titles, including Never Let Me Go, Les Misérables (2 volumes), Don Quixote (illustrated collector's edition), The Complete Comedies of Molière (4 volumes), The Complete Novels of Kafka (3 volumes), The Collected Works of Dostoevsky (9-volume set), Reason and Persons, and Oedipus Rex (Translation Classics). Its author resources include foreign writers such as Kazuo Ishiguro, Victor Hugo, Cervantes and Molière, as well as translators such as Zheng Kelu, Sun Jiameng, Li Jianwu and Zhang Kun. The publisher has brands such as "Translation Classics Selections" and "Translation Documentary," and emphasizes translated works in foreign literature and the humanities and social sciences, while also publishing bilingual dictionaries and foreign-language educational books. Public information is limited; the above is based on the book information in the database.

版权信息
《地下》与《1Q84》之间（译序）
写在前面
千代田线
丸之内线（开往荻洼）
丸之内线（开往池袋／区间车）
日比谷线（中目黑始发）
日比谷线（北千住始发，开往中目黑）
“没有标记的噩梦”——我们将要去哪里呢？

FAQ

Is Underground a novel?

No. It is a work of nonfiction by Haruki Murakami, documentary literature based on extensive on-site interviews, recording the experiences and feelings of victims of the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin gas attack.

Is this book very different in style from Murakami's other works?

Yes, markedly so. It sets aside the surreal metaphors, lonely male protagonists, and jazz atmosphere common in his fiction, adopting instead an extremely realistic, calm, and objective interview format, showing another kind of touch and sense of responsibility the author brings to major social realities.

Do I need to know the background of the event before reading this book?

It helps, but it is not essential. The interviews themselves outline the basic shape of the event, and Murakami provides in-depth social analysis in the afterword. Knowing something about Japanese society in 1995 and the basics of Aum Shinrikyo beforehand will help readers understand the text's context more deeply.

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About the author

Haruki Murakami Author · Japan · 1949

Haruki Murakami is a Japanese novelist and translator of American literature, born in 1949 in Fushimi, Kyoto, and a graduate of Waseda University. He entered the literary world in 1979 with Hear the Wind Sing and has since continued to produce novels, essays, and interview-based nonfiction, with 57 titles by him carried on this site. His fiction often traces urban individuals' sense of loneliness, loss, and self-discovery, moving between the real and the surreal in a light yet introspective tone that has become a highly recognizable personal style. Representative works include Norwegian Wood, A Wild Sheep Chase, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, and The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, many of which are classed as classics and foreign literature. He has also translated American writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, and his own work has been translated into many languages and recognized with international awards including the Franz Kafka Prize and the Jerusalem Prize, giving him wide influence among contemporary world literature readers.

Lin Shaohua Author · Chinese · 1952

Lin Shaohua, born in 1952 in Jiutai, Jilin, with ancestral roots in Penglai, Shandong, is a renowned Chinese literary translator and essayist who previously served as a professor at the College of Foreign Languages, Ocean University of China. Since translating Norwegian Wood in 1989, he has devoted himself to introducing Japanese literature to Chinese readers, translating more than forty works by Haruki Murakami as well as notable works by Natsume Soseki, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, and Yasunari Kawabata. His fluent and nuanced translations have won him a wide readership in the Chinese-speaking world and have profoundly influenced the reception of Murakami and modern Japanese literature in China. In 2018, he received the Japanese Foreign Minister's Commendation. His translations span novels, essays, and interview collections, with representative works including Snow Country, The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, Kokoro, The Setting Sun, and The Izu Dancer.