from Haruki Murakami’s Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche (Vintage International, 2000)

[pp. 230-33>]

Autonomy is only the mirror image of dependence on others. If you were left as a baby on a deserted island, you would have no notion of what autonomy means. Autonomy and dependency are like light and shade, caught in the pull of each other’s gravity, until, after considerable trial and error, each individual can find his or her own place in the world.

Those who fail to achieve this balance, like Shoko Asahara perhaps, have to compensate by establishing a limited (but actually quite effective) system. I have no way of ranking [Asahara] as a religious figure. How does one measure such things? Still, a cursory look at his life does suggest one possible scenario. Efforts to overcome his own individual disabilities left him trapped inside a closed circuit. A genie in a bottle labeled “religion,” which he proceeded to market as a form of shared experience.

Asahara surely put himself through hell, a horrific bloodbath of internal conflicts and soul-searching until he arrived at a systematization of his vision. Undoubtedly he also had his satori, some “attainment of paranormal value.” Without any firsthand experience of hell or extraordinary inversion of everyday values, Asahara would not have had such a strong, charismatic power. From a certain perspective, primitive religion always carries its own associated special aura that emanates from some psychic aberration.

In order to take on the “self-determination” that Asahara provided, most of those who took refuge in the Aum cult appear to have deposited all their precious personal holdings of selfhood—lock and key—in that “spiritual bank” called Shoko Asahara. The faithful relinquished their freedom, renounced their possessions, disowned their families, discarded all secular judgment (common sense). “Normal” Japanese were aghast: How could anyone do such an insane thing? But conversely, to the cultists it was probably quite comforting. At last they had someone to watch over them, sparing them the anxiety of confronting each new situation on their own, and delivering them from any need to think for themselves.

By tuning in, by merging themselves with Shoko Asahara’s “greater, more profoundly unbalanced” Self, they attained a kind of psuedo-self-determination. Instead of launching an assault on society as individuals, they handed over the entire strategic responsibility to Asahara…. The only one [actually] fighting was Shoko Asahara: most [of his] followers were merely swallowed up and assimilated by his battle-hungry ego. Nor were the followers unilaterally subjected to Asahara’s “mind control.” Not passive victims, they themselves actively sought to be controlled by Asahara. “Mind control” is not something that can be pursued or bestowed just like that. It’s a two-sided affair.

If you lose your ego, you lose the thread of that narrative you call your Self. Humans, however, can’t live very long without some sense of a continuing story. Such stories go beyond the limited rational system (or the systematic rationality) with which you surround yourself; they are crucial keys to sharing time-experience with others.

Now a narrative is a story, not logic, nor ethics, nor philosophy. It is a dream you keep having, whether you realize it or not. Just as surely as you breathe, you go on ceaselessly dreaming your story. And in [your story] you wear two faces. You are simultaneously subject and object. You are the whole and you are the part. You are real and you are shadow. “Storyteller” and at the same time “character.” It is through such multilayering of roles in our stories that we heal the loneliness of being an isolated individual in the world.

Yet without a proper ego, nobody can create a personal narrative, any more than you can drive a car without an engine, or cast a shadow without a real physical object. But once you’ve consigned your ego to someone else, where on earth do you go from there?

At this point you receive a new narrative from the person to whom you have entrusted your ego. You’ve handed over the real thing, so what comes back is instead a shadow. And once your ego has merged with another ego, your narrative will necessarily take on the narrative created by that other ego.

Just what kind of narrative?

It needn’t be anything particularly fancy, nothing complicated or refined. You don’t need to have literary ambitions. In fact…the sketchier and simpler the better…. Junk, a leftover rehash will do. Anyway, most people are tired of complex, multilayered scenarios—they are a potential letdown. It’s precisely because people can’t find any fixed point within their own multilayered schemes that they’re tossing aside their self-identity. A simple “emblem” of a story will do for this sort of narrative, the same way that a war medal bestowed on a soldier doesn’t have to be pure gold. It’s enough that the medal is backed up by a shared recognition that “this is a medal,” no matter that it’s a cheap tin trinket.

Shoko Asahara was talented enough to impose his rehashed narrative on people (who for the most part came looking for just that). It was a risible, slapdash story. To unbelievers it could only be regurgitated tripe. Still, in all fairness, it must be said that a certain consistency runs through it all. It is a call to arms.

From this perspective, in a limited sense, Asahara 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. Asahara deliberately cobbled together bits and pieces from all around him…and brought to them a singular flow, a current that darkly reflected the inner ghosts of his own mind. Whatever the deficiencies in that narrative, they were in Asahara himself, so they presented no obstacle to those who chose to merge themselves with him…. Most of us laughed at the absurd off-the-wall scenario that Asahara provided…and we ridiculed the believers who could be attracted to such “lunatic fodder”…. But were we able to offer “them” a more viable narrative? Did we have a narrative potent enough to chase away Asahara’s “utter nonsense”?

That was the big task. I am a novelist, and as we all know a novelist is someone who works with “narratives,” who spins “stories,” professionally. Which meant to me that the task at hand was like a gigantic sword dangling above my head. It’s something I’m going to have to deal with much more seriously from here on…. So then, what about you?…. Haven’t you offered up some part of your Self to someone (or something), and taken on a “narrarative” in return? Haven’t we [each, as individuals,] entrusted some part of our personality to some greater System or Order? And if so, has not that system at some stage demanded of us some kind of “insanity”? Is the narrative you now possess really and truly your own? Are your dreams really your own dreams? Might not they be someone else’s visions that could sooner or later turn into nightmares?

[pp. 359-64>]

I attended several of the trials of the defendants in the Tokyo gas attack. I wanted to see and hear these people with my own eyes and ears, in order to come to some understanding of who they were. I also wanted to know what they were thinking now. What I found there was a dismal, gloomy, hopeless scene. The court was like a room with no exit. There must have been a way out in the beginning, but now it had become a nightmarish chamber from which there was no escape.

Most of the defendants have lost all faith in Shoko Asahara as their guru. The leader they revered turned out to be nothing more than a false prophet, and they understand now how they were manipulated by his insane desires. The fact that following his orders led them to committing terrible crimes against humanity has made them do real soul-searching, and they deeply regret their actions. Most of them refer to their former leader simply as Asahara, dropping any honorific title. There’s even a hint of insult mixed in at times. I can’t believe that these people sought to become involved in such a horrific, senseless act at the beginning. On the other hand, at a certain point in their lives they abandoned the world and sought a spiritual utopia in Aum Shinrikyo, something they do not repent or regret.

This is apparent when they are asked in court to clarify details of Aum doctrine and they quite often say something like, “Well, this may be difficult for ordinary people to comprehend, but…” They still believe they are at a higher spiritual level than “ordinary people” and have a sense of being specially chosen. Though they don’t quite say as much, what I detect is a message along the lines of: “We are extremely sorry for the crimes we committed. We made a mistake. But the one who should be blamed is Shoko Asahara, who fooled us into following these orders. If only he hadn’t gone over the edge we would have been able to pursue our religious goals peacefully and correctly, without bothering anyone.” In other words: “The results were bad, and we regret them. However, the basic aims of Aum Shinrikyo are not flawed, and we don’t feel there’s any need to reject them outright.”

The unwavering conviction in the “correctness of aims” is something I found not only in the Aum followers I interviewed, but even among those who have left and are now openly critical of the Aum organization. To all of them I posed the same question, that is, whether they regretted having joined Aum. Almost everyone answered: “No, I have no regrets. I don’t think those years were wasted.” Why is that? 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.

In that sense, then, the Aum path is still open to them. I don’t mean that former members are likely to return to the fold. They are aware now that it is a very flawed and dangerous system, and agree that the years they passed in Aum were filled with contradictions and defects. At the same time I got the impression that, to a greater or lesser degree, there is still within them an Aum ideal—a utopian vision, a memory of light, imprinted deep inside them. If one day something that contains a similar light passes before their eyes (it needn’t be a religion) what is inside them will now be pulled in that direction. In this sense what is most dangerous for our society at the moment is not Aum Shinrikyo itself, but other “Aum-like” entities.

After the Tokyo gas attack, society’s attention was drawn exclusively to Aum Shinrikyo. The question was asked over and over again: “How could such elite, highly educated people believe in such a ridiculous, dangerous new religion?” Certainly it’s true that the Aum leadership was composed of elite people with distinguished academic credentials, so it’s little wonder that everyone was shocked to discover this. The fact that such upwardly mobile people easily rejected the positions in society that were promised them and ran off to join a new religion is a serious indication, many have said, that there is a fatal defect in the Japanese education system.

However, as I went through the process of interviewing these Aum members and former members, one thing I felt quite strongly was that it wasn’t in spite of being part of the elite that they went in that direction, but precisely because they were part of the elite…. I’m sure each member of [Japan’s] Science and Technology elite had his own personal reasons for renouncing the world and joining Aum. What they all had in common, though, was a desire to put the technical skill and knowledge they’d acquired in the service of a more meaningful goal. They couldn’t help having grave doubts about the inhumane, utilitarian gristmill of capitalism and the social system in which their own essence and efforts—even their own reasons for being—would be fruitlessly ground down.

Ikuo Hayashi, who released sarin gas in the Chiyoda Line of the subway, leading to the deaths of two subway workers, is clearly one of these types of people. He had a reputation for being an outstanding surgeon, devoted to his patients. Most likely it was because he was such a good doctor that he began to mistrust the present-day medical system, shot through as it is with contradictions and defects. As a result, he was drawn to the active spiritual world that Aum provided with its vision of intense, perfect utopia…. “I’d had a dream of a green, natural spot with buildings dotting the landscape, where truly caring medical care and education were carried out. My vision [and Asahara’s plan for an ‘Astral Medicine’-based] Lotus Village were one and the same.”

Hayashi thus had a dream of devoting himself to a utopia, undergoing strenuous training unsullied by the secular world, putting into practice a kind of medical care he could give all his heart to, and making as many of his patients as happy as he possibly could…. Take a step back, however, and it’s clear how completely [the scene he describes is] cut off from reality. In our eyes this is like some strange landscape painting that lacks all sense of perspective. Still, if any one of us had been a friend of Dr. Hayashi at the time he was considering becoming an Aum renunciate and we tried to give him some convincing proof that his ideas were alienated from reality, it would have been very difficult.

But what we should say to Dr. Hayashi is really quite simple, and it goes like this: “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’re able to exclude that aspect of reality, but it will always be lying in wait for you, ready to take its revenge.”

I doubt Dr. Hayashi would be convinced by this line of argument. Using technical terminology and a kind of static logic he would strenuously counterargue, outlining how proper and beautiful the path is down which he plans to travel. So at a certain point we could do nothing but fall silent. The sad fact is that language and logic cut off from reality have a far greater power than the language and logic of reality—with all that extraneous matter weighing down like a rock on any actions we take. In the end, unable to comprehend each other’s words, we’d part, each going our separate ways.

Reading Ikuo Hayashi’s notes, we are often forced to stop and think, and ask ourselves such simple questions as: “Why did he have to end up where he did?” At the same time, we’re seized by a sense of impotence, knowing that there was nothing we could have done to stop him. You feel strangely sad. What makes you feel emptiest of all is the knowledge that it is those who should be most critical of our “utilitarian society” who use the “utility of logic” as a weapon and end up slaughtering masses of people.

But at the same time who would ever think, “I’m an unimportant little person, and if I end up just a cog in society’s system, gradually worn down until I die, hey—that’s okay”? More or less all of us want answers to the [questions of] why we’re living on this earth, and why we die and disappear. We shouldn’t criticize a sincere attempt to find answers. Still, this is precsiely the point where a kind of fatal mistake can be made. The layers of reality begin to be distorted. The place that was promised, you suddenly realize, has changed into something different from what you’re looking for. As Mark Strand puts it in his poem: “The mountains are not mountains anymore; the sun is not the sun.”

In order that a second, and a third Ikuo Hayashi don’t crop up, it is critical for our society to stop and consider, in all their ramifications, the questions brought to the surface so tragically by the Tokyo gas attack. Most people have put this incident behind them. “That’s over and done with,” they say. “It was a major incident, but with the culprits arrested it’s wrapped up and doesn’t have anything more to do with us.” However, we need to realize that most of the people who join cults are not abnormal; they’re 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 neighborhood. And in yours.

Maybe they think about things a little too seriously. Perhaps there’s some pain they’re carrying around. 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. That might very well be me. It might be you.