Domestic Terror

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

In March of 1995, the Tokyo subway system was poisoned with a Nerve Gas Attack (Sarin) by a domestic Buddhist Yoga Doomsday Cult named Aum Shinrikyo. Twelve people died of Sarin Poisoning and five to six thousand commuters were affected and/or hospitalized by exposure to the nerve gas. The year before in 1994, there was another incident at one of the Aum Shinrikyo offices and retreats, where sarin gas was detected in the vicinity of the Aum offices. So someone in one of the Japanese ministries must have known that Aum was manufacturing and had access to the nerve gas. But the attack in 1995 was a surprise, not only for its victims but for the Japanese Homeland Ministries and the Emergency Services.

I am interested in the Anthrax Attack in the US and the incompetent investigation done by the US Government. It is obvious to me that someone in the US Government at the time made the Weaponized Anthrax and distributed it and killed five Americans and sickened seventeen other Americans. And no, I do not believe that it was Dr. Ivins. He was just the convenient dead scapegoat to distract the public from US Government malefeasance. Who was responsible is lost along with the second or third shooter at the Kennedy assassination and the dead Lee Harvey Oswald and the dead Jack Ruby.

Mr. Murakami is a prominent and popular Japanese novelist who interviewed victims of the Tokyo Subwary Nerve Gas Attack and followers of the Aum Cult (not the ones who actually made and planted the Sarin Gas, they were in the Japanese Criminal System and not available to interviews) to attempt to determine what happened and why it happened in Japan. Mr. Murakami thought that the attack was integral to the Japanese psyche, but in the years since the attack, I think that we can all conclude that Terrorism is about the Human Psyche and very often it is Government Sponsored either directly or indirectly. There are no great particular conclusions about National Psyches that can be reached or revealed in any contemplation of it.

Mr. Murakami followed the Studs Terkel method of interviewing the participants and with a few well placed questions, allowing the people who were affected and involved to tell their own stories from their own view points. Each individual interview builds a more human and compelling whole for the Reader to contemplate.

I've read some of Mr. Murakami's fiction and the one story that I recall is about a lady in Tokyo who has a green monster in her backyard, the short story is from The Elephant Vanishes. The monster or leprechaun (as I deduced from its description) has sprung up from a hole that it dug in the backyard and pops up now and then like a "whack a mole" to bedevil and tease the lady. Mr. Murakami has an affinity for underground monsters so it is no surprise that he should find the Tokyo Subway attack to be so compelling as to write a non-fiction account of it.