Underground (14 page)

Am I busy? Not as much as before during the “Bubble.” Now, the property market’s in a downturn. Then there was the deregulation of the petroleum industry. Our suppliers can now access cheaper oil coming in from overseas and we have to start thinking about restructuring.

I leave the house at
7:00
and dash to the station about a mile away in twenty minutes. For exercise, you understand. My blood sugar’s been high lately, so I thought the walk would do me good. From Futamatagawa it’s the Sotetsu Line to Yokohama, then the Yokosuka Line to Tokyo, and from there I take the Marunouchi Line
to Shinjuku-sanchome. The commute takes about an hour and a half. I always find a seat from Ginza or Kasumigaseki, so it’s no strain.

On the day of the gas attack my wife had gone back to her family’s house. Her father had died. I think it was the hundredth-day observances over his ashes. So she wasn’t home. I left as usual and changed to the Marunouchi Line at Tokyo Station. I boarded the third car from the front, the one I always travel in when I have to buy milk.

That’s right, when I buy milk I always get off at Shinjuku-gyoemmae. I drink milk at lunch, and every other day I buy two days’ worth on my way in in the morning at a nearby store. If I don’t buy any, I get off at Shinjuku-sanchome. My office is located between Shinjuku-gyoemmae and Shinjuku-sanchome. That day was my milk day, thanks to which, I got caught up in this sarin business. Just my luck.

That day I got a seat at Tokyo Station. If you read the written summary, the perpetrator, Hirose, first boarded the second car, then got off halfway and switched to the third car. He punctured the sarin packets at Ochanomizu, so they were right where I was sitting, by the middle door of the third car. I was too wrapped up in reading
Diamond Weekly
to notice anything. The detective grilled me later: How could I not notice? But, well, I didn’t. I felt like I was a suspect or something—not nice, let me tell you.

Soon though, I began to feel funny. It was around Yotsuya Station I first felt sick. My nose ran all of a sudden. I thought I’d caught a cold, because I started to feel empty-headed, too, and everything before my eyes grew dark, like I had sunglasses on.

At the time I was scared it was some kind of brain hemorrhage. I’d never experienced anything like it before, so I naturally thought the worst. This wasn’t just a cold; it was a lot more serious. I felt as though I might keel over any minute.

I don’t remember much about the others in the car. I was too concerned about myself. Anyway, somehow I made it to Shinjuku-gyoemmae and got off. I was dizzy; everything was black. “I’m done for,” I thought. Walking was a terrific struggle. I had to grope my way up the steps to the exit. Outside it might as well have been nighttime.
I was in pain, yet I still bought my milk as usual. Strange, isn’t it? I went into the AM/PM store and bought some milk. It didn’t even occur to me not to. Thinking back on it now, it’s a mystery to me why I’d buy milk like that when I was in such agony.

I went to the office and stretched out on the sofa in the reception area. But I didn’t feel the least bit better, and one of the women employees said I ought to go to the hospital, so around
9:00
I went to Shinjuku Hospital close by. While I was waiting, a salaryman came in saying, “I started feeling out of sorts on the subway,” and I thought, “I must have the same thing too.” A brain hemorrhage.

I was in the hospital for five days. I thought I was well enough to leave earlier, but my Cholinesterase level still wasn’t up to it. “Get good and well,” the doctor told me. Even so I left early. I pleaded with them, I had a wedding to go to on Saturday. It still took me two weeks for my vision to improve. Even now my eyesight’s bad. I drive, but at night the characters on the signs are hard to read. I had new glasses made, stronger ones. Recently I went to a meeting of victims and this lawyer said, “Everyone whose eyesight is worse, raise your hands,” and there were plenty of people. So it must be the sarin.

Also, my memory’s a lot worse. People’s names just don’t come. I deal with bank employees, right? I always carry a memo in my pocket: who’s the director of which branch … Used to be that sort of thing would simply pop into my mind. Also I’m a go enthusiast, and used to play a game in the office at lunchtime. But now I can barely concentrate. It’s worrying, I tell you. And this is only the first year—what’s going to happen after two or three years? Is it going to stay like this, or is it going to get progressively worse?

I don’t feel especially angry toward the individual culprits. It seems
to me they
were used by their organization. I see Asahara’s face on television and for some reason I’m not filled with animosity. Instead I wish they’d do more to help the really badly affected victims.

We’re the only two siblings, born four years apart. My own two kids are also four years apart and my mother says they act just like we did. Which I suppose means we fought a lot
(laughs)
, though I don’t remember fighting much. Maybe over little things—what TV channel to watch, who got the last piece of cake … But my mother says whenever Shizuko got candy or something to eat, she would always
be sure to say, “Give some to big brother, too.” But then, come to mention it, so does my little girl.

Shizuko was always a helpful soul. At kindergarten or school, if some other kid was crying, she’d always go and ask, “What’s the matter?” And she was painstaking by nature. She kept a diary up until junior high school. Never missed a day’s entry. She filled three whole notebooks.

When she finished junior high, she decided not to go to high school and went to a dressmaking academy instead. Our parents were getting old, she said, so rather than studying any longer, she wanted to find work quickly and lighten their load. When I heard that I remember thinking, “You’ve got more moral strength than me.” She was a serious child. Or rather, she always seemed to think things through to the end. She could never just rush something through and be done with it.

So she went to a dressmaking academy, then got a job sewing, but unfortunately the company was mismanaged and went under. That was after three or four years. She looked around for another job where she could continue to use her seamstress skills, but nothing came up. So she went to work at a supermarket. She was kind of disappointed, but she wasn’t the sort to take off on her own and leave her parents in the lurch, and that was the only job she could find nearby.

She worked there for ten years. She took the bus to the supermarket and worked checkout mostly. Ten years on the job, she became a kind of veteran. Even now, after two years in the hospital, she’s still officially listed as a full employee. And the supermarket’s been a great help since the attack too.

Actually, on that day, she was supposed to attend an employeetraining seminar over in Suginami
[west Tokyo]
. In April, the new trainees would be coming and Shizuko was down to help instruct them. She’d gone to the seminar the previous year, too, and apparently her boss had asked her to go again.

The day before the gas attack—Sunday, March 19—we’d gone to buy a backpack for my son, who was going to be entering grade school. My wife and I, my parents, and the kids all went out shopping together. Just after noon we all dropped by the supermarket to
take Shizuko out to lunch at a nearby noodle shop. Supermarkets are always busy on Sundays and she can’t usually take time off, but somehow that day she got free and we all ate out together.

That’s when she mentioned, “Tomorrow there’s this thing in Suginami I have to go to.” So I said, “Okay, I’ll drop you off at the station.” I had to take the kids to nursery school, then drive my wife to the station anyway. After that I’d park the car and take the train. All I had to do was give her a lift together with my wife. But she said, “It’s too much trouble for you. I’ll just take the local line to the Saikyo Line, then change to the Marunouchi Line.” And I said, “That’ll take forever. You’d be better off going straight to Kasumigaseki, then change to the Marunouchi Line.” Looking back on it now, if I hadn’t suggested that to Shizuko, she would probably never have suffered like this.

Shizuko liked going places. She had one really close friend from school, and the two of them would go on vacation together. But a supermarket’s not like a normal company; you don’t get three or four days off in a row. So she had to pick a quiet time and get someone to fill in for her before she could get away.

Another thing, she loved going to Tokyo Disneyland. She went there a few times with her best friend, and whenever she managed to get a Sunday off she would invite us all: “C’mon, let’s go!” We still have our snapshots of those times. Shizuko only liked the thrill rides: roller coasters and that sort of thing. My wife and our eldest, that’s what they like, too. Not me, though. So while the three of them went on one of those scary rides, I’d sit with my younger daughter on the merry-go-round and wait for them. Like, “You all just go have fun. I’ll wait right here.” Yeah, come to think of it, the place we went to most often as a family was Disneyland.

Whenever there was a special occasion, Shizuko would always buy some kind of present. Like our parents’ birthdays or the kids’, our wedding anniversary. She kept all those dates in her head. She remembered everyone’s favorite things. She never touched a drop of alcohol, but since our parents drink, she’d study which brands were supposed to be good and come by with a bottle. She was always so exacting, so attentive to those around her. For instance, if she went on vacation somewhere, she’d be sure to bring home souvenirs or buy cookies for her colleagues at work.

She’d fret so much over personal relationships at work. She’s such an earnest soul; the least little problem she’d take so much to heart. Some throwaway remark would niggle at her, things like that.

Shizuko never married, in part because she felt so responsible toward our parents. There’d been matchmaking attempts, but either the man lived too far away or she didn’t want to leave our parents behind, so in the end nothing came of it. I’d gotten married and left home, so I suppose she had a duty to look after our parents. By then Mother’s knees had given out and she had to walk with a stick … which is what gave Shizuko such a strong sense of duty. Much stronger than mine.

Yeah, and Father’s business had folded, which left him without work, so I suppose she decided to take up the extra financial burden. Shizuko was a hard worker. She’d say, “I don’t need time off,” and force herself to go to work.

On March 20 I passed by the old house and picked up Shizuko, then dropped her and my wife off at the station. That must have been around
7:15
. Then I took the kids to nursery school just before
7:30
, and walked to the station.

If Shizuko and my wife caught the
7:20
, that would put her into Kasumigaseki just before
8:00
, and it’s a long walk between the Chiyoda Line and the Marunouchi Line, so that meant she got on the train with the sarin. And to make matters worse, she probably boarded the very car where the sarin packet was. Just once a year she took the Marunouchi Line to go to a training seminar.

She collapsed at Nakano-sakaue Station and was taken to the hospital. I heard that the station assistant who tried to give her mouth-to-mouth inhaled sarin himself and collapsed in the process. I didn’t meet him, though, so I don’t really know.

I learned about the gas attack through Head Office. It’s on the Hibiya Line and several employees had been affected, so they called to ask if everything was all right at our end. I turned on the TV to find out what was going on and I’ve never seen such an uproar.

I phoned my wife straightaway, but she was okay. Then I called my mother, because if there’d been any trouble Shizuko would have called her. But there’d been no message. “She must be all right, then,” I thought. “She’s probably sitting in that seminar right now.” Still, it made me uncomfortable not being able to get in touch with
“To be perfectly frank,” the doctor told me, “tonight is very critical. She’s under complete care. Please limit your visit to this.” I spent the night in the hospital waiting room in case something happened. At dawn when I asked, “How is she?” all they would say was, “She’s stabilized for now.”