Bulletin > Volume 25 Spiritual Quests in Contemporary Japanese Writers Before and After the Aum Affair: Oe Kenzaburo and Murakami Haruki Around 1995

Okuyama Michiaki

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Two influential Japanese novelists, Ōe Kenzaburō and Murakami Haruki, coincidentally produced a trilogy of novels each in the early 1990s, both seemingly spiritual—or rather, one religious, the other psychic— namely, Moeagaru midori no ki [A green tree with glittering flame] (1993-95), and Nejimakidori kuronikuru [The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle] (1994-95). In 1995, when Aum Shinrikyō’s gas attack on the Tokyo subway system occurred, both Ōe and Murakami were obliged to face the Aum Affair seriously as novelists. Their works after 1995, especially another religious novel of Ōe’s, Chūgaeri [Somersault] (1999)y and Murakami’s collections of interviews with the victims in the subways and with Aum followers, Underground (two volumes, 1997-98), can be regarded, therefore, as their respective creative responses to the Aum Affair.