About this episode

This episode explores the Aum Affair's influence on Japanese literature and discusses various novels that respond to the events.

In this episode, we examine the history of the Aum Affair and its lasting impact on Japanese fiction. We'll start out with the history of new religions in Japan, including Aum Shinrikyo. We'll take a look at Haruki Murakami's non-fiction book, Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche. We'll move on to an examination of four novels that respond directly to Aum or the Aum attacks—Keiichiro Hirano's Eclipse, Kenzaburo Oe's Somersault, Banana Yoshimoto's The Lake, and Haruki Mura...

People in this episode

Host: Alison Fincher

Topics covered

• Aum Affair
• Japanese fiction
• new religions in Japan
• Haruki Murakami
• literary responses to Aum

Keywords

• Aum Affair
• Japanese fiction
• Haruki Murakami
• Keiichiro Hirano
• Kenzaburo Oe
• Banana Yoshimoto
• literature

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche, Eclipse, Somersault, The Lake

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