"To follow by faith alone is to follow blindly"
-Benjamin Franklin
In the bustling city of Tokyo, Japan, 12 people died and thousands were seriously injured when assailants released highly toxic sarin nerve gas into the crowded confines of the Tokyo subway. It was, and still remains, the deadliest act of terrorism in Japanese history.
The perpetrators were highly educated, literate, and intelligent people. They were doctors, professors, physicians, chemists, and graduate students, but they had been blinded by a fanatical devotion to a bizarre doomsday cult, led by a charismatic, manipulative, half-blind egomaniac who proclaimed himself to be Jesus Christ reincarnated.
This is the story of the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult and its leader, Shoko Asahara. It is a harrowing tale of terror, deception, egomania, and mass, indiscriminate murder, all perpetrated at the hands of one of the most manipulative and evil people to ever exist in history. It is a cautionary story that serves as a reminder of how bizarre, and how dangerous, religiously-motivated terrorism can be.
Shoko Asahara
Shoko Asahara was born with the name Chizuo Matsumoto on March 2nd, 1955, in the city of Yatsuhiro in Japan's Kumamato prefecture.
Matsumoto was disabled from birth, and suffered from infantile glaucoma. As a child, he lost all sight in his left eye and went partially blind in right eye.
Because of this affliction, Matsumoto was enrolled in a school for the blind, even though, unlike most of the other students, he still had partial sight.
It was here that Matsumoto first displayed many disturbing anti-social traits. Because he still had partial sight in his right eye, Matsumoto was appointed by the other teachers to help lead other students to their classrooms.
However, knowing he couldn't be visually identified by the other students, Matsumoto took advantage of his eyesight. He took sadistic pleasure in bullying his blind classmates, leading them into walls, beating them, and taunting them. Matsumoto forced them to give him their money if they didn't want to be tormented, and he used his skills in charm and manipulation to avoid getting caught.
After graduating from school in 1977, Matsumoto married a woman named Tomoko and tried to enroll in the University of Tokyo. However, after he failed the admission test twice, Matsumoto instead turned to studying acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine. He opened a clinic in Tokyo where he sold numerous herbs and pseudo-medical remedies.
In 1981, however, Matsumoto was convicted by a Japanese court of unlawfully selling drugs and practicing medicine without a license. He was forced to close his business and was fined ¥200,000.
Following his conviction, Matsumoto underwent a religious experience. He changed his name to "Shoko Asashara", and began studying a whole variety of philosophies, such as yoga, meditation, astrology, Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, pseudoscience, Taoism, and Nostradamus.
Aum Shinrikyo
In 1984, Asahara founded a religious organization in his Tokyo apartment, known as "Oumu Shinsen no Kai", or "Society of Aum Mountain Hermits". Asahara later changed the group's name to "Aum Shinrikyo", or "Aum Supreme Truth", in 1987.
The group was initially little more than a meditation or yoga study group, but even then this fledgling organization harbored frightening beliefs. They preached a bizarre mix of Tibetan Buddhism, esoteric Christianity, and Hindu apocalypticism, especially regarding Shiva, the Hindu God of destruction and rebirth.
At first, Aum Shinrikyo didn't gain much publicity. But Asahara knew that many people, especially young college students, were seeking spiritual meaning in life. The New Age and Human Potential movements were extremely popular in the 1980s and 1990s, and Asahara knew that he could gain thousands of followers by tapping into the spiritualist craze.
So, after several years of proselytization, especially in Japan's college campuses, Aum Shinrikyo's membership quickly exploded. Within three years, the cult grew from a small yoga class with a few dozen members to a massive, multi-million-dollar empire boasting over 40,000 followers worldwide, with bases in not just Japan but also Australia, Russia, Kazakhstan, and the United States.
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| Shoko Asahara, pictured in 1990 |
Many of Aum's converts were highly intelligent and well-educated people. They were scientists, chemists, professors, and doctors. Many had degrees from elite universities and had devoted their lives to their professions. Yet their education could not compensate for their supposed lack of purpose in life.
Asahara played on that aspect of his recruits. He took advantage of their insecurities and swindled them out of their money, possessions, and even their families. Asahara promised his followers a better life, a new life, but, as always, his ulterior motive was greed, money, sex, and power, and the methods he used to gain converts were specially designed to indoctrinate disciples into giving him their absolute and undying loyalty.
Cult of Fear
The process through which Asahara would indoctrinate followers was as intricate as it was abhorrent.
When a convert joined Aum Shinrikyo, he would first have to go through a bizarre series of rituals called "Christ Initiations", which lasted for four days.
These rituals were carefully and meticulously crafted to be as demeaning, as exhausting, and as unpleasant as possible. Asahara knew full well that the best way to ensure loyalty was to put his converts through living hell. He needed to convince them that the outside world was depraved and corrupt, and that he was their sole source of salvation and happiness.
First, converts would sign a document in which they promised never to reveal the specifics of the ceremony or complain about the tactics used. If they agreed, the new converts would be led into a special room, where they were told to remove all of their clothes, put on adult diapers, and wear a special pullover robe. They were not allowed to eat, drink, or speak without permission.
After sitting in silence for several hours, the recruits would be told to complete the sentence "I am...", and then they would be asked what they thought would happen to them once they died. The recruits were told again and again that "Master Asahara" would always be with them, both in life and in death, to guide them on their final journey towards enlightenment and salvation.
Finally, the recruits would meet Asahara himself. Asahara would enter the room and welcome the new recruits into Aum Shinrikyo. He would congratulate them on deciding to become "enlightened", and promised them that they were about to enter the first chapter in a new, wonderful life.
Asahara's charismatic manner of speaking, and his signature long hair and beard, had an indelible effect on the new recruits. One later recalled that he felt as if Jesus himself had walked into the room.
Asahara would sit down in front of the recruits on a cushion. He would begin questioning each convert, asking him about his personal life. Then, he would berate the convert for his "materialistic" lifestyle, and tell him that he was living a life of sin. Asahara had a talent in finding personal character flaws in nearly everyone who came to him, and he would harp on those insecurities and flaws until the recruit broke down and confessed to his "immorality".
After the grilling came the next part of the initiation. Asahara would drink from a chalice of water, passing it around to each new recruit to sip. The converts were unaware that the water was secretly laced with hallucinogens such as LSD.
After the converts drank the spiked water, Asahara would tell them that he expected total devotion from his initiates. To underscore the point, he said, he would show them the consequences of not being enlightened.
Asahara would bring the initiates into another room with a vibrating floor. Knowing the LSD would now begin to take effect on the recruits, Asahara would have other people run into the room, wearing brightly colored, flamboyant costumes and screaming nonsensical gibberish. This would provoke terrifying hallucinations in the drugged recruits, who would see everything from demons to monsters to evil gods. As the recruits panicked, Asahara told them that, if they saw an evil god, all they had to do was picture his face, recite the five principles of Buddhism, and the demons would vanish.
After the drug wore off, Asahara would tell the recruits that they had just witnessed the evils brought on by a "materialistic lifestyle". Asahara told the initiates that they had been corrupted by these demons, but that, with his guidance, he would rescue them from eternal hellfire and lead them to purification and enlightenment.
By the end of the harrowing initiations, most initiates would be exhausted, both physically and emotionally. They would break down crying, begging Asahara for forgiveness and pleading to be saved from the evils of their sinful lifestyle. Asahara would comfort them. They were stronger than the common man, he would say, because they had chosen to enter a life of enlightenment. He promised them a better life, a life of freedom and happiness. All they had to do, Asahara said, was follow his every command without question.
Once the ceremony was over, the cultists were not permitted to return to their homes. Asahara explained that, in order to be enlightened, the initiates had to leave behind everything from their old life. That, of course, included all "material possessions", such as their money and property. All "material wealth" was to be given to Asahara for "safekeeping", and, in exchange, Asahara would grant them superpowers such as levitation, telepathy, astral projection, and the ability to move through solid objects.
The cultists would purify themselves by listening to tapes of Asahara's sermons and practicing long hours of Yoga, meditation, and fasting. Additionally, they were to abstain from sex, television, entertainment, sports, and reading the newspapers. Everything they needed, they were told, would be provided to them by Asahara.
There were other methods of initiation available to recruits. Many cultists, especially young children who could not handle the effects of LSD, were instead made to wear special electronic headsets so they could be subject to initiation rituals called "PSI", or "Perfect Salvation Initiations". These headsets would pass electrical currents through their brain in an effort to implant Asahara's thought patterns directly into their minds.
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| Asahara wearing one of Aum's "Perfect Salvation Initiation" headsets |
Through these purification processes, claimed Asahara, the initiates would become "enlightened" and rise above common humanity. They would see the "Supreme Truth" of Aum, he said, and would be saved from eternal damnation.
Asahara told his followers that the world was coming to an end. The entire planet, he said, was being corrupted by materialism, which was decaying common morality and polluting all of humanity. The source of this moral decay, Asahara said, was the Jews. According to Asahara, the Jews controlled the United States of America, the Dutch, the British Royal Family, and the Illuminati, and were using the American government to spread their immorality and materialism, seeking to enslave the world and establish a New World Order.
But, Asahara said, there was still hope. World War III was about to happen, he said, and it would trigger a fiery apocalypse and fulfill divine prophecy. Only the enlightened members of Aum Shinrikyo would survive the cataclysm, he told them, and they would live forever in paradise. All non-members, corrupted by materialism and lusts, would be doomed to spend eternity in hellfire.
"Souls attached to materialism and souls attached to carnal pleasures", Asahara said in one sermon, "are most definitely going to hell!"
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| Aum Shinrikyo produced a manga/anime recruitment video to spread its message to younger viewers. This is a segment from that video, depicting a cartoon version of Asahara demonstrating supernatural powers |
Asahara, however, lived a much different life from his followers. Underneath Asahara's facade of a selfless, benevolent teacher, there lurked a sinister, evil, self-obsessed narcissist who was consumed by greed, egomania, and an undying lust for money, sex, and power.
Asahara's tactics made him incredibly wealthy, with assets totaling more than $1,000,000,000, and he freely engorged himself with the same material lusts he claimed to abhor.
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| The cover of Shoko Asahara's memoir, Declaring Myself the Christ, is a blatant example of his grandiose narcissism. |
Shoko Asahara's ego was legendary. As Aum's "guru", Asahara proclaimed himself to be God personified, the reincarnation of Jesus Christ, Gautama Buddha, and the Hindu god Shiva. In 1992, he published a memoir entitled Declaring Myself the Christ, the cover of which was adorned with Asahara's face superimposed over the face of a crucified Jesus.
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| So great was Asahara's ego that he often made his followers wear masks of his face and carry balloons with his picture on them |
Asahara also had his followers wear masks of his face, carry balloons with his picture on them, and sing his name in songs of praise, with titles such as "Leader Asahara" and lyrics such as "I have descended from Heaven for this joyless world".
But Asahara's egomania and lusts for power and domination went far beyond petty self-indulgence. If Asahara's ego was bruised in even the slightest way, the consequences would be horrific.
Within Aum Shinrikyo, Asahara wanted to consolidate his power and his authority, and to do this he established a terrifying regime of brutality. All members of Aum Shinrikyo were expected to follow Asahara's commands without question. Dissidence was forbidden, and often punishable by torture, humiliation, or even death. Asahara told his followers that if they thought his teachings were wrong, it was because their heart and their soul was corrupted by evil.
If someone badmouthed Asahara or expressed doubts about his divinity, the guru would order them locked into a dark room for an entire month. Others were beaten, chained to the ceiling and hung upside down for days, or stripped naked and immersed in a vat of scalding water.
Asahara was paranoid about potential spies in his cult. If he suspected someone was an informant, he would have the person injected with a truth serum such as sodium thiopental, or subjected to electric shocks until they either confessed, lost their memory, or died.
The brutal tactics employed by Asahara were soon leaked to the public by defectors, provoking a backlash. Opponents of Asahara founded an organization called the "Aum Shinrikyo Victims' Association", which was made up of estranged family members of cultists who had fallen prey to Asahara's lies.
But Asahara didn't let criticism of his group go unpunished. Numerous members of the Victims' Association found themselves the targets of harassment and death threats at the hands of the cult.
The public backlash also hardened Asahara's attitude towards defectors and dissident members. Now, if anyone expressed dissidence towards Asahara, he would order them executed. Other ex-cultists and critics of Aum were hunted down and subjected to death threats, harassment, and acts of intimidation. The exact number of dissident cult members murdered at the hands of Asahara's thugs may never be known, but the number is estimated to be as high as 68.
The Sakamoto Murders
In 1989, Asahara faced his first major legal obstacle. In the city of Yokohama, Japan, anti-cult lawyer Tsutsumi Sakamoto was filing a class-action suit against Asahara and Aum Shinrikyo on behalf of the Victims' Association. Sakamoto argued that the cult members in Aum were not there voluntarily, but had been deceived into joining the cult and were being held against their will. The goal of Sakamoto's lawsuit was to expose Asahara as a predatory con man, and force him to pay huge sums of money to the families of cult members who had fallen prey to his seductions.
Asahara knew that, if Sakamoto were to win his case, all his work would go to ruin. Aum would almost certainly go bankrupt, and he would be exposed as a charlatan. He couldn't allow that to happen. When Asahara failed to have the lawsuit against him dismissed, he devised a more sinister solution to the problem. If Sakamoto were to die, the lawsuit would fail and he would be off the hook.
On November 3rd, 1989, an Aum hit squad was dispatched to Sakamoto's apartment in Yokohama, Japan. The men were led by Hideo Murai, a violent ex-convict who served as one of Aum Shinrikyo's chief scientists. The other three members of the hit team were Satoro Hashimoto, Tomomasa Nakagawa, and Kazuaki Okazaki, all young recruits eager to prove their loyalty to Asahara.
The group carried a pouch with 14 hypodermic needles and numerous vials of potassium chloride, a chemical which causes the heart to stop beating if injected into the bloodstream.
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| The killers of Tsutsumi Sakamoto and his family (left to right): Tomomasa Nakagawa, Hideo Murai, Kazuaki Okazaki, and Satoro Hashimoto |
At 3:00 AM that morning, the four men entered the apartment through an unlocked side door. Inside slept Sakamoto, his wife Satoko, and his 14-month-old son, Tatsuhiko. They were defenseless and completely unaware of their impending deaths.
The Aum cultists ambushed the entire family as they slept. Hideo Murai bludgeoned Sakamoto over the head with a hammer, knocking him unconscious, while Hashimoto and Nakagawa grabbed Satoko and began beating her.
While the cultists struggled with Sakamoto and his wife, Okazaki grabbed the wailing Tatsuhiko, injected him with potassium chloride, and wrapped a cloth around his face, killing him within a minute. Satoko met a similar fate, and died after she, too, was injected with potassium chloride.
But Tsutsumi Sakamoto didn't die as quickly, probably because his struggling caused the syringe to miss his major artery. When the poison failed to kill Sakamoto, Murai and Nakagawa wrapped a ligature around the lawyer's neck and strangled him to death.
After killing the Sakamoto family, the four men dismembered their bodies and crammed them into three giant metal drums. They smashed their victims' teeth to prevent identification, and hid the barrels in three separate locations within Yokohama.
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| Anti-cult lawyer Tsutsumi Sakamoto, his wife, Sakoto, and their infant son, Tatsuhiko, met a violent death at the hands of Shoko Asahara's thugs |
Asahara's evil plan had succeeded. Without Sakamoto, the lawsuit against Aum Shinrikyo ultimately collapsed, and, while authorities suspected Sakamoto had been murdered, they were unable to prove it or locate his remains. Asahara had crossed his first major legal hurdle, but, as always, he would continue down his path of murder.
Chemical Weapons
Following the murder of Tsutsumi Sakamoto and his family, Shoko Asahara's audacity continued to grow to terrifying proportions. Convinced that he was, in fact, the Messiah, Asahara's doctrine again underwent a change. Now, he said, it was his duty to launch a holy war against the Japanese government in order to bring about Armageddon.
It wasn't long before Asahara began exploring the potential to use chemical and biological weapons in his holy war against the corrupted world. He ordered Aum's "Ministry of Science and Technology" to begin synthesizing large quantities of sarin.
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| Aum Shinrikyo's chief chemist Masami Tsuchiya (left) and head scientist Seiichi Endo (right) manufactured vast quantities of chemical and biological weapons, including ricin, sarin, soman, and VX. |
Sarin is one of the deadliest chemicals known to mankind. Originally manufactured by Nazi Germany in the 1930s, sarin is a colorless, odorless, tasteless liquid that is highly volatile. It is also extremely toxic, being 26 times more deadly than cyanide, and forms deadly vapors when exposed to the open air. Contact with just 1 milliliter of sarin (or a drop about the size of Abraham Lincoln's eye on a penny) is enough to kill a full-grown human adult.
Sarin's toxicity comes from its ability to react with acetylcholinesterase, a natural enzyme which allows the body's muscles to flex and relax. By binding with the acetylcholinesterase, sarin causes every muscle in the human body, from the biceps to the heart, to violently seize up. The victim suffocates, chokes, convulses, and finally dies from a combination of paralysis, cardiac arrest, asphixiation, and sheer exhaustion. Death usually occurs within one-to-five minutes of exposure.
Because of its toxicity, sarin was used as a chemical weapon in warfare before it was banned by international conventions. Nevertheless, with Aum's vast financial resources, the cult's chemists were able to synthesize a large amount of sarin gas, purified to its full deadly potential. Asahara wanted to stockpile his chemical weapons for the upcoming Armageddon he promised was around the corner.
"If I am the Christ as has been foretold, and if the Third World War happens", he said, "it will be a great leap forward for all in Aum, and for myself!".
In addition, Aum's chemists also synthesized other nerve agents such as soman, tabun, and VX, all of which have a similar toxicity to sarin. They also produced choking agents such as phosgene and mustard gas, as well as biological weapons like botulinum toxin, ricin, and anthrax.
It wasn't long before Asahara began carrying out small chemical and biological attacks against targets he deemed a threat. In 1993, Aum terrorists sprayed botulinus toxin outside the Japanese Imperial Palace, attempting to kill the Imperial family, but they caused no casualties.
That same year, in late June of 1993, Asahara released aerosolized anthrax spores from an apartment building in Tokyo's Kameido prefecture, but, again he caused few injuries and no fatalities.
In May of 1994, Aum attempted to assassinate Taro Takimoto, another attorney representing the Victim's Association. While jogging past him on a city sidewalk, Aum operatives sprayed him with a sarin aerosol. Although Takimoto became sick, he ultimately recovered.
At first, these attacks were only directed against individual targets, and none of them caused any mass casualties, but, in June of 1994, Asahara would take his murderous actions up yet another step. The city of Matsumoto, Japan, would be the location of his first mass-murder by sarin gas.
Real-Estate Disputes and a Sinister Plan
In 1994, Shoko Asahara was forced to deal with another legal problem. He had been trying to construct an office complex and a factory for his cult in southern Matsumoto, but had faced staunch opposition from the local residents. A public petition against the construction project gathered over 140,000 signatures, equivalent to 70% of Matsumoto's population, and a local landowner decided to file a lawsuit to halt all development by the cult in the area.
Despite Asahara's attempts to have the lawsuit dismissed, the case ultimately proceeded to the local court, where a panel of judges was to make a verdict.
Asahara knew his cult was not popular among the residents of Matsumoto. He feared that the judges would rule against him and he would lose the case. But Asahara had a devious plan. Asahara's murder of Tsutsumi Sakamoto had succeeded in destroying the last lawsuit against Aum. Now, he decided to try it again. Asahara decided to release poison gas into the neighborhood where the judges resided. If the judges were dead, Asahara reasoned, they couldn't rule on the case, and he would be off the hook again. It would also serve as a good test for the effectiveness of his cult's sarin stockpile.
Asahara immediately ordered construction minister Kiyohide Hayakawa to construct a special truck that could disperse the sarin gas as an aerosol. Hayakawa and his fellow technicians developed an ingenious device to carry out the sarin attack. In the back of a specially modified refrigerator truck, Aum's technicians installed a sophisticated heating device with a pump connected to a large ampoule of sarin liquid. The heating system would make the sarin into a volatile aerosol that could easily disperse into the air. To facilitate this, a large fan within the heating system would blow the sarin gas through a large pipe leading out the back of the truck.
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| A diagram of the sarin truck used in the Matsumoto attack |
The entire contraption would be concealed by the truck's trailer, and the drivers of the truck would be safe from any danger. All the Aum terrorists had to do was drive the truck through the judges' neighborhood. They could gas the entire block without raising even the slightest suspicion.
Mass Murder in Matsumoto
June 27, 1994, was a warm evening in the city of Matsumoto, Japan. The summer heat was high enough that most residents went to sleep with their windows open. Unfortunately for them, this would prove to be a terrible mistake.
At about 10:45 PM that night, a large, blue-gray truck entered a residential neighborhood in Matsumoto, driving past a three-story apartment block where the city's judges resided. The truck slowly circled the neighborhood for about 15 minutes, leaving a strange fog in its wake, before driving away.
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| The modified refridgerator truck used by Aum terrorists to gas the Matsumoto suburbs |
After the truck drove away, some residents noticed a strange-looking cloud floating through the neighborhood. Maybe it was fog from the humidity, they thought.
But this fog was anything but harmless. At 11:09 PM, less than ten minutes after the truck left the neighborhood, emergency services in Matsumoto began receiving hundreds of calls from residents who had woken up choking, gasping, vomiting, and suffering from severe eye pain and headaches.
The reports got more harrowing by the minute. People were collapsing to the ground in fits of spasm. Others were vomiting and going into convulsions. And, worse, many weren't moving at all.
By 11:30 PM, hundreds of seriously ill patients were being rushed to the hospital, suffering from severe nausea, headaches, convulsions, blindness, choking, and apnea. Authorities were initially clueless as to what was happening. Some residents described seeing a mysterious fog with a slightly pungent odor prior to the mass sickness, but none of them had any idea what it could have been.
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| Coroners remove the body of a man killed in the sarin attack on Matsumoto. |
Searching the neighborhood, authorities discovered hundreds of dead birds and caterpillars lying all over the block. A nearby pond was filled with dozens of dead fish, and the leaves on nearby trees had become withered and discolored.
It wasn't until midnight that a medical doctor recognized the symptoms as being those of nerve gas poisoning. A gas chromatograph-spectrometer confirmed his suspicions, and identified the agent as sarin. There was now no question that this mass poisoning was intentional, but police had no idea who could have committed such an act. Suspicion was first placed on a resident who owned a large amount of pesticides. When he was cleared, authorities instead placed blame on North Korean operatives.
In the end, eight people (Tamiko Sejima, Yuta Abe, Tomomi Ito, Mitsui Yasumoto, Kenji Murooka, Tetsuji Enoda, Yutaka Kobayashi, and Sumiko Kono) were killed in the sarin attack on Matsumoto. Over 500 others were injured, many of them seriously. The Matsumoto judges were among the mass casualties, and, as a result, never managed to deliver their verdict. The case against Aum collapsed, and, while some individuals placed suspicion on Asahara, the police never acted on any tips. Asahara's plan had been successful.
Having successfully carried out a mass terror attack with sarin gas, and having gotten away with his crimes, Asahara became even more empowered. In his mind, he was now totally unstoppable.
The Satyan-7 Accident
Asahara's successful use of sarin gas on Matsumoto not only saved him from another legal hurdle, but it also demonstrated the effectiveness of his nerve gas supply. Following the sarin attack, Asahara became even more audacious and willing to use murder as a tool to silence his critics.
Throughout the fall of 1994, Asahara's operatives continued to carry out small, individually-targeted chemical attacks on ex-members, critics, and journalists investigating Aum, using sarin, phosgene, and VX.
But Asahara suffered a serious setback in July, 1994, when an accident occurred at Satyan-7, Aum's primary chemical factory.
Satyan-7 was one of Asahara's most prideful accomplishments. Constructed at a cost of $10 million, it served as the primary manufacturing site for Aum Shinrikyo's chemical stockpile. Overseen by chief chemist Masami Tsuchiya and head scientist Seiichi Endo, Satyan-7 had produced literally tons of deadly chemical and biological agents such as sarin, tabun, soman, cyclosarin, VX, anthrax, botulinus toxin, ricin, phosgene, and cyanide.
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| Aum's Satyan-7 chemical plant |
One day, in July of 1994, Satyan-7 suffered a chemical explosion that released a deadly amount of nerve gas into the surrounding environment. Although Aum's scientists managed to escape unharmed, the accident did not escape the attention of the local police.
When questioned, Asahara tried to explain the incident away as a factory accident. Nevertheless, investigators discovered traces of methylphosphorous acid dichloride, a chemical product of sarin degradation, and isopropyl methylphosphonic acid, a chemical commonly found in impure batches of sarin.
While there was no law in Japan specifically prohibiting the manufacture of nerve gas, this discovery raised alarm among Japanese authorities, who were still investigating the mass poisoning in Matsumoto earlier that year.
The Deadly Plot
In February, 1995, Japanese authorities became further alarmed when Kiyoshi Kayira, the brother of a dissident cultist, suddenly went missing. In Kayira's residence, police found a note reading "If I disappear, I was abducted by Aum Shinrikyo". Fingerprints found at the scene were matched to those of several known Aum members, and police theorized that Aum had kidnapped and likely killed Kayira to stop him from convincing his sister to leave the cult.
With this evidence, Tokyo police and the Self-Defense Force (the Japanese equivalent of the army) obtained search warrants for numerous Aum facilities all across Japan. They planned to raid Aum's bases simultaneously on March 22, 1995, and seize evidence of Asahara's criminal activities and shut down his cult for good.
But, unfortunately, Asahara's influence was far-reaching, extending even into the Japanese Self-Defense Force. On March 18th, 1995, two Aum members serving in the Japanese army informed Asahara of the upcoming raids. They told him that Aum was under investigation by numerous law enforcement branches, and that the police suspected he was producing chemical weapons.
Asahara was mortified. If the police uncovered evidence of his evil deeds, he and his cult would be finished. He would go to prison, if not death row, and everything he had worked so hard to build would be destroyed.
But Asahara, as always, had a devilish plan to thwart the police investigation. In the past, murdering his opponents had always worked in his favor. When Tsutsumi Sakamoto was murdered, the civil lawsuit against his cult was dropped. When his cult gassed the Matsumoto suburbs, the judges were unable to make a verdict against him.
Now, Asahara decided, he would once again use mass murder to his advantage. Asahara knew he didn't have enough time to cover his tracks before the raid, but, maybe, he could buy himself more time.
Asahara consulted with his inner circle to formulate a plan. Aum's head of intelligence, Yoshihiro Inoue, proposed an idea: carry out another chemical attack, this time targeting police headquarters in Tokyo, by releasing sarin gas into the city's subway system.
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| Yoshohiro Inoue, Aum Shinrikyo's "head of intelligence", first proposed the idea of a chemical attack to divert police attention away from Aum. Inoue was the chief coordinator of the March 20th attack on the Tokyo underground. |
Tokyo's subways are notoriously crowded, and the underground trains all converge on Kasumigaseki Station, which houses Japan's police headquarters. An attack on Kasumigaseki Station, said Inoue, would be devastating. Thousands of people would die, he said, and the police would be sidetracked for months. They would call off the raid in order to deal with the crisis in Tokyo, and, while police were distracted, Asahara could cover up his tracks.
Asahara agreed to the plan, and he appointed Inoue to direct the operation. Asahara contacted chief scientist Seiichi Endo and ordered him to prepare a new batch of sarin to be used against the Tokyo underground.
To Asahara, the fact that thousands of people could potentially die was of little concern. He didn't care about collateral damage. His lust for power was so great that he was willing to kill anyone and everyone to get what he wanted.
Five Men, Three Lines, One Target
Early on the morning of Monday, March 20th, 1995, the more than 9,000,000 residents of Tokyo awoke for a regular day of work. The prior weekend had been a national holiday. Many people had just returned from vacation, and, as usual, the underground subway system soon became packed with thousands of commuters.
Early that same morning, five cars set out from Aum Shinrikyo's headquarters, each heading to different train stations across Tokyo. Each car contained two men; one to go on the train and release the sarin gas into the subway, and the other to serve as a getaway driver.
The plan was this: Five Aum operatives would each enter a different train on three different subway lines, all of which intersected at Kasumigaseki Station. They would carry packets of sarin liquid wrapped in newspapers, and hold a steel umbrella with a sharpened tip. As the trains would converge on Kasumigaseki Station, the Aum terrorists would puncture the packets with their umbrellas and leave the train. The sarin would leak into the crowded subway, killing and injuring thousands of people. It was a carefully coordinated plan of mass, indiscriminate killing, all in service of a madman blinded by egomania and delusions of grandeur.
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| A map of the Tokyo subway, showing the three lines targeted in the sarin attack (Photo courtesy of Zero Hour) |
At Sendagi Station, which connected to the subway's Chiyoda Line, Aum cultist Ikuo Hayashi, aged 48, was dropped off by fellow operative Tomomitsu Niimi to wait for his train.
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| Ikuo Hayashi |
Hayashi was a highly educated man. Ten years earlier, he had been a highly-skilled cardiologist, a doctor who was a devoted father and husband. But he had abandoned his previous life after falling prey to Shoko Asahara's false promises of salvation. Now the former doctor, once trained to save lives, was preparing to commit mass, indiscriminate murder.
Hayashi was already an experienced criminal. As Aum Shinrikyo's chief medical officer, Hayashi was tasked with drugging new recruits, subjecting dissidents to torture and interrogation, and "curing" members suspected of "deviance" by shocking them with electrodes and injecting them with truth serum.
The second subway line targeted in this attack was the Marunochi Line. Unlike the Chiyoda Line, two Aum operatives were dispatched to spread sarin along the subway trains in Marunochi.
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| Kenichi Hirose |
One of the men was 30-year-old Kenichi Hirose. Like Dr. Hayashi, Hirose was a highly intelligent and well-educated man. He had graduated from Japan's elite Waseda University with a degree in physics, and was part of Aum Shinrikyo's engineering and chemical brigades. Hirose was dropped off at Yotsuya Station, where he would board a train, release the sarin, and exit.
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| Masato Yokoyama |
Yokoyama was a fanatical devotee of Asahara. He had even committed murder on behalf of Aum, and, to prove his loyalty to Aum, he had strangled a young dissident cultist to death in 1989.
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| Toru Toyoda |
The final subway line targeted in this attack was the Hibiya Line, and it, too, was to be attacked by two operatives. At Hibiya's Naka-Meguro Station was 27-year-old Toru Toyoda. Like Masato Yokoyama, Toru Toyoda had a master's degree in applied physics, which he had earned at the University of Tokyo. Toyoda had abandoned his doctoral studies to join Aum Shinrikyo, and he was appointed as a member of the cult's Ministry of Science and Technology.
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| Yasuo Hayashi |
The final attacker, located at the other end of the line at Kita-Senju Station, was 37-year-old Yasuo Hayashi. Unlike the other four attackers, Yasuo Hayashi carried three packets of sarin instead of two. Asahara had suspected Hayashi of dissidence, and Hayashi had volunteered to carry a flawed leftover packet of sarin in order to prove his loyalty to the cult leader.
Hayashi had graduated from Kogakuin University with a degree in Artificial Intelligence, and had joined Aum after coming across their pamphlets while studying yoga.
Together, these five men blended in perfectly with the millions of commuters heading to work in Tokyo's metro underground. Nobody could have possibly known that they would be responsible for the worst terrorist attack in Japanese history.
Silent Strike
The five attackers each boarded their respective trains at around 7:50, carrying their sarin packets wrapped in newspaper. Prior to the mission, they had calculated that the trains would all intersect at Kasumigaseki Station shortly before 8:10 AM. The plan was for all of the men to simultaneously release their sarin at 8:00 AM in order to maximize the destructive effect of the poison gas.
On board the subway on the Marunochi Line, Kenichi Hirose was becoming nervous. After believing a schoolgirl had seen his sarin packets, Hirose briefly exited the train at Korakuen Station. It was then that he was struck by implications of what he was about to do. He immediately began contemplating just walking away and not following through with the attack.
"I was envious of the people who could just walk out of there", Hirose would later recall. "But I told myself that this was nothing less than salvation. The Teachings tell us that human feelings are the result of seeing things the wrong way. We must overcome our human feelings."
Instead of walking away, Hirose went back onto the train, determined to carry out his mission.
The five men waited silently aboard their trains as they crossed through the underground for another ten minutes. At 8:00 AM, the terrorists made their move.
Kenichi Hirose was the first to attack. He reached into his parcel and pulled out his newspaper-wrapped sarin packets. As he did so, he accidentally dropped the packet to the floor of the subway car. For a minute, Hirose became frightened, worried that he had been spotted, but no one intervened.
As the car pulled into Ochanomizu Station, Hirose dropped the newspapers to the floor, muttered an Aum mantra to himself, and stabbed the package twice with his sharpened umbrella, puncturing both packets with so much force that he bent the tip of his umbrella. He then strode out of the subway car and headed upstairs where his getaway driver sat waiting.
Masato Yokoyama, on the same subway line as Hirose, was the second terrorist to attack. As his train pulled into Yotsuya Station, he stabbed his packet once with his umbrella. He only managed to puncture one packet, and that only with one small hole, before leaving the train.
On board his train on the Hibiya Line, Toru Toyoda was next to strike. At 8:01 AM, after just two minutes on his train, Toyoda dropped the newspapers on the floor, punctured both packets with his umbrella, and left the train at Ebisu Station. He was on the train for the shortest time out of the five attackers.
Next to attack was Yasuo Hayashi, also on the Hibiya Line. He placed the three packets of sarin at his feet. At the last minute, he began to reconsider his actions. "I didn't want to do it, but I knew I couldn't run away from it.", he later recalled. "I just had to do it".
As his train pulled into Akihabara Station, Hayashi stood up and repeatedly stabbed the packets with his umbrella. He managed to puncture two of the three bags of sarin, and made more punctures than anyone else in the group.
The last to attack was Ikuo Hayashi, the only attacker on the Chiyoda Line. As he prepared to release his sarin, Dr. Hayashi suddenly had a pang of conscience. He looked around at the crowds of innocent people on the train with him. I'm a doctor, he thought, and I've been working all my life to save lives. If I release this sarin many people will die. He looked at a woman sitting across from him. If I release this sarin now, the woman opposite me is dead for sure.
Dr. Hayashi debated just walking away and not puncturing the sarin packets, but, like Kenichi Hirose, Hayashi's fanatical devotion to the cult overwhelmed what little restraint he possessed. As the train pulled into Shin-Ochanomizu Station, Hayashi punctured one of the two packets of sarin with his umbrella and left the subway car.
By 8:02 AM, all five attackers had successfully released their sarin. As the terrorists headed back to headquarters, the five trains continued towards Kasumigaseki Station, spreading the deadly sarin gas along their respective lines.
Ironically, Kenichi Hirose ended up accidentally poisoning himself when he punctured his sarin. He had stabbed the packets with such force that he inadvertently splattered a drop of the toxic liquid onto his clothes. The terrorist began suffering from symptoms once he got into his getaway car but he was able to inject an antidote of atropine sulfate he carried on his person, thus saving his own life.
Terror in Tokyo
As the five trains continued down their lines, the liquid sarin puddling on the floors of the subway cars began to evaporate, creating a highly deadly mist that spread throughout the trains.
Yasuo Hayashi's attack was the most devastating. By the next stop, passengers were overcome by the poison gas. They collapsed to the ground, choking, convulsing, vomiting, and gasping for air.
Normally, sarin gas is odorless, but, because the Aum chemists had not properly purified the chemical, it had a pungent odor like that of mustard or burning rubber. When the train pulled into Kodenmacho Station, passenger Yasuhiro Nakamura noticed a large package of newspapers soaked in liquid lying on the floor of the subway car. Believing this to be the culprit, Nakamura kicked the package out of the train and onto the station's platform, unwittingly causing the sarin to sicken thousands of other commuters waiting there.
As the train continued, however, a puddle of sarin remained on the floor of the car, and more passengers became violently ill. Finally, a passenger pulled the emergency stop lever at Tsukiji Station. Passengers stumbled out of the subway cars, choking, screaming, and suffering from spasms. They ran upstairs for fresh air, unaware that they were spreading the sarin into the station and sickening hundreds of other commuters.
Suspecting a gas leak or explosion, the authorities at Tsukiji Station halted all trains and evacuated the platform. In total, eight people (Takako Iwata, Eiji Wada, Hajime Kojima, Katsuaki Tanaka, Ito Ai, Mitsuo Okada, Tatsuo Chuetsu, and Tsuna Sakai) died as a result of Yasuo Hayashi's sarin drop (four died on board the train and four died in Kodenmacho Station). Over 275 others were seriously injured.
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| Medical personnel treat injured commuters outside Tsukiji Station, where four people died from sarin poisoning |
On board Toru Toyoda's train, also on the Hibiya Line, similar events were occurring. All 30 milliliters of sarin had spilled out onto the floor of the train, and it was now rapidly evaporating. At Roppongi Station, just two stops after Toyoda left the train, the passengers began to feel the effects of the poison gas. Hundreds of sick commuters stumbled out of the train onto Roppongi's platform, suffering from violent convulsions and seizures.
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| A puddle of liquid sarin surrounds the packets left on the subway car by Toru Toyoda |
One passenger, Shunkichi Watanabe, collapsed face-first into the puddle of sarin. By the time station attendants arrived to help him, it was too late; he was dead. Watanabe was the only fatality of Toyoda's attack, but more than 500 people were seriously injured.
The station attendants at Roppongi evacuated the car, but, not knowing of the sarin, they allowed the train to proceed one stop further before finally halting it for good.
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| Subway station attendants assist two severely injured passengers felled by sarin gas |
On the train where Kenichi Hirose left his two packets of sarin, it took much longer for the poison gas to take effect on the commuters, but, when it did, the results were devastating. At Nakano-sakaue Station, 14 stops after Hirose left the train, dozens of sick passengers spilled out onto the platform, suffering from severe sarin poisoning.
Station attendants bravely raced into the subway cars to help remove injured passengers, but they were too late. Passenger Takeo Fujimoto had collapsed and already lost consciousness. He would die within 48 hours.
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| Emergency services tend to dozens of casualties of the subway sarin attack. The dense crowds enabled the poison gas to sicken thousands of commuters |
Assistant stationmaster Sumio Nishimura entered the train to help, and he immediately noticed a suspicious, liquid-soaked clump of newspapers lying on the floor of the subway car. Though Nishimura didn't know it at the time, these were the sarin packages left by Hirose.
Nishimura carefully laid out another newspaper on the floor, gently moved the packets onto the newspaper, wrapped them up, placed them in a plastic bag, and moved the packets to a back office.
Nishimura's careful disposal of the sarin probably saved his life. He was cautious enough to wear gloves while handling the packets. Though he suffered from some minor symptoms of sarin poisoning, he ultimately survived.
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| A military chemist holds one of the packets of liquid sarin left aboard one of the trains. Normally a clear and colorless liquid, this sarin is brownish in color due to chemical impurities. |
Meanwhile on the Chiyoda Line, where Dr. Ikuo Hayashi left his two packets of sarin, station authorities had been informed of numerous passengers becoming sick, and the train was halted at Kasumigaseki Station. Kasumigaseki's stationmaster, Kazumasa Takahashi, noticed Hayashi's wet newspapers lying on the floor of the train. Unaware that they were soaked with sarin, Takahashi immediately began cleaning up the mess with newspapers and paper towels. In doing so, he unwittingly smeared sarin all over his hands and clothes. Within minutes, Takahashi began to feel dizzy. He abruptly stood up, stumbled forward a few steps, and collapsed unconscious to the ground.
Takahashi's colleagues immediately rushed to his aid. They checked his pulse. His heartbeat was present, but weak and erratic, and he was convulsing and foaming at the mouth.
The other station attendants loaded Takahashi onto a stretcher and took him to a back office, where they tried to administer first aid, but they were unsuccessful. Takahashi abruptly ceased breathing, and his pulse suddenly stopped.
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| Kasumigaseki's Stationmaster, Kazumasa Takahashi, died in the sarin attak on Tokyo's subway. He is pictured here with his wife and three young children. |
To make matters worse, the attendants had also brought the plastic bag holding the sarin-soaked newspapers into the office as well. The poison gas continued to leak out of the bag.
As his colleagues tried to revive Takahashi, fellow station attendant Tsuneo Hishinuma suddenly began coughing. He, too, collapsed to the floor, unresponsive and foaming at the mouth.
The station attendants desperately called for an ambulance, but none were available. Thousands of emergency calls were coming in from all over Tokyo. The emergency services were being stretched to the limit.
As a result, both Kazumasa Takahashi and Tsuneo Hishinuma died from sarin poisoning in the back office. Although Asahara had intended for the bulk of the casualties of the sarin attack to occur at Kasumigaseki Station, Takahashi and Hishinuma were the only victims to die there.
The only sarin attack that day that caused no fatalities was the one carried out by Masato Yokoyama. Because he only partially punctured one packet, and that only with a tiny hole, the sarin hardly evaporated. Although hundreds of passengers suffered minor injuries, there were no serious incidents aboard Yokoyama's train, and it took over an hour and 40 minutes before the sarin packets were finally discovered and removed.
Shock
By 8:46 AM, approximately an hour after the five attackers boarded their respective trains, all of Japan began to awaken to the reality of what was happening in Tokyo. They came to realize that, for the first time in recent history, Japan had been the target of a major terrorist attack.
Throughout the day, Tokyo was in a complete state of panic. Over 5,500 patients flooded hospitals all across the city. Many were severely injured and in critical condition, blinded, choked, and asphyxiated by the toxic sarin vapors. Others were worried commuters who, fearing that they had been poisoned, had checked themselves into hospital for treatment.
It wouldn't be until 10:30 AM that a military doctor would finally identify the cause of the mass illness. He had treated victims in Matsumoto the previous year, and immediately recognized the symptoms as being those of sarin poisoning. But even when the poison was identified, most hospitals did not have enough sarin antidotes on hand, and, as a result, many patients died.
At 1:30 PM, more than five-and-a-half hours after the attack, a team of chemical experts, dressed in full-body HAZMAT suits and wearing military-issue gas masks, descended onto the Tokyo underground, escorted by over 100 soldiers from the Self-Defense Force. They placed the sarin packets into sealed containers and removed them from the scene while dozens of specialists, also dressed in chemical warfare gear, began carefully washing and decontaminating each car.
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| Japanese army personnel, wearing protective chemical suits and gas masks, clean one of the sarin-contaminated subway cars |
In the end, a total of 12 people died as a result of the sarin attack on the Tokyo subway, and over 5100 people were injured, more than 250 of them seriously. Many survivors were left with permanent injuries, and several later died in the following years from complications resulting from the initial poisonings. The Tokyo subway sarin attack was, and still remains, the deadliest terrorist attack in Japanese history.
But, as devastating as the Tokyo attack was, it had the potential to be much deadlier. The sarin used by the Aum terrorists had been hastily manufactured, and therefore was not purified enough.
If it had been, the deaths could have potentially been in the tens of thousands.
As Japan recovered from the terror in Tokyo, Asahara hoped to destroy the evidence linking him to his numerous crimes. He had hoped the devastating attack in Tokyo would stall the police raid on Aum and buy him more time, but, in the end, this heinous act of terrorism would ultimately spell Asahara's doom.
The Plan Backfires
After the devastating terror attack on Tokyo, police suspicion immediately fell on Asahara. Many investigators in Kasumigaseki knew about the raid that was to take place on Aum Shinrikyo, and, when they heard of the attack, the cult stood out as the prime suspect. Authorities already suspected Asahara was producing chemical weapons. The circumstances of the chemical attack in Tokyo, and the timing of the attack, all pointed to Aum Shinrikyo as the culprit.
Two days after the attack, on the morning of March 22nd, 1995, Aum Shinrikyo found itself under siege. Thousands of police officers and soldiers launched simultaneous raids on 25 Aum facilities all across Japan, confiscating numerous chemicals, weapons, blueprints, laboratory and military equipment, boxes of documents, and computers. The authorities were seizing everything Asahara had tried so hard to keep hidden. Soon, the full scale of Aum Shinrikyo's crimes would be revealed to the entire world.
As the other raids went underway, a gigantic army of 2,500 police officers and Japanese soldiers, accompanied by military helicopters, tanks, and armored personnel carriers, descended upon Aum Shinrikyo's headquarters at the base of Mount Fuji in the rural settlement of Kamikuishiki. They had search and arrest warrants put out for Shoko Asahara and numerous other members of Aum Shinrikyo's leadership.
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| An army of 2500 Japanese soldiers and police marches towards Aum Shinrikyo's headquarters on March 22, 1995 |
Searching the facility, the Japanese authorities discovered dozens of prisoners, most of them dissident cult members Asahara had locked in cages. They were rescued and taken into custody, along with over 50 cult children.
As they continued to search Aum's headquarters, police made a horrifying discovery. They found that Aum's chemists had manufactured an incredible 70 tons of sarin gas, enough to kill more than four million people. In addition, they found a Russian Mil Mi-17 helicopter the cult had purchased from Russian military contractors. Asahara planned to use the helicopter to spray his stockpile of sarin gas all over the city of Tokyo, killing hundreds of thousands of people in an attempt to ignite a Third World War.
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| Aum Shinrikyo purchased this Mil Mi-17 military helicopter from Russia. The cult had planned to use it to spray sarin gas all across the city of Tokyo. |
In addition to chemical weapons, police uncovered rocket launchers, heavy machine guns, and numerous biological weapons such as ricin, as well as cultures of anthrax, botulinum, and Ebola. They also uncovered a gigantic stash of drugs such as LSD and methamphetamine, along with a safe filled with gold and millions of dollars in cash.
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| This anthrax culture was recovered from Aum Shinrikyo's headquarters |
As a result of the series of police raids, hundreds of Aum members were arrested and charged with numerous crimes ranging from terrorism to murder. Among those arrested were construction minister Kiyohide Hayakawa, chief scientist Seiichi Endo, chief chemist Masami Tsuchiya, and head of intelligence Yoshihiro Inoue, the man who had proposed the idea of a sarin attack on Tokyo's subway.
However, despite the extensive searching, the one thing police were unable to find was Shoko Asahara. The evil cult leader, realizing that all was lost, was in hiding.
But, even with his cult in ruins, Asahara was far from finished.
Downfall
As police searched throughout Japan for Asahara, Aum Shinrikyo continued to carry out attacks against Tokyo. Even with his cult collapsing, Asahara was not going down without a fight.
On March 30th, 1995, just ten days after the subway attack, Takaji Kunimatsu, the chief of Japan's National Police Agency, was shot four times by an unknown assailant as he left his house, barely escaping with his life. Kunimatsu was in charge of the police investigation into Aum, and, although his attacker has never been found, it is highly likely he was a target of a cult assassination attempt.
On May 3, 1995, Tokyo's underground again became the target of a gas attack by Aum terrorists. Two bags containing sulfuric acid and sodium cyanide were lit on fire and left in a subway bathroom. The goal was to spread deadly hydrogen cyanide gas throughout the train station. Although four people were injured, the attack failed to cause mass casualties.
Finally, on May 16, 1995, police again searched Aum's headquarters at Kamikuishiki. Inside a hollow wall within one of the buildings, they discovered Asahara hiding in a concealed room, and he was immediately arrested. News cameras captured him being driven away by a caravan of police cars.
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| Shoko Asahara is transported to prison after his arrest on May 16, 1997 |
The same day Asahara was arrested, Aum cultists mailed a letter bomb to the governor of Tokyo, but the bomb instead exploded in the hands of his assistant, blowing several of his fingers off.
Between May and July, 1995, Aum Shinrikyo carried out four more attacks against the Tokyo subway, none of them causing serious casualties. By the fall of 1995, with their leadership in prison and their facilities dismantled, Aum's attacks finally ceased. The group's tax-exempt status was revoked in October of 1995, and, by early 1996, Aum Shinrikyo went bankrupt and formally shuttered.
Eleven years after it started, Asahara's evil warpath had finally been halted. Now, he and the rest of Aum's leaders would face the consequences for their crimes.
Only one member of Aum's leadership never made it to trial. Hideo Murai, who had led the hit team that brutally murdered Tsutsumi Sakamoto and his family, was himself stabbed to death on April 24, 1995, by Hiroyuki Jo, a Korean-born "Yakuza" gangster, as officers tried to transfer Murai to a nearby police station.
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| In front of live TV cameras, Aum cultist and murderer Hideo Murai was stabbed to death by Yakuza gangster Hiroyuki Jo. Jo, who cited revenge for the Tokyo attack as his motive, would later be sentenced to 12 years in prison for the killing. |
Hideo Murai evidently stayed loyal to Asahara's particular brand of religious hatred even in death. As the cultist lay mortally wounded in the street, Murai uttered his last words: "Jews got me!"
Judgement Day
Asahara's trial was one of the longest in Japanese history, spanning from 1996 to 2004. This was due to the tremendous amount of crimes that the Japanese government charged Asahara with. He was charged with 27 counts of murder in 13 different indictments, as well as charges of terrorism, subversion, fraud, conspiracy, and attempting to overthrow the Japanese government.
At first, Asahara was eager to talk to investigators. He boasted of his accomplishments and his wealth, and bragged about how he had transformed Aum Shinrikyo from a small yoga club into a massive global empire. Despite the severity of the charges against him, Asahara seemed overconfident, possibly even smug, and he remained convinced that, as usual, he would somehow escape legal consequence for his actions.
Asahara's smug attitude was obvious even when he was first formally charged with his crimes in April of 1996. When the judge addressed him by his birth name, Chizuo Matsumoto, Asahara interrupted him. "I have abandoned that name,", he said. "My name is Shoko Asahara, and I am the leader of Aum Shinrikyo".
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| Asahara testifies during his murder trial |
In 1997, Asahara took the stand to give testimony in his defense. His testimony lasted for over three hours, and was littered with long, nonsensical ramblings ranging from proclamations of personal divinity to accusations that he was being "persecuted" or "framed".
Asahara told the court that he had never ordered any attacks, and that the terrorist attacks in Tokyo and Matsumoto were committed by "rogue Aum members" who acted without his knowledge.
But Asahara's attitude soon began to change. As the trial progressed, some of Asahara's closest confidants turned on him. They told the prosecutors that, in addition to countless other crimes, they had committed sarin attacks in Matsumoto and Tokyo. They revealed that it was Asahara himself who gave the orders to carry out all terrorist actions, even though the cult leader denied any knowledge of such actions.
Asahara's lawyers desperately tried to discredit the testimony of the other Aum members. They told the court that the prosecution's witnesses were mostly lower-level members. Many of them, they claimed, had never even met Asahara personally. How could they know, the defense asked, whether Asahara ordered the attacks or not?
But the prosecution had a star witness: Dr. Ikuo Hayashi, one of the men who had punctured the sarin packets on the Tokyo subway. Wrought with regret and guilt, and looking to make amends for his terrible actions, Hayashi had decided to cooperate with police and testify against Asahara on behalf of the prosecution.
Through his testimony, Dr. Hayashi punched a hole through every one of Asahara's lies. Dr. Hayashi's close relationship with Asahara had given him intimate knowledge of the cult's inner workings. He was privy to every command Asahara gave, every murder he ordered, and every attack he plotted. Now he was telling the entire world about it.
With Hayashi's testimony, the picture became quite clear. Asahara was not framed. He was not an innocent man caught up in a misunderstanding. He was not a fall man to take the blame for the actions of rogue Aum members. No, Shoko Asahara was nothing more than a manipulative, lying, greedy, and narcissistic mass murderer. He had ordered every attack perpetrated by the cult, and now he had to face punishment for his evil deeds.
The evidence against Shoko Asahara was damning and insurmountable. On February 27th, 2004, after seven years of testimony, a four-judge panel found Shoko Asahara guilty on all 13 counts of the indictment, including murder, attempted murder, terrorism, fraud, conspiracy, and illicit manufacture of chemical weapons. For his crimes, Asahara was sentenced to death by hanging.
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| Asahara's trial as depicted by a courtoom artist. |
12 other cult members also were sentenced to die for their roles in Aum Shinrikyo's crimes.
Kazuaki Okazaki, Tomomasa Nakagawa, and Satoro Hashimoto were all sentenced to death for the murder of Tsutsumi Sakamoto and his family, whose remains were located soon after the Tokyo attack.
Masami Tsuchiya and Seiichi Endo were also sentenced to death for manufacturing the sarin used in the terrorist attacks in Matsumoto and Tokyo. Yoshihiro Inoue likewise received the death penalty for his role in directing the Tokyo attack, as did Asahara's second-in-command, Kiyohide Hayakawa, and Aum's minister of internal affairs, Tomomitsu Niimi.
The five subway attackers were likewise convicted of murder for their roles in the sarin attack. Four of them, Masato Yokoyama, Toru Toyoda, Kenichi Hirose, and Yasuo Hayashi, were sentenced to death; however the fifth attacker, Dr. Ikuo Hayashi, was spared the death penalty. Because he had cooperated with police and testified against Asahara and numerous other cult members, he was instead sentenced to life in prison.
The 13 death sentences were finally carried out in July of 2018, more than twenty years after the sarin attack in Tokyo. On the morning of July 6th, 2018, Shoko Asahara, clad in an adult diaper, was led to the gallows in Tokyo Detention House. After being told his appeals had been denied, a blindfold was placed over his eyes, and a noose was placed around his neck. With the press of three buttons, and the crash of a trapdoor, Shoko Asahara's evil, twisted life came to a bitter, solemn end.
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| Shoko Asahara was executed by hanging in the indoor gallows of Tokyo Detention House on July 6th, 2018. |
Asahara was the first of seven Aum members to be put to death that day, while six others, including all four of the Tokyo subway attackers, were granted a temporary stay of execution.
Despite pleas from anti-death-penalty groups for clemency, Japanese authorities rescheduled and ultimately carried out the executions of the last six condemned Aum members just twenty days later, on July 26, 2018.
Asahara had long proclaimed that the world would be consumed by a fiery apocalypse, with only him and his followers surviving, but, in the end, it was Asahara himself who was sent to face divine judgement, put to death by the very same people he swore to destroy.
Twisted Theology: The Danger of Religious Terrorism
The case of Aum Shinrikyo is one of the most bizarre and most terrifying crime stories in history. It truly serves as living proof that terrorism cannot only happen anywhere, but it can come from any religious group. It is a reminder of why we must remain vigilant against religious extremism.
Aum Shinrikyo is a prime example of how any religion can be twisted to fit a nefarious agenda. Aum proclaimed itself to be an organization that followed an esoteric brand of Buddhism. Now, one would think that Buddhists would be the least likely to engage in acts of violence. After all, the entire religion of Buddhism is based on the idea of nonviolence and peace.
But this didn't stop Aum Shinrikyo from carrying out acts of terrorism in direct contradiction to their supposed ideology. They committed mass, indiscriminate murder, all the while believing that, in doing so, they were fulfilling their roles as devout Buddhists and cleansing the world of the evils of materialism.
Asahara's manipulation extended far beyond his personal aspects. He was able to twist not just his own image, but also the doctrine of Buddhism itself. The fact that Asahara could take a religion like Buddhism, a fath based completely on peace and harmony, and turn it into a doctrine of terrorism and destruction, shows that there is, in fact, no religion that is safe from distortion.
One does not need to look far today to see examples of religion being twisted to fit a violent agenda. From fundamentalist Islam's Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant to fundamentalist Christianity's Lord's Resistance Army to fundamentalist Judaism's Kach Movement, we can easily see how all sorts of religions can be twisted to justify violent action. And, like Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, Buddhism is no less vulnerable to manipulation at the hands of those seeking to justify their violent actions.
Shoko Asahara's violent actions may have been motivated by a combination of egomania and practical self-preservation, but he masked his acts of violence by claiming he was acting in the name of religion and enlightenment. And, the scary thing is, thousands of his followers believed it to the point that they were willing to not only give their lives, but also take thousands of other lives, in fulfillment of that cause.
And that, perhaps, is the most dangerous aspect of Aum Shinrikyo. Despite the near-insanity of Asahara's narcissistic, deranged ramblings, the fact is that thousands of his disciples, even those with the highest degrees of intelligence and education, were willing to believe and follow him to the ends of the earth, not caring who they killed or injured in the process.
So, in the end, we should never discount the damage that can be done by religious terrorists. Nothing in the world is more dangerous than a man convinced that he is fighting in the name of God. Nothing can stop him. Nothing can convince him that he is wrong. He will carry out his mission no matter what the cost, not caring who gets hurt in the process. Fanatically loyal religious terrorists like those in Aum Shinrikyo are the greatest threat to peace this world will ever face, and we must do all we can to diminish the influence and power of these dangerous cults before it is too late.
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