Notes
- aum followers share an emptiness and search for ‘truth’, for higher purpose beyond being merely a cog in life
- murukami thinks they are logically consistent to a point where they use the utility of logic as a weapon and end up slaughtering masses of people
- wants to build an utopia without contradictions
- humanist vs ??? binary or grey areas
perhaps my favourite book from him? it takes all those years of searching and wandering, aimlessly trying to find an alternative world induced with meaning and higher purpose and culminates it into this book about the japanese society from the POV of the ordinary indiscriminate everyday men to the outsiders, aum followers.
pg 306: In this sense I think the gas attack was a kind of catharsis, a psychological release of everything that had built up in Japan - the malice, the distorted consciousness we have. Not that the Aum incident got rid of everything. There’s still this suppressed, virus-like apocalyptic vision that’s invading society and hasn’t been erased or digested.
- even if you could get rid of it at an individual level, the virus would remain on a social level.
- maybe if I had been in Japan then and was 21-23, I would have been seduced by their cultist philosophy and ascetic way of life.
- aum, ashara;;;;evokes Nazi Germany, Hitler and all the cults that come before it. during economic uncertainty, it is more probable to “prey on” people’s vulnerabilities and to convert them.
- everyone including myself could be one of them, when logic is weaponized and willed to create that utopia they want.
- it was horrifying for ordinary ppl that encountered the sarin attacks.
- emotions:
- cried at a few parts especially with the widow that lost her husband
- cried at the helplessness of the system and society
- marvelled at the doctors trying their best
- I guess this is why liquid in check in is so strict. was thinking if there was a sarin attack in the airplane, everyone including me would have surely died then.
- the metaphor of the inklings from underground feeding on rotten fleshes. our weaknesses and inhumanity at the end.
Quotes
Quotes
pg 10: As if it weren’t enough to be the victim of purely random violence, the man had suffered “secondary victimization” (everyday corporate violence of the most pervasive kind)
pg 14: Perhaps its 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.
from everyday victims pov
pg 33: I have been to the Aum headquarters’ Kamikuishiki Village lots of times on the job. Most of the cultist there, they look spaced out, like their souls have been sucked away. They don’t even laugh or cry. Like Noh masks, expressionless.
pg 48: The fact is, the very day of the gas attack i worked straight through at the office until 5:30. I didn’t feel well enough to eat lunch, of course; had no appetite.
pg 61: Since the war ended, Japan’s economy has grown rapidly to the point where we’ve lost any sense of crisis and material things are all that matters. The idea that it’s wrong to harm others has gradually disappeared.
pg 106: Rather than leaping out of a speeding car by his own will and judgement, then having to face the consequences, it was far easier just to obey.
pg 137: Thinking back over it now, it was eerie. The contrast was just so weird. But on television they only showed the abnormal part, quite different from the actual impression I had. It just made me realize all the more how frightening television is.
pg 142: Making it big is no guarantee of success. There have been lots of companies that made it big, only to disappear.
pg 194: The most important thing in a mass disaster is triage: the prioritizing of patients to receive treatment.
The doctor’s dilemma is having to decide who gets priority: the patient who can’t breathe, or the one who can’t see? Difficult judgment comes with dangerous situations. It’s the hardest thing about being a doctor.
pg 195: As one American expat said, to have had five thousand sarin gas victims and only twelve dead is close to a miracle. All thanks to the extraordinary efforts of the local units, because the overall emergency network was useless.
murukami’s musings
pg 201: the aum “phenomenon” disturbs precisely because it is not someone else’s affair. it shows us a distorted image of ourselves in a manner none of us could have foreseen.
pg 202: Many parts of the social system in which we belong and function do indeed aim at repressing the attainment of individual autonomy, or, as the Japanese adage goes: “The nail that sticks up gets hammered down”
pg 204: Ashara was a master storyteller who proved capable of anticipating the mood of the times. He was not deterred by the knowledge, whether conscious or not, that his ideas and images were recycled junk.
pg 211: Another personal motive for my interest in the Tokyo gas attack is that it took place underground. Subterranean worlds — wells, underpasses, caves, underground springs and rivers, dark alleys, subways — have always fascinated me and are an important motif in my novels. The image, the mere idea of a hidden pathway, immediately fills my head with stories …
Underground settings play particularly major roles in two of my novels, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World and The Wind Up Bird Chronicle. Characters go into the World Below in search of something and down there different adventures unfold. They head underground, of course, both in the physical and spiritual sense.
aum followers pov
pg 224: What i am getting at is that if you examine the history of science you can see that it has been manipulated in the name of politics and religion. the nazis did that.
pg 234: Since the sea that i loved so much was going to get polluted anyway, I might as well be the one to do it. Mixed-up emotions, I know. My mind was torn in different directions.
pg 235:
Murakami: In Adrian Boshier’s case he had to enter that other world, but in your case you could still return ot this world. You were told, in fact, to return.
Akio Namimura: That’s what happened. Having a normal life - marriage, kids - that’s all a kind of training. I was told. In fact, it’s the most difficult sort of training.
pg 238: Their (police) methods were pretty archaic. “Can you trample on a photo of Shoko Asahara?” they demanded, like it was in the Edo period when they made the Japanese Christians renounce their faith by stepping on a drawing of Jesus.
pg 253: I think I approached things with an artist’s intuition, relying on emotions rather than on logic.
pg 254:
Murakami: People who agonize over fundamental issues usually go through a sort of set pattern: reading all sorts of books when they’re young, discovering different philosophies and choosing from them a system of ideas. But you didn’t do this. You let your mood carry you along and just went straight into Aum.
pg 261:
In the final analysis, Aum created people who had discarded their Selves and just followed orders.
One element was there from the start, and as he surrounded himself with yes-men his sense of reality faded and the delusion took over. However, I think that, in his own way, Asahara was seriously considering the question of salvation. Otherwise, no one would have renounced the world to follow him. To some extent there was something mystical about it all. The same thing holds true for me - yoga and ascetic practice led to some mystical experiences.
pg 263: Why shouldn’t a few people be able to think deeply about things that aren’t directly relevant to society? The problem lies in the fact that Aum Shinrikyo was one of the few havens for such people, and in the end it turned out to be corrupt. Paradise was an illusion.
pg 295: People raised in happy families probably wouldn’t join Aum.
pg 306: In this sense I think the gas attack was a kind of catharsis, a psychological release of everything that had built up in Japan - the malice, the distorted consciousness we have. Not that the Aum incident got rid of everything. There’s still this suppressed, virus-like apocalyptic vision that’s invading society and hasn’t been erased or digested.
afterwords.
pg 309: The answer is simple - because in Aum they found a purity of purpose they could not find in ordinary society. Even if in the end it became something monstrous, the radiant, warm memory of the peace they originally found remains inside them, and nothing else can easily replace it.
pg 311: For the most part they were young, extremely talented, and well educated, their heads full of newly minted, ambitious visions. As long as they stayed in the Japanese state, with its coercive structure, they believed it was impossible to find an effective outlet for all their energy. And that’s exactly why they sought out this more accommodating, experimental land, even if it meant jumping off the normal track.
pg 313: Reality is created out of confusion and contradiction, and if you exclude those elements, you’re no longer talking about reality. You might think that — by following language and a logic that appears consistent — you are able to exclude that aspect of reality, but it will always be lying in wait for you, ready to take its revenge.
pg 315: However we need to realize that most of the people who join cults are not abnormal; they are not disadvantaged; they’re not eccentrics. They are the people who live average lives (and maybe from the outside, more than average lives), who live in my neighbourhood. And in yours. Maybe they think about things a little too seriously. Perhaps there’s some pain they’re carrying around inside. They’re not good at making their feelings known to others and are somewhat troubled. They can’t find a suitable means to express themselves, and bounce back and forth between feelings of pride and inadequacy. They might very well be me. It might be you.