Timeline Wednesday 31 December 1997

Events on Wednesday 31 December 1997 5

• 1995 – 1997 Return to Japan and Underground Returned to Japan in 1995, prompted by two events: the devastating Kobe earthquake in January and the Tokyo subway sarin gas attack by the Aum Shinrikyo cult in March. Feeling a moral obligation to engage with Japanese society, he interviewed survivors of the attack for Underground (1997), his first major work of non-fiction.
• 1997 1997: Jacques Villeneuve Williams Canadian Villeneuve, son of the legendary Gilles Villeneuve, won the title after Schumacher was disqualified from the championship for deliberately colliding with him at the final race at Jerez.
• 1997 Broadway Debut in Skylight Made his Broadway debut in David Hare's Skylight, earning a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Play.
• 1997 Tearing the Silence Published Tearing the Silence: On Being German in America, a nonfiction work based on interviews with over 200 German Americans born during or just after the Nazi era, exploring the shame and silence they inherited.
• 1997 Launch of the Prius Championed the launch of the Toyota Prius, the world's first mass-produced hybrid car. The Prius would become a symbol of the auto industry's push toward green technology and sell millions of units worldwide.