1Q84

[Bekah]

One of the Japanese connections comes from the Aum Shinrikyo. the group responsible for the Tokyo subway terrorist attacks in 1995.  Murakami's  non-fiction  work "Underground" is about the effects of that incident.  The group was very large at the time -  maybe 10,000 members in Japan but more world-wide. 

It has been speculated that the 'little people' from 1Q84 might be the metaphorical demons that plagued the half insane Shoko Asahara, one of the leaders (two - the group split in 2003).  Asahara was sentenced to death in 2004 - he acted a bit crazy then.  

Other cult members who have been in hiding since 1995 have very slowly been being arrested and turning themselves in ever since the attack - the latests a few days ago. 

Lots of sources but this is pretty good up to 2007: 
http://www.jref.com/japan/society/aum_shinrikyo.shtml

Bekah


On Jan 17, 2012, at 7:55 PM, John Bailey wrote:

> There's definitely a lot lost in translation with this one. People
> who've read it in the original have said that the translations are
> overly simplified and even lazy, as well as adding in lots of new
> lines that explain things deemed too "japanese" but which are pretty
> lame additions that make everything seemed overly spelled out.
> 
> And even from my limited knowledge I've spotted plenty of references
> to Japanese myth as well as characters and scenes from earlier
> Murakami novels. I haven't read a review that tries to grapple with
> the ontological issues of the novel, which is essentially about two
> people writing each other (Tengo and Aomame are fictions created by
> one another), or the Little People metaphor which to me seems a direct
> comment on the culture of patriarchal violence, conformity, complicity
> and the sexual degradation of women and young girls in contemporary
> Japanese society - in fact the most political statement the author's
> ever managed.
> 
> All of this said, even given the mistakes in translation and reading,
> this is a long book that doesn't justify its length in English and I
> wouldn't recommend it particularly. You'd need to have an interest in
> Murakami and Japan to want to bother even trying to work out what's
> going on beneath the surface.
> 
> On Wed, Jan 18, 2012 at 2:34 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Have you read his earlier novels?
>> They're all clunkers.
>> 
>> On Tuesday, January 17, 2012, Technopaegnion Tapinosis
>> <technopaegniontapinosis at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Isn't this novel a clunker? It is stylistically lazy, ignorant of the
>>> sounds of human voices, bereft of the kinds of  thought of real humans
>>> engage in. Although praised for the blending of atmospheres and narratives,
>>> it's hard to get through a page without thinking that everything must be
>>> lost in translation.