In spite of the perpetrators' intentions, the Tokyo gas attack left only twelve people dead, but thousands were injured and many suffered serious after-effects. The novelist Haruki Murakami interviews the victims to try and establish precisely what happened on the subway that day. He also interviews members and ex-members of the doomsday cult responsible, in the hope that they might be able to explain the reason for the attack and how it was that their guru instilled such devotion in his followers.

Map of the Tokyo Subway

Preface

TOKYO METROPOLITAN SUBWAY: CHIYODA LINE

Kiyoka Izumi: Nobody was dealing with things calmly

Masaru Yuasa: I've been here since l ftrst joined

Minoru Miyata: At that point Takahashi was still alive

Toshiaki Toyoda: I'm not a satin victim, I'm a survivor

Tomoko Takatsuki: It's not even whether or not to take the subway, just to go out walking scares me now

Mitsuteru Izutsu: The day after the gas attack, I asked my wife for a divorce

Aya Kazaguchi: Luckily I was dozing off

Hideki Sono: Everyone loves a scandal

TOKYO METROPOLITAN SUBWAY: MARUNOUCHI LINE

(DESTINATION: OGIKUBO)

Mitsuo Arima: I felt like I was watching a programme on TV

Kenji Ohashi: Looking back, it all started because the bus was two minutes early

Soichi Inagawa: That day and that day only I took the first door

Sumio Nishimura:-lfI hadn't been there, somebody else would have picked up the packets

Koichi Sakata: I was in pain, yet I still bought my milk as usual

Tatsuo Akashi: The night before the gas attack, the family was saying over dinner, "My, how lucky we are"

Shizuko Akashi: Ii-yu-nii-an (Disneyland)

TOKYO METROPOLITAN SUBWAY: MARUNOUCHI LINE

(DESTINATION: IKEBUKURO)

Shintaro Komada: "What can that be?" l thought

Ikuko Nakayama: I knew it was satin

TOKYO METROPOLITAN SUBWAY: HIBIYA LINE

(DEPARTING: NAKA-MEGURO)

Hiroshige Sugazaki: "What if you never see your grandchild's face?"

Kozo Ishino: I had some knowledge of sarin

Michael Kennedy: I kept shouting "Please, please, pleaset." in Japanese

Yoko Iizuka: That kind of fright is something you never forget

TOKYO METROPOLITAN SUBWAY: HIBIYA LINE

(DEPARTING: KITA-SENJU: DESTINATION: NAKA-MEGURO)

Noburu Terajima: I'd borrowed the down payment, and my wife was expecting- it looked pretty bad

Masanori Okuyama: In a situation like that the emergency services aren't much help at all

Michiaki Tamada: Ride the trains every day and you know what's regular air

TOKYO METROPOLITAN SUBWAY HIBIYA LINE

Takanori Ichiba: Some loony's probably sprinkled pesticides or something

Naoyuki Ogata: We'll never make it. If we wait for the ambulance we're done for

Michiru Kono: It'd be pathetic to die like this

Kei'ichi Ishikura: The day of the gas attack was my sixty-fifth birthday

TOKYO METROPOLITAN SUBWAY: KODEMMACHO STATION

Ken'ichi Yamazaki: I saw his face and thought: "I've seen this character somewhere"

Yoshiko Wada, widow of Eiji Wada: He was such a kind person. He seemed to get even kinder before he died

Kichiro Wada and Sanae Wada, parents of Eiji Wada: He was an undemanding child

Koichiro Makita: Sarint. Sarint.

Dr Toru Saito: The very first thing that came to mind was poison gas - cyanide or sarin

Dr Nobuo Yanagisawa: There is no prompt and eficient system in Japan for dealing with a major catastrophe

Blind Nightmare: Where Are We Japanese Going?

Preface

Hiroyuki Kano: I'm still in Aum

Akio Namimura: Nostradamus had a great influence on my generation

Mitsuharu Inaba: Each individual has his own image of the Master

Hajime Masutani: This was like an experiment using human beings

Miyuki Kanda: In my previous life I was a man

Shinichi Hosoi: "If l stay here, "I thought, "I'm going to die"

Harumi Iwakura: Asahara tried to force me to have sex with him

Hidetoshi Takahashi: No matter how grotesque a figure Asahara appears, I can't just dismiss him

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