Holy Terror: Armageddon in Tokyo 0834803534, 9780834803534

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Armageddon in Tokyo

D.W. Brackett

flP

New York

•

WEATHERHILL-

Tokyo

SB 1

First edition,

1996

Published by Weatherhill,

Inc.,

568 Broadway, Suite 705,

New

York,

New York

Protected by copyright under terms of the International Copyright Union;

use in book reviews, no part of this book

all

may be reproduced

10012 rights reserved.

any reason by any means, including any method of photographic reproduction, without permission of the Except for

fair

for

publisher. Printed in the United States of America.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

D.W. Holy Terror: armageddon in Tokyo p. cm. Brackett,

/

by D. W. Brackett.

ISBN 0-8348-0353-4 1.

Oumu

Shinrikyo

(Religious organization)

Shinrikyo (Religious organization)

3.

Terrorism

—

2.

Terrorism

Japan.

I.

— Religious

aspects

— Oumu

Title.

BP605.088B73 1996 365.i'523'o952

—dc2o

96-427 CIP

Contents

Foreword, by Brian Jenkins Preface

xii

Prologue: 1

ix

March 20, 1995

1

Beware Beginnings: Murdering

A

a

Dangerous

2

Matsumoto's Miasma:

3

The Dawn of Ultraterrorism 45

4

Aum

5

Countdown

6

Sarin:

7

Sarin in the Subway: Ultraterrorism' s Brave

8

The Empire

9

Religion at the Bar:

Shinri Kyo:

the One- Eyed

Strikes

New

Back

Battle

27

Is

King

59

109

New Morning

143

The End of Aum Shinri Kyo?

181

Bibliography

Man

9

Armageddon 79

Old Wine in a

Epilogue

Index

to

Where

Nocturnal Prelude

Man

192

194

VII

163

121

Foreword

Aum sect's nerve-gas attack on Tokyo's

subways came as a shock but

The did not surprise the small group of government and academic analysts of terrorism. ical cults

The

possibility that terrorist groups, organized crime, or fanat-

might acquire and use chemical,

vised nuclear

weapons

journal that focuses

what they thought

is

not a

biological, radiological, or

new concern.

on terrorism, conducted

terrorists

In 1985,

TVI

impro-

Report, a specialist

a poll of its readers asking

them

might do before the year 2000. Sixty-nine

per-

cent of the respondents, mainly government officials and academic experts

devoted to the topic of terrorism, thought rorists

it

"likely" or "very likely" that ter-

would employ chemical weapons by the end of the century.

The

attacks in

Matsumoto and Tokyo demonstrated

that their concern

was not unwarranted, and understandably have increased worries

that

what

occurred in Japan represents the crossing of a threshold, the breaking of a taboo, the creation of a headline that will provide inspiration to others,

increasing the likelihood that further incidents involving chemical will occur.

Where does

terrorism?

And what

Prior to the

the Tokyo attack

does

Tokyo

it

mean

fit

weapons

in the trajectory of contemporary

for the future?

attack, there

were numerous reports and threats

involving the criminal use or suspected use of deadly chemicals. Deranged

IX

— Holy Terror: Armageddon

Tokyo

in

individuals, criminal extortionists, and, in fewer cases, political extremists

plotted or threatened to use chemical or biological weapons.

A smaller num-

ber of attacks were actually attempted. Very few resulted in

fatalities.

The most ambitious schemes were the products of madmen. Most quent were the threats made by criminal extortionists voirs, food, or bottled beverages.

were readily

who

fre-

threatened reser-

The poisons they mentioned

or

employed

available substances like cyanide or strychnine. Incidents involv-

ing the large-scale use of chemical or biological substances were rare: the

1978 Jonestown murder-suicide in which nine hundred eleven members of the Jim Jones cult died (how

many were murdered

and how many committed suicide the Rajneesh cult in

order to

make them

Oregon ill

to

not

is

clear);

—

certainly the children

members of

the 1984 plot by

contaminate the food of local townspeople in

and thereby unable

to vote in a local

referendum; the

1993 World Trade Center bombing, which contained cyanide; and the dents in Japan. episodes, selves

and

from

It is

all

significant that religious fanaticism inspired

but one involved cults whose

members had

all

isolated

inci-

these

them-

society.

This suggested even before Tokyo that the perpetrators of the chemical

might not have come from the ranks of typical

attacks

cal goals. In a very speculative

essay written in 1975,

members of a group contemplating tion

would have

morality. "They

to place

the use of any

subject of the report

ism, but the

same

idea

with

politi-

suggested that the

weapons of mass

(or at least tacit

God)." This thought was echoed in a 1980 report

The

I

destruc-

themselves above the constraints of conventional

might claim divine inspiration

1

ration.

terrorists

made by

was the possible motives

would apply

to the

the

approval by

Rand Corpo-

for nuclear terror-

use of nerve or any other scenario

of mass destruction:

Terrorist groups with

more

millennial aims, as opposed to those

operating on behalf of concrete political programs, tained in their actions and hence casualties. to

These more

fanatical

more

may be less

willing to cause or risk

and extreme

terrorist

con-

mass

groups tend

hold apocalyptic views, devoid of specific political content, and

seek the creation of new and continuing disasters as the precondition for the

emergence of a new heavenly order on

earth.

2

Foreword

The most dangerous combination would be

group whose charismatic

a

leader asserts divine inspiration that his obedient devotees accept, an apoca-

with violence, and a shared paranoia.

lyptic vision, a fascination

lethal

mind

set

ample

financial resources, scientific

redoubt for experimentation, and you have Terrorism,

The Tokyo

is

imitative behavior.

attack has already

A

Aum

Add

know-how, and

a

to this

remote

Shinri Kyo.

spectacular event invites repetition. effect as reflected in new may now at least be think-

had an inspirational

and reports indicating

that

some

ing about chemical weapons.

The

probability of a second event exceeds the

threats

probability of the probability

may

gift

of prophesy to state what that

be. Nor, despite increased attention of the possibility of

chemical attack, can

and thwart any new Shinri Kyo cult;

we have no

but

first,

terrorists

it

we be

could

would be able

certain that authorities

attack. It

could

come from

a

come from an entirely new direction. dilemma for all democratic societies.

This, in turn, poses a

constraints

on domestic

ties investigating

time,

The

intelligence gathering.

We

We

Aum

impose

do not want the authori-

every political group or every religious cult. At the

same

we want to reduce the risks of future Tokyos, wherever they may occur.

authorities' ability to

goal,

to identify

group resembling the

but how? Indeed,

future Tokyos,

promptly apprehend the perpetrators must be the

how

democratic societies can deal with the threat of

and remain democratic

societies,

has become the topic of

intense debate.

The ical

story told by

scam

D.W. Brackett is not

just the story of a grotesquely

that turned into a diabolically deadly

A

scheme.

It

com-

also raises the

tenants will be judged as criminals.

how Shoko Ashara and his lieuWhere history should ultimately place

them

and

issue of

evil.

in the

court in Tokyo will decide

pantheon of villains,

real

fictional, the

reader of this riveting

account will decide.

NOTES i.

2.

Brian Jenkins, Will Terrorists Gail Bass et

al.,

Go Nuclear?

(Los Angeles: Crescent Publications, 1975), 22.

Motivations and Possible Actions of Potential Criminal Adversaries of U.S.

Nuclear Programs (Santa Monica, CA:

The Rand Corporation, 1980).

Preface

Tracking down months

the story of

Aum

Shinri Kyo has been like living for ten

in a cross-cultural kaleidoscope.

Changing constantly before

eyes were facts, non-facts, truths, half-truths, sions.

Only

at

the end did

I

appreciate

how

lies,

innocent

I

distortions,

was

at the

my

and omis-

beginning.

After only a couple of months of digging into the voluminous research

had gathered on this

Aum

book to Herman

for solid details,

I

Shinri Kyo,

I

began

to toy

with the idea of dedicating

Melville's obsessive hunter, Captain

seemed

to

Ahab. In searching

be chasing a modern Japanese incarnation of

Ahab's great white whale. Too often

I

found that the

facts

would

together for only a few hopeful weeks, then disappear beneath a

watery reporting,

much

appeared. Absorbed,

I

of

I

different

it

from the version

new

that

all

hold

layer of

had

watched as firmly sourced news reports about

just

Aum

appeared one day only to be contradicted by different firmly sourced reports a few days later; eye-witness accounts were refuted by other eye-witnesses;

newsmen" rather than the usual caution markers of credibility. As the

attributions such as "police sources"

became

stop signs

story shifted uncertainly back

Basic Reporting 101

But often that was

and

and

forth,

I

"investigators told

quickly relearned the lesson of

—even the most obvious

like trying to

hug

a cloud.

XII

facts require

double checking.

Preface

Direct interviews with senior

most were

in

where only the

jail,

Interviews with lay

added

little

that

Asahara and

members,

was new

Aum

officials

were out of the question;

and lawyers could speak

police

as the Japanese

to

them.

media demonstrated too

often,

Reading their continued adulation for

to the story.

Aum often became the print equivalent of going down in warm

molasses for the third time. be had, leaving

me

to

make

I

discovered that sometimes the truth was not to

a best guess about

Even the dead would not be ple died in the

subway gas

Then,

that doctors could not confirm that

of the gas attack.

It

it

possibly

lay.

For months the press said twelve peo-

still.

attack.

where

later in the year, officials

one of the dead had died as

announced

a direct result

may have been an unrelated illness that caused the death, who daily travel on the Tokyo subways,

they said. Considering the millions

was not implausible and

that

I

accepted

But then there was a problem

it.

commonly used figure of five thousand five hundred injured was suddenly dropped downward by government prosecutors to slightly more than three thousand seven hundred. The new figures, they said, were based on a more accurate count than the earlier police estimates. However, in the absence of more convincing number of injured. At the end of the year,

about the

proof,

the

along with most of the news media, continued to accept the five

I,

thousand

And

five

hundred figure

as

more

accurate.

there were other problems. For example, the details of the

murder

of the Sakamoto family present discrepancies that have yet to be fully explained. In the

with police killings.

of 1995, two of Japan's largest newspapers were replete

The Sakamotos had been

ride injected first,

fall

details, first-person confessions,

by an

and other statements about the

killed or incapacitated

Aum doctor named

Nakagawa, they

by potassium chlosaid.

The baby died

because he cried; the wife was next to die from an injection and fought

for her

Sakamoto the lawyer, was

life;

and he was

also injected, the poison failed to work,

finally strangled; afterward

Nakagawa was seen

to

be depressed

by sect leader Shoko Asahara. Yet

at

Nakagawa's

trial

in March,

to prosecution statements, the

it all

baby died

came out

last,

differently.

According

smothered in his parents' bed-

ding despite his mother's pathetic plea that he be spared. But he cried out,

and they suffocated him. Or so

that version of the story goes.

The

first ver-

who did the initial interrogation of Nakagawa, the second from the prosecution. Where the truth lies between the two, and why sion

it

is

from

police sources

became so scrambled, only the murderers know. In the book

I

give both

XIII

— XIV

Holy Terror: Armageddon

in

Tokyo

versions of this tragic tale because

it

will

probably be years before history

finally settles

on

ous

of Aum Shinri Kyo. Even then there will be small pockets of

activities

comprehensive, acceptable

a

of facts about the murder-

set

unsolved mystery to keep imaginative writers busy.

—

Holy Terror

book concept, and

idea,

Hunter, the president of Weatherhill,

him more than

Studies gave

am most

grateful

—

whose

Inc.,

is

the brainchild of Jeffrey

doctoral degree in Buddhist

a passing interest in the

religious-terrorist sect in Japan, I

title

where he

lived

emergence of a deadly

and worked

for

he thought of me when putting together

Aum,

many

years.

this project. In

number of people whose contributions, scholarship, advice, and assistance made my task easier. First and foremost is my clever daughter, Beverley Brackett, who took pretrying to decipher the truth about

cious time

from her law studies

must thank

I

Senate hearings on

to attend

spend many hours in the Library of Congress and tracking

down news

less research

The

and

reports

and odd

bits

telling of the story

Aum

me

from any number of

errors.

tire-

written.

Hunter and Elmer Luke added tremendously

and saved

and

in university library stacks

of information. Without her

book would not have been

intelligent advice this

editing of Jeffrey

a

to the

Reiko Tomii

was very helpful in reading dozens of Japanese sources and making them available to

me.

I

also

thank

contributed to this book in

my informed friends in

numerous

Japan and America

who

valuable ways.

Beside the lake in South Carolina, where most of the writing was done, I

was fortunate

neighbors

—

to

have the wonderful friendship and protection of two great

Gladys and Lamar Ezelle. Not only did they vigorously fend off

strangers while

I

tried to write,

but they often nourished

the finest Southern cooking to be found outside

my

me

with

some of

mother's kitchen.

Equally supportive were Dr. David Price and his charming wife Ginger

without their friendship

my

wife and

I

would never have known the

placid

beauty of Walker Point. Special

mention must go

to the

Democratic

staff

of the Senate Perma-

nent Subcommittee on Investigations for their outstanding report on Shinri Kyo. Like Senator trying to educate the

about the grave

Gakuin

on the

American public

one of the

to read a draft

subject added

first

and

the Western democracies

Professor Richard

Western scholars

offer

immeasurably

many

to

my

Aum

a lonely voice in the wilderness

—and

new danger they now face.

University,

kind enough

Sam Nunn, theirs is

Young of Meiji

to write

on Aum, was

useful suggestions. His articles

understanding of the impact of

Preface

Aum Shinri Kyo on young Japanese.

Professor

Susumu Shimazono

University deserves special praise for his seminal the faith universe of

Aum Shinri Kyo. His Aum Shinri Kyo's

English document about

work

of Tokyo

in English exploring

remarkable exposition faith history,

is

a rare

and the only one

I

have seen which lucidly discusses the important implications of societal pressure on the those

who want

sect.

to

His work,

know how

like Professor

a religious

Young's, should be studied by

group

like

Aum

Shinri Kyo evolves

into ultraterrorism. Finally,

but by no

means

least, in

Chapter 2

I

relied in part

that appeared in Tokyo Journal in 1995. "Death in the Air"

on an

article

by Andrew Marshall

puts a bright young writer working at his sensitive best on a very dark topic.

The opening sentence of his

story

on the Matsumoto

tragedy of Yoshiyuki Kono, the

man

modern

was a

died."

journalistic classic: "It

sarin attack

and the

wrongly accused of perpetrating pretty

normal evening

it,

until the

is

a

dogs

XV

Prologue:

March 20, 1995

first calls for

help start coming into Tokyo's emergency assistance

The telephone switchboards shortly before 8:20 a.m. on Monday, March 20,

1995. These early calls from subway attendants and passengers complain about the "strange smells"

and "powerful odors" encountered

Kamiyacho Station on the Hibiya

Line, odors that

vomit and cause others

on the platform.

Within minutes, the

to collapse

calls

in the

make some passengers

increase in frequency and urgency, each

new caller

repeating the earlier complaints of foul, strong, "chemical" smells in the sub-

way and people being sickened by them. Worse, the operators note that more subway At

stations are being hit

by the mystery fumes.

8:33 a.m., a caller to the fire-department

emergency squad reports

that six

passengers have collapsed on the Nakano Sakaue Station platform and

numerous

others are

Nakano Sakaue

ill.

Station

They need help immediately, the

is

on the Marunouchi

Line.

man

says.

The

Both the Marunouchi

Line and the Hibiya Line are major subway arteries that criss-cross the heart

of downtown Tokyo carrying hundreds of thousands of passengers each day.

The unidentified

affliction is

not only spreading from subway station to

Holy Terror: Armageddon

subway

station,

Tokyo

moving from one subway

also

it is

in

line to another

—and

at a

chilling pace.

A

rescue squad team speeds out of the Nakano Fire Station to the nearby

subway

stop.

There they pick up several passengers and station employees

and rush them By 8:44

to a

nearby hospital.

a.m., senior police supervisors

monitoring the emergency

calls at

the

Japan National Police Agency in the center of Tokyo have heard enough convince them that something frightening

way system. They immediately order

is

under way in the

to

capital's sub-

the establishment of an emergency

unit to coordinate and direct the city's police,

fire,

and medical-

rescue,

response systems.

By 8:50 the police suspect

that a powerful chemical agent of

leaked into the subway system and they ask the Japanese

chemical warfare experts

up

to the

emergency

some

Army

to

type has

send two

unit. Shortly afterward they set

a joint police investigative unit to begin probing the mysterious

subway

fumes.

At nearby Kasumigaseki Station, a major subway intersection serving gov-

ernment

and the headquarters of the National Police Agency,

offices

a

num-

ber of police investigators descend into the depths of the station, where they

encounter the gas fumes and become suddenly police headquarters,

and the

police agency orders

workers entering subway stations

At about

this

same time

the Chiyoda Line and gas. Passengers

the

many

to

ill.

all

This report flashes to police

word comes

in that a third

of

Tokyo

its

central

major subway

line,

stations are stricken by the

and subway attendants on the Chiyoda

across the center of Tokyo like the

and emergency

wear gas masks.

Marunouchi and Hibiya

Line,

which cuts

Lines, are report-

ing noxious gas fumes, ailing riders, and people so sick they are unable to

walk or

talk.

Pleas for

emergency medical

help, ambulances,

and rescue

teams are flooding in from everywhere. Central Tokyo lances,

and

fire

is

ringing with a cacophony of sirens as police cars,

trucks rush to the beleaguered

subway

stations.

ambu-

The workday

Prologue

has just begun, and employees Station rush to the

they do not see

Some

thirty

is

what

at the

Bank near Kamiyacho

chaos in the street below.

is

below the

unfolding in the station

streets.

passengers have detrained in a crush, handkerchiefs pressed to

and mouths as they

their eyes

the Tokyo Kyodo

windows and peer out

What

"Help!" and

"I

can't see!"

ridors of the station fear,

at

flee

toward the station

exits.

Screams of

echo from the platforms and down the

where dazed passengers sink to

unable to understand what

is

happening

to

their

warm

cor-

knees in agony and

them and why

their bodies

do not function properly.

The

first

stricken passengers to climb out of the station depths to street

now making

level are

their appearance outside the

Kamiyacho Station

entrance. But the fresh winter air filling their lungs brings

no

relief,

and

those most heavily exposed to the fumes take only a few steps before collapsing in a heap on the sidewalk. Others are bent double in agony; everyone

who had been below is ing

pale.

Many are vomiting and

several people are froth-

the mouth, their eyes open but unseeing, as they are carried

at

Others

stretchers.

lie

prostrate

on the concrete

massages from passers-by who mistake them

some

streets,

away on

receiving heart

for heart- attack victims.

when suddenly there was a smell like paint thinner," a twenty-eight-year-old company worker from Meguro Ward in Tokyo later said. "The next moment my eyes ceased to focus and I lost my vision. What "I

was

in the car

happened?"

Away from the The

first

scene, the Japanese public

is

glued to their television screens.

reports are being broadcast, just in time for the 9:00 news.

The

anchors are talking about gas and terrorism. The vagueness of the reports only

makes them more

incredulity.

frightening.

But the

first

reaction of

many

is

Terrorism in Japan?

At Kayabacho Station, scrambling rescue workers cry out, "Make room!

Make room!"

as they haul

vices Tokyo's

busy stock-market

one victim

after

district.

another out of the station that ser-

Some

of the victims being carried

out wear oxygen masks; their faces are twisted in agony. side the station, several

uniforms

lie

office

workers in identical company

plastic sheet as

medical attendants hover over

young female

prone on a blue

On the sidewalk out-

them, offering emergency medical treatment.

Holy Terror: Armageddon

The

saw

a

Some

of the gas seems to follow no single pattern.

effect

are quickly injured by "I

Tokyo

in

it,

woman

while others

seem unharmed or only mildly nauseated.

Kodenmacho

collapse in

passengers

Station

on the Hibiya

an uninjured thirty-one-year-old company employee from Saitama

was riding

porters. "I

something

in the third car

like a rolled-up

from the front of the

newspaper on the

floor.

.

.

.

train

One

Line,"

told re-

and

I

saw

of the police

found the rolled-up newspaper that the gas came from and brought

it

out of

the subway car."

The hospitals nearest the gassed subway stations are the first to be overwhelmed by patients. Victims begin flooding into Saint Luke's Hospital near Tsukiji Station at 8:40 a.m. Within an hour, their numbers exceed one hundred fifty. The hospital halts all other admittance to concentrate on the subway patients who are laid out on long benches in the hallways and in the chapel.

Typical of many patients

worker who was trying

is

twenty-six-year-old Miyuki

to get to

her office

when

Kume,

a

company

the gas struck her down.

"I

was

in the third car

from the front on the Hibiya

ting

on

an intravenous drip running into her arm. "When we

a sofa with

arrived at

Ningyocho

Station,

car hitting the floor, then a

the windows!'

We

to transfer to

another

had stopped

everything went black.

at

Ningyocho, so

when

My eyes

screamed. Someone nearby yelled 'Open

are

I

side Japan that

something unusual

news report

eight

subway

states that

still

stations in

is

I

went out on the platform

smelled a sharp smell and suddenly flashing

At 9:12 a.m. the British Reuters news agency

brief

sit-

heard the sound of another passenger in the

I

woman

train,

Line," she said, calmly

is

and are clouded

the

happening

first to tell

over."

the world out-

in Tokyo's subways. Their

an unidentified noxious gas has appeared

at

Tokyo and more than two hundred commuters are

harmed. But by then the aggressive national media in Japan

is

already broadly

hinting that a poison gas attack has taken place in the subway.

At 9:45 a request goes out from the National Police Agency to the SelfDefense Forces to send six military doctors to the police hospital in Iidabashi. At about the

same

time, Shizuka Kamei, head of the Ministry of

Transport and Transportation, sets up an emergency desk and orders the highest level of security on

all

transporation systems throughout Japan.

Prologue

leaves his residence, Defense Minister Hirozo Igarashi speaks to

As he reporters.

His comments are of course broadcast nationwide. "This

discriminate attack against a large investigate

number of

ordinary citizens.

an

is

We

in-

will

thoroughly and get to the bottom of it," he says.

it

At 9:52, the Associated Press

files

an urgent report stating that Tokyo's sub-

way system has been attacked with poison gas. At 10:30 the National Police Agency reports that three hundred and fourteen have been hospitalized. Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama orders the

Defense Minister to make the rescue of victims the nation's top

At

11

a.m. the National Police

Agency announces

from the gas in the subway and the five

hundred

priority.

that five people are

dead

department reports that more than

fire

are hospitalized with serious injuries. Shortly afterward, the

Criminal Investigation Division of the National Police Agency conference there

is

a strong possibility that the gas in the

tells a

subway

is

news

a nerve

agent called "sarin," and they are investigating the incident as a murder case.

An hour

later,

more than By

six

the police raise the death

and

on the

clinics

than

total

five

of eleven persons, are taken

city.

The world's

of a major industrialized power

for a

and

in television

facilities

for

all

crowded subway bounces

editorials

about the need to stop terrorism and violence. Thereafter,

on the

is,

few weeks, drawing predictable expressions of shock

from government spokesmen and the usual

raids

first ultrater-

over.

story of the nerve-gas attack in the

around the world

front page

to

thousand, are receiving medical

throughout the

capital city

and purposes,

The news

dead and dying, a

now more

away, and the injured, care in hospitals rorist attack

and the hospital cases

hundred.

early afternoon, the

intents

toll to six

of

news shows

Aum

is

Shinri Kyo

and commentaries its

longevity

on the

extended by fresh reports of police

(Aum Supreme

Truth), the small

Japanese religious sect that produced the sarin and carried out the gas attack.

But despite

all its

media coverage, the underlying significance of what

took place in Tokyo was barely noticed. With few exceptions, only two groups of people understood that a horrible bell had tolled in the Tokyo subways,

Holy Terror: Armageddon

one that the world

mous

Tokyo

in

will surely

hear again. The

implications of the sarin-gas attack

terrorist experts

who

terrorist organizations.

daily

first

group

to realize the enor-

was the small handful of counter-

monitor the

known

of the world's

activities

They understood immediately that the Tokyo gassing

Weapons of mass

crossed an unprecedented threshold of terrorist violence.

and

destruction, specifically chemical

biological agents,

had been produced

will to use them. The counknew that the odds were good that other terrorist groups copy the new form of terrorism pioneered by Aum Shinri Kyo.

by a small group of religious terrorists with the terterrorists also

would

try to

The second group the Tokyo attack

who pursue

to instantly recognize the

was the international

political

and

that

engagement"

new

March morning

in Tokyo. Terrorists

A

do not follow "rules of

free to

is

and destruction

it

many

use chemical or biological weapons,

be

to

successful terrorist operation

Tokyo gassing was

precedent-setting example before them,

and

life

do absorb the lessons

that receives broad publicity for the death, injury,

causes. By that standard, the

human

chapter in terrorist violence was

in their operations, but they

learned from "successful" acts of violence.

one

groups themselves, those

religious goals at the expense of

suffering. They, too, realized that a

opened on

terrorist

underlying importance of

if

a

huge success. With

terrorist

groups

will

that

now

feel

they can acquire them. With

those weapons they can conduct terrorism on a scale so horrific that

bombings, assassinations, and skyjackings that have gone before

all

the

will pale

into insignificance.

What

did the terrorists of

Aum

gassing? Not their stated objectives.

Shinri Kyo accomplish in the

A

major

priority

was

Tokyo

to paralyze parts of

the government, especially the headquarters of the National Police Agency,

by killing and injuring thousands of people. Although more than

sand were injured, the death a nerve-gas attack. That sarin

rate

was due

—estimated by chemists

the crude

method used

death and injury

toll

in large part to the relative

to

—and

it.

its

Had

the gas been stronger

method of dispersal more

factors in the attack, the sarin

method, were not exactly

right, the resulting

grim

weapons

truth:

—

—and

say, sev-

effective, the

could easily have soared into the tens of thousands. But

though the two essential

strate a

for

weakness of the

have been only thirty-percent pure

to disperse

enty- or eighty-percent pure

five thou-

—eleven people—was surprisingly low

even

when

and

its

dispersal

deaths and injuries demon-

poorly produced and disseminated, chemical

are devastatingly effective.

Tokyo's sprawling subway system six

million people daily

late

—

a

network that transports more than

—was paralyzed, but only

afternoon on the day of the attack subway

running again. Passenger volume dipped

mal

after the

With five

system went back on

five

officials

slightly

had the system up and

but soon returned to nor-

and

a police estimate of more than

hundred persons injured by the gas

agencies revised that figure

downward

By

transport officials said.

line,

a death count of eleven people

thousand

for a matter of hours.

to three

(other

government

thousand seven hundred by

the end of the year, but the press and this author continue to accept the five

thousand

five

hundred figure

as the

most accurate),

Aum Shinri Kyo's attack

represents a world record for a single terrorist operation.

also frightened

It

the citizens of Japan, and especially those living in Tokyo, in ways they

not experienced since the darkest days of World

War

had

II.

Perhaps one of the toughest blows to absorb in the aftermath of the gassing attack was that

it

was committed by Japanese against Japanese.

Shinri Kyo, the small religious sect that carried out the attack,

of Japanese culture and socialization. Not only

were among Japan's "best and

came from

Japan's top schools and

made Japanese

image

as

one of the

beating in the news media

Japanese are nothing

if

sect's top lead-

in

many

They graduated from

brightest."

solid middle-class families.

society a lot less certain about the

Finally, Japan's terrific

but the

a product

number of young men and women who,

ership included a large respects,

that,

was

Aum

way

it

raises

safest countries in the

—and none worse than in

its

The gassing its

children.

world took a

own. But the

they are not resilient. They are often said to have a

"typhoon mentality," which

is

the ability to weather the storm, sustain the

damage, and then move forward without looking back. To make sure that a terrorist threat like

Aum

Japanese government

is

Shinri Kyo does not recur at

making changes

some

in everything

future point, the

from the laws

that

regulate religious corporations to suffer controls over ownership of certain

chemicals.

question

As they make these adjustments, they must

why the

world's

first ultraterrorists

of Japanese religious fanatics. As they are question

is

both complex and

difficult.

also address the

evolved from an obscure group

now

learning, the

answer

to that

Beware Beginnings: Murdering a Dangerous Man

Because the baby cried out when the men first entered the bedroom, they murdered him

first.

The

killing

morning, only a few minutes quietly

began shortly

after the

Aum

after three o'clock in the

Shinri Kyo "action squad"

opened the unlocked door of a small apartment in a middle-class

Yokohama neighborhood and

let

themselves

in.

The

six

men were tired and

nervous, but they had the presence of mind to wait for a few their eyes adjust to the darkness before easing their

where

way

moments

into the

to let

bedroom

their three victims lay sleeping.

Clad in cotton pajamas, fourteen-month-old Tatsuhiko Sakamoto was in

bed between his parents when the

them would

later sheepishly

men

crept into the apartment. Several of

confess to police that he was the

and when he saw them, suddenly began one of the

men

mouth with

first to

awake

crying. After the infant's first cry,

leaned over and snatched

him from

the bed, smothered his

him into the waiting hands of his killer, named Tomomasa Nakagawa. His hypoNakagawa quickly jerked down the baby's pajama

a cloth, then delivered

a thirty-two-year-old medical doctor

dermic needle ready, Dr.

pants and injected his buttock with a large dose of potassium chloride, a

powerful poison. Nakagawa then watched the child with coldly waiting patiently for the deadly poison to

make

its

clinical eyes,

way through

his small

Holy Terror: Armageddon

The

body.

Tokyo

infant's cries gradually snuffled out,

fatally

then ceased altogether

spasms swept over him

a series of limb-shaking

then

in

stopped his young heart.

It

was

when

as the poison first seized

like putting

an unwanted puppy

to sleep.

The

baby's frightened cry and the shuffling

awakened the

child's parents,

commotion

in the

bedroom

Satoko Sakamoto, his twenty-nine-year-old

mother, and Tsutsumi Sakamoto, thirty-three, the boy's father. The scene confronting the groggy Sakamotos was straight out of a nightmare. Their

bedroom was

small

with strange men, one of whom held their strug-

filled

gling son in his arms.

Alarmed and badly

scared, both parents tried to res-

cue their son but were no match for the overwhelming force of their attackers.

Seeing her baby in the hands of a stranger with a hypodermic needle,

Satoko Sakamoto desperately fought back against her assailants, but within a

few minutes they overpowered her and she was given

Nakagawa. Within minutes he confirmed that she,

Tsutsumi Sakamoto was the

last to die,

did not die quickly. Battling furiously for his to bite

was

tion, Dr.

finally

now

five to one,

subdued. While several of the

Nakagawa jabbed

a

and

he managed during the

after several

to

men

held

filled

fray

draw blood. But the

and within

hypodermic needle

ride into his buttock. This time the

by

was dead.

but unlike his son and wife he life,

one of his attackers on the arm, hard enough

odds against Sakamoto were too,

too,

a lethal injection

a

few minutes he,

him

tightly in posi-

with potassium chlo-

drug did not work as expected, however,

minutes of painful writhing Sakamoto remained very

much

him off, it was necessary for the team leader, Kiyohide Hayakawa, to hold down his legs while Tomomitsu Niimi straddled his chest and strangled him with his bare alive.

Members of the squad

told police that in order to finish

hands.

The above account of the murder of the Sakamoto family was printed the Japanese press in the

fall

a different version of the trial for

of 1995. Six months

later, in

in

mid-March 1996,

Sakamoto murders surfaced during Nakagawa's

his part in the killings. According to a report filed by

Tokyo

corre-

spondent Nicholas D. Kristof of The New York Times, prosecutors told the

Tokyo

Sakamoto and

district court that

his wife

were strangled and that the

baby was suffocated. There was no mention of the lier

lethal injections that ear-

reports persistently stated were administered by Nakagawa.

But

like the previous

statements

made

to the

news

reports

—

all

of which were based on police

Japanese news media in the

fall

of 1995

—the prose-

Beware Beginnings: Murdering

Dangerous Man

a

cution statements quoted by the Times described an equally harrowing death

They

scene.

said the first to die

member of the

was Sakamoto, who was strangled by one

group, while another kicked his wife, Satoko, in the abdomen.

"Please spare the child, at least," she

was

The

strangled.

said to have

is

screamed before she,

report said the baby then began to cry,

bers suffocated him with the bedding. The trial also shed new light on possible motives

and the

sect

too,

mem-

murders,

rais-

ing questions about the actions of Tokyo Broadcasting System, a major

tele-

The prosecution

vision station.

made

after the station

alleged that the decision to

informed sect

from

program

The Times

it.

to protest the

video.

after the

said

Aum

that

Sakamoto was

Shinri Kyo.

Sakamotos vanished, but

TBS admitted

kill

advance about a television

officials in

interview in which Sakamoto strongly criticized celed the

for the

Aum

TBS

can-

later aired excerpts

officials visited the station

proposed program, but denied sect members were shown the

However, Japanese press reports said unidentified

Aum officials told

TBS offices. In late April 1996, Hirozo Isozaki, the president of TBS, who resigned to take responsability for the affair, told a news conference that TBS had shown the video to sect officials. Sect protests caused TBS not to run the interview, Isozaki said. had seen the video

police they

Whatever the reason

at

for the differences

between the

earlier police

and

prosecution version of the killings, murdering the Sakamoto family took

between

fifteen

and twenty minutes, and

three dead bodies

on

at the

end Aum's action squad had

their hands. Their plan

was not simply

Sakamotos, but to make them disappear without a step

was

to

cles outside

Because

it

trace.

remove the three bodies from the apartment

to kill the

The next

to the

critical

getaway vehi-

without being seen. Here luck and timing worked for them.

was the morning

after a

major national holiday, there was no one

about in the winter darkness as they hauled the bodies outside, placing them in the car

and

station

wagon

way back to the

were on

their

slope of

Mount

they'd rented for the operation. By 4 a.m. they sect's

compound in

Kamikuishiki, on the north

Fuji.

With one exception, the members of the death squad Sakamotos were Asahara, the

named

all

that killed the

senior disciples and close confidants of sect leader Shoko

man who ordered the murders. The exception was a young man

Satoru Hashimoto

who

joined the team at the least minute

strength of his recent victory in an

Asahara had not wanted

on the

Aum Shinri Kyo martial-arts tournament.

to include

Hashimoto because he was

a junior

I

I

Holy Terror: Armageddon

member

of the

sect,

in

Tokyo

but the others had pressed the guru, arguing that his

muscle might come in handy during the mission. Faced with Asahara

More than anything he wanted

finally relented.

a consensus,

the dangerous

Tsutsumi Sakamoto behind him.

threat posed by the troublesome

ing that success might hinge on young Hashimoto's martial arts

If achiev-

then

skills,

him go along. The seeds of the death of the Sakamoto family were planted in the early spring of 1989, when a group of distraught parents whose children were members of Aum Shinri Kyo walked into the Yokohama law office of let

Tsutsumi Sakamoto. Sakamoto had already developed

a reputation as a

tough, iconoclastic, and fearless lawyer with a penchant for taking on the

unusual cases that other Japanese lawyers shunned. In 1982 he had graduated from the

Law Department of Tokyo

University, the

most prestigious

the country, and by 1987 he received his certification as an attorney and

working

Yokohama Law

for the

Office in Naka-ku,

was

Yokohama. Sakamoto

He

despised injustice and had a strong, natural sympathy for the underdog.

was deeply involved Railway workers

and

large

new

in legal efforts to protect the rights of Japanese National

when

the government-owned corporation

numbers of its employees were

an advocate

in

Aum

privatized

forcibly reassigned or laid off.

As

he had some experience in confronting

for children's rights,

religious groups like

was

Shinri Kyo; in the past he

had

assisted par-

ents in efforts to free their children from the ranks of the Unification

Church.

The parents gathered Shinri Kyo

came

in Sakamoto's office in

as supplicants;

Yokohama

to discuss

Aum

the other lawyers they spoke to had

all

lawyer with the tenacity of a

What they were looking for, indeed, Aum, was a bright and energetic bulldog someone who would sink his teeth

into the evasive religious sect

and not

politely

but firmly turned them away.

what they needed

As Sakamoto ents,

to

—

let

go until justice was done.

listened carefully to the complaints of the distraught par-

he noted that in each case the story was

gious sect

Aum

Shinri Kyo

some kind of mind sect,

be successful against

had taken

much

their children

control. First their children

one of the many shinko shukyo

more commonly, "new

religions."

—

The new

"newly risen religions," or

the children abruptly

left

home,

explaining to their startled parents that they were going to live in an

commune, where

they would

reli-

from them by means of

had attended meetings of the

literally

Then

the same:

become monastics. Upon

arrival at the

Aum com-

Beware Beginnings: Murdering

mune

a

Aum

the inductees were required to relinquish to

Dangerous Man

their financial

all

bank accounts, and

assets, everything

from

were forbidden

have further contact with their parents and friends.

And told

to

there were

used telephone cards

partially

more

blood.

The

police

adults

and

free to

The worried parents

disturbing rumors as well.

Sakamoto they had heard dark

occult practices involving

to

mind

stories

about Aum's supernatural and

control, drugs,

were powerless

to help, since

do as they pleased. The

and the drinking of human

most of their children were

sect vigorously

denied the presence

of any underage followers, though some of the parents disputed

most importantly,

Further, perhaps

Aum

Shinri Kyo

was an

this.

official religion

protected from government interference by Japan's rigidly observed freedom

of religion laws.

The Japanese

police,

the governmental bureaucracy, exercised

like

extreme caution in handling complaints

made

against official religious

groups. Partly as a reaction to the harsh oppression of religious freedom by Japan's prewar military government, the postwar constitution icy

and police

pol-

nationwide called for scrupulously avoiding even the appearance of reli-

who

gious persecution. For the aggrieved parents

believed that

Aum

had

who would

taken their children from them,

civil

law and a tenacious lawyer

press their cases to the fullest in

civil

court were the only recourses. But like

the police,

with the a nasty

most Japanese lawyers avoided becoming involved

new religions, and most especially with Aum reputation among Japan's legal community consuming and

countersuits that were both time

in civil cases

Shinri Kyo, which had as a sect

which

filed

At

first,

terribly expensive.

Sakamoto's reaction was no different from those of the other lawyers, and

though what he had heard was

interesting,

he told the group he was inclined

not to take their case. As a libertarian, he firmly supported freedom of religion. But the to listen

group continued

more

to press for his help,

and

closely to the frustrated, angry voices.

ries, in particular

as they did

The

he began

details of their sto-

Aum followers were forced to pay exorbi-

the charges that

tant fees for religious training

and gimmicks of highly dubious

appealed to Sakamoto's sense of

justice. After

suspected that gullible

sounded

One

Aum

Shinri Kyo

members, young and like his

of his

was using

religious status to prey

old, for financial gain.

kind of case, and

first

its

finally

value,

hearing the families out, he

he agreed

On

on

the surface,

it

to represent the families.

— "The Association they had dubbed themselves —was dig

steps as counsel to the parent group

of Victims of Aum Shinri Kyo," as

its

to

Holy Terror: Armageddon

Tokyo

in

into the

background of the

In his

first

few weeks of prying into the

history

Sakamoto became convinced

that

it

sect.

members. Wasting no time

coming

in

Sakamoto served

official notice

was demanding

a face-to-face

on the

was

deliberately victimizing

new

with his

to grips

sect that

sect's its

adversaries,

he represented a mother who

meeting with her daughter, a young

Aum

member. The

first sect official to

age twenty-nine was tect

of

its

Aum

meet Sakamoto was Yoshinobu Aoyama, who

at

Shinri Kyo's talented chief lawyer and the archi-

successful defense strategy of expensive countersuits and legal

intimidation. At the meeting,

Sakamoto firmly

insisted that his client be

allowed to speak with her daughter or he would seek a court order forcing

Aum

to

show cause why

the

meet her mother. After some

young

woman

legal dickering

could not be

back and

made available to Aoyama finally

forth,

agreed to set a date for a meeting between the mother and daughter sect's general ty

headquarters in Fujinomiya, Shizuoka Prefecture,

some

at the

nine-

minutes by car from Tokyo. The meeting between mother and daughter

was attended by Sakamoto, Aoyama, and two of the Kiyohide Hayakawa and

Tomomitsu

sect's senior leaders:

Niimi. Sakamoto could not

know

it

at

the time, but as he entered the meeting and exchanged the ritual Japanese

introductory

bows with the

Aum

men who would murder him and

leaders,

he had

politely greeted

his family less than four

months

Yoshinobu Aoyama was the son of a wealthy Osaka family large clothing firm. Bright, articulate,

University

Law

and

savvy,

two of the

that

later.

owned

School, and while there distinguished himself by

becoming

the youngest person in his class to pass the tough national bar exam.

joined

Aum

Aoyama

in

1988 and became

chief legal counsel two years

prided himself on being a shrewd judge of character.

carefully sized

up Sakamoto on

young lawyer's determined ing.

its

face

their first meeting,

and

steely

demeanor was extremely

scared away by

and well prepared, not the

Aum's usual

bluster

and

man

very

in the

disturb-

because he was

who

could be

For that reason,

Aoyama

sort of lawyer

threats.

He

later.

He had

and what he saw

Sakamoto, he concluded, was a very dangerous

intelligent, tenacious,

a

he was a graduate of Kyoto

decided to take a softer approach and agreed to schedule the meeting

between the mother and daughter in the hope interest in

pursuing

Aum. However, he

it

might dampen Sakamoto's

badly underestimated the young

lawyer from Yokohama. In Sakamoto, the parent's group found the legal

Beware Beginnings: Murdering

bulldog they were looking Shinri Kyo's flank he had

for.

no

Now

Dangerous Man

a

were sinking into

that his teeth

Aum

intention of letting go.

Sakamoto recognized the meeting between the mother and daughter a sop offered

by Aoyama.

opening gambit in addition to a in the sect,

He

viewed

a series of actions

number of other

between the two lawyers to a

Aum

In the late 1980s, rather

As

he planned

bring against the

cases involving parents

new

It

was

a

new twist the

made from

Aum member who

this case that raised the conflict

Shinri Kyo's religious practices had taken a

sect

special cult initiation rite in

training.

began

Aum

offered "select"

guru Shoko a

told,

spiritual

and you

to saishu gedatsu, or "final liberation." Further

the line in spiritual effectiveness

was

a special tea

and toward the bottom was

these tonics from the body of the guru

will

down

brewed from Asahara's

a two-hundred-cubic-centimeter

bottle of his bath water (or "miracle pond," as

Sakamoto hoped

its

new members

improve the effectiveness of their

Drink Asahara's blood, the new members were

hair clippings,

occult.

peddle several "powerful" spiritual

to

which they could drink the blood of Asahara,

to vastly

be on the inside track

In

and missing children

former

the hair, bath water, and the blood of

which was supposed

sect.

level.

Asahara. For ten thousand dollars,-

that

to

sudden entrepreneurial turn toward the supernatural and the

part of this

tonics

not as a major concession, but as the

it

Sakamoto was now representing

claimed the sect had cheated him.

as

came

it

was touted by Aum).

at a stiff cost,

and

it

All

was here

to score a telling victory over the sect for practicing

fraud and extortion.

His

client

had paid the standard ten-thousand-dollar

drinking "initiation," but

no

closer to liberation.

it

Sakamoto pressed

based on non-performance. In response, bility

his client's claim for a refund

of the ritual by claiming that research conducted by the Kyoto

Asahara's blood. In a

letter to

was

a "secret

Sakamoto, Aoyama said the

"when the blood of the Worthy Master (Sonshi

the body, that

brought him

Aum attempted to boost the credi-

University Medical School proved there

that

fee for the blood-

failed to deliver; the pricey libation

the

kundalini spirit

is

stirred

power" in Shoko tests

demonstrated

in Japanese)

is

taken into

and higher consciousnesses

had until then been only potential manifest themselves." Sakamoto

* All U.S. dollar equivalents are based on a rate of one

hundred yen

called

to the dollar.

Holy Terror: Armageddon

this bluff

Tokyo

in

by contacting the school and asking for the

September 20, 1989, reply unequivocally that

had never conducted any

it

When confronted with this In a

memo

with

Aoyama

explain the

dated October that

test results. In its

Sakamoto's inquiry, the medical school stated

to

statement

on the guru's

tests

Aoyama began

to

blood.

backpedal vigorously.

Sakamoto recorded a telephone conversation

13,

began with an apology from the

DNA test clearly. Aoyama asked

sect lawyer for failing to

Sakamoto

to believe that the test

was done by a Kyoto University student of genetic engineering working toward his doctorate. The

was

test

carried out at

Aum

facilities,

with equip-

ment that Aum "had purchased at great expense." But the good news, Aoyama was

said,

that the test "was notarized."

Unfazed, Sakamoto asked

and informed him

called

be available for ten days

"underwater meditation"

demonstrated their sealed box that

Sakamoto

—a

ability to

man who was

the test

would not

which advanced meditators

practice during

slow or even stop their breathing by entering a

was then submerged

Aum

The next day Aoyama

who performed

two weeks because he was participating in

to

said he understood

At that point, not a

to see the test data.

that the student

in water.

and would be glad

Shinri Kyo's legal

team

to wait for the data.

Sakamoto was

realized that

going away.

Events in October underscored chief attorney Aoyama's darkest assess-

ment them

that the upstart lawyer

from Yokohama was determined

once and

as religious frauds

for

all.

On

October

11,

to

Sakamoto

general meeting for victims of the deceptive practices of Aum.

which was well attended, produced more damaging data

expose called a

The meeting,

for further suits

against the sect. According to the Yomiuri Shimbun, in a radio interview con-

ducted by telephone

five

days

later,

Sakamoto strongly condemned the

sect's

He charged Aum with persuading minors up residence in sect communes and accused

fraudulent and unethical practices. to leave their families

and take

Asahara of demanding large cash donations from his followers for which they received

little if

perhaps the most

and

it

anything in return. This interview with Sakamoto was

critical

public attack ever

created a storm of anger

The after the

sect's

among

the

made

against the sect

on radio

Aum hierarchy.

response to the charges was immediate and

program was broadcast, handbills

typical. Shortly

bitterly attacking

Sakamoto

were distributed in his residential Yokohama neighborhood and he began to receive telephone threats at his

home and

office.

In the

same month,

Beware Beginnings: Murdering

Sakamoto was interviewed

for a television

by TBS, a major television

on Aum's

scathing attack

a

Dangerous Man

documentary on

Aum

produced

he again delivered a

station. In the interview

fraudulent practices. Asahara learned of the pro-

gram's contents and on Halloween, October

31,

Aoyama, senior

sent

disciple

sect spokesman named Fumihiro Joyu to Yokohama for a showdown. Full details of this discussion have not been made public, but the Aum leaders confirmed that they had the data on the magical efficacy of Asahara' s blood. Though they did not give the data to Sakamoto, he made notes on their explanation: Several mem-

Hayakawa, and a charismatic Sakamoto's

office in

bers had drunk Asahara's blood and their religious practice had improved.

Sakamoto learned

that there

no control group

blood,

for

had been no genetic or any other

any

any reasonable standard of

test

made on

it.

What that meant was

Aum

measurement,

scientific

analysis of the that by

had no

in fact

proof that their guru's blood contained a "secret power." The sect leaders also

demanded

Sakamoto

that

issue an apology to

retract his

Aum. Sakamoto

TBS

interview statements and

refused.

At that point the meeting quickly disintegrated into a screaming match that filled the air with personal insults.

angrily declared that

money because

Aum could do as

it

According

one witness, Aoyama

to

pleased with

its

members and their

the sect was an official religious corporation under Japanese

law and therefore protected by the government against interference from outsiders. told the

Though outnumbered

three to one, Sakamoto didn't flinch.

threesome that Aum did not have a right to cause personal harm and

suffering to others. Before ordering the

he informed them he was

office,

cial status as a religion It

was

on the

He

a defining

table.

and

day, in a

delegation to get out of his

filing a suit that

that he'd

would challenge

soon see them

moment for both

What happened

The next

Aum

all

their offi-

again in court.

sides. All the cards

were now face up

next sealed the fate of the Sakamoto family.

meeting with the

sect's hierarchy,

the failure of the talks with Sakamoto to

Aum

Aoyama

reported

Shinri Kyo leader, Shoko

Asahara. The bad news, he told the guru, was that he was unable to persuade

Sakamoto not

much

about

to file a suit.

how

work entirely too well. risk to

Aum's

If he

at the

now knew

his suit,

it

too

his

home-

would present

a grave

young lawyer had done

went ahead with

official status as a legal religion.

Everyone present

had

But worse was that Sakamoto

the sect operated; the

This was no small threat.

meeting knew that religious incorporation in Japan

a one-year probationary period,

and

Aum

had only received

its

papers

Holy Terror: Armageddon

as of

August

was found

25. If the sect

during that period,

Tokyo

in

its official

committing any

illegal acts

status could easily be revoked by the govern-

ment. Those present also knew that

harmed, maybe even finished

severely

guilty of

happened the

if that

would be

sect

for good.

now seemed no doubt that Sakamoto was leading a movement to Aum, Aoyama said, and his threatened suit was only the opening

There destroy

shot in the fusillade that was sure to follow. But there was

more

at stake

than

the sect's official status. Another top aide at the meeting told Asahara that the sect's ambitious political

campaign

to

win

seats in the lower

house of the

upcoming 1990 elections would fall Sakamoto could make any of his charges stick in court. This

Diet (Japan's national assembly) in the flat

on

its

face if

young lawyer

in

Yokohama was

removed before he could

On the very same

act,

a very

dangerous

the aide advised.

The

man and

he must be

Aum leaders were right.

day they were meeting, Sakamoto was making a presenta-

tion to his colleagues, arguing persuasively that

Aum

could be successfully

prosecuted for duping consumers with false advertising.

Asahara understood

and

privilege

he had

mortal threat.

too well that the small religious empire of wealth

all

built for

himself over the past

He acknowledged

that loss of

five years

now

faced a

Aum's governmentally sancnew reli-

tioned religious status would be disastrous, both for the sect as a

gion and for his long-planned election campaign for the Diet. The Diet tion

was the culmination of one of

himself was running on the

Aum's

slate

his oldest personal ambitions.

sect's ticket

and was convinced

would

national recognition

and

give

him

political

Asahara

that both

of candidates would be swept into office by the voters.

tory at the ballot box

elec-

he and

A sect vic-

the two things he had long yearned

power. The source of the threat was

for,

clear:

Standing squarely in his path was this troublesome lawyer from Yokohama, a

man

of conscience

who would

not be reasonable and go away quietly.

Asahara's choice for resolving the threat was no less vive

and achieve the

sect

would have His mind

selors,

to

to

political clout

he believed

it

clear: If

Aum was to sur-

deserved in Japan, then the

permanently remove the threat presented by Sakamoto.

made

up, Asahara dismissed his legal and political coun-

then immediately

summoned five of his most trusted

an urgent meeting the next day, November

2, at

senior disciples

the sect's headquarters in

Fujinomiya. As Asahara pondered his options, he realized that timing was everything.

worse

—

Externally, the

timing of the Sakamoto

crisis

could not be

if Sakamoto got before a court and the public with his complaints,

Beware Beginnings: Murdering

Aum's

was jeopardized,

future

Sakamoto. But internally,

—

senior leadership

Asahara

a pressure point not lost

that echelon

—the timing

tion in the cult. right

who ranked

of leaders

was

for action

The man

on the

within the convoluted dynamics of the

Aum

for the

months

for the job

would

was intense and

a highposi-

sit at

a

it is

most

under

number-two

selected for the coveted position

hand of Asahara. Jockeying

clever

cult's

directly

also right. For several

power struggle had been under way in

level

Dangerous Man

a

the

mark of

Asahara' s manipulative brilliance that he chose the top three contenders for the position to attend the urgent meeting he called to plan the

murder of

Sakamoto.

Openly competing

Hideo Murai,

forty-six;

senior

for the

members of the

earliest days

and was

a

number-two spot were Kiyohide Hayakawa, and Kazuaki Okazaki,

thirty-six; sect.

thirty-four. All

were

Okazaki had been with Asahara since the very

founding

the Sakamoto kidnapping, he

member of Aum

was considered

ership directly under the guru. There

is

first

no doubt

Shinri Kyo. Leading

among

up

equals in the lead-

that his status

was higher

than that of Hayakawa and Murai. But for reasons not clearly understood this time,

to

at

Asahara appointed Hayakawa leader of the Sakamoto action squad

while Okazaki was relegated to the rather lowly position of driver. There

is

speculation that by this time Okazaki had dropped out of contention for the

number-two

slot,

possibly because of "his

investigator said. In any event, Okazaki

left

from

personality,"

one police

was near the end of his

stint as a

of Aum Shinri Kyo. Just before the February 1990 Diet elections,

member he

weak

the sect after being accused of trying to steal three million dollars

its

coffers.

him by name and went

Badly frightened that Asahara might seek to silence

ordering his murder or abduction, Okazaki assumed a false into hiding in his native

Yamaguchi

Prefecture.

He was

arrested in 1995

and

charged with conspiracy to commit murder, a charge that stemmed from the strangulation of a

young

Aum

member, Shuji Taguchi,

Police believe this killing, ordered by Asahara,

Hayakawa was the man who tion. In 1975,

Hayakawa received

in February 1989.

was Aum's

eventually captured the

first

number-two

various architecture-related enterprises until 1986,

Aum

Shinri Kyo, a group called

a monastic the following year.

ership

abilities,

posi-

a master's degree in environmental plan-

ning from the architecture department of Osaka University.

cursor of

murder.

Aum

when he

Shinsen no

He worked

in

joined the pre-

Kai,

and became

Hayakawa was quickly recognized for his

lead-

distinguishing himself as director of the Osaka division of

20

Holy Terror: Armageddon

the sect.

same

He

later

in

Tokyo

Aum

became Construction Minister when

adopted the

organizational functions as the Japanese national government, an idea

which Hayakawa proposed

promotion

to Asahara. After his

command, Hayakawa began spending

second in

to

a lot of time in Russia developing

contacts there for the sect's militarization program. There were also that after the

Sakamoto murders, Hayakawa

tancing himself from involvement in

Hideo Murai, although

a relative

deliberately

seemed

rumors

to

be

dis-

Aum's lethal criminal activities. newcomer who entered an Aum com-

mune in mid-1989, had a meteoric ascent through the sect's ranks due to his scientific

background and brazen ambition. After graduating from the

physics department at Osaka University, he entered graduate school, where

he majored in astrophysics. In 1987, while working development department of Kobe craft,

an

he happened

for the research

where he conducted studies on

Steel,

and air-

one of Asahara's books. The next day he entered

to read

Aum commune with his wife, enrolling in a six-day Aum training course

at the

compound

parents that he

at

felt

existential bird in

would

Kamikuishiki. After completing the training he told his

had become

as if he

a

"Jonathan Livingston Seagull," the

Richard Bach's best-selling novel of the same name. Murai

become Aum's Minister of Science and Technology.

later

In selecting Hayakawa, Okazaki, and Murai for the death squad Asahara

knew he had

a loyal core

men

other two

whom

he could

trust to carry out his orders.

The

present were not high ranking, but their dedication to

Asahara was unquestioned. One of them, Tomomitsu Niimi, thirty-one,

would at the

later

be elevated to

meeting was

medical student

at

Home

Affairs Minister.

Tomomasa Nakagawa,

little

The

fifth

who

joined

person present

Aum while a

Kyoto Prefectural College of Medicine in February 1988.

After passing the national medical

cine for a

a doctor

exam

over a year, he took

in April

up residence

Kamikuishiki in August 1989. Asahara chose

1988 and practicing mediin the

him

Aum commune

for the

at

Sakamoto death

squad because he had medical expertise that would be used in the murders.

Nakagawa would

later

his primary duties ical care for

was

become head of the Household Agency, where one of to act as Asahara's personal doctor and provide med-

the guru's family.

There are conflicting versions of exactly what happened

meeting but most of the senior members present a circle with Asahara

who

was

Aum

trying to destroy

at this

stated matter-of-factly that the lawyer

Shinri Kyo

seminal

later told police they sat in

and must be eliminated

Sakamoto

in order to

Beware Beginnings: Murdering

most accounts

save the cult. By

it

Dangerous Man

a

took the group less than thirty minutes to

plan the death of Sakamoto. These

initial

plans included only the abduction

and murder of Sakamoto; there was no mention of harming

young

one account given

to

how he wanted

Sakamoto

casually

a

Asahara was quite

He

Hashimoto,

left

3,

the

now

1989, the group,

Aum compound

including martial-arts

in two cars

sect,

was Culture Day,

a

would

down

set the

into a

The

original

team

kill

in the

Meiji,

many

detail in their plan-

also a

is

whose government trans-

nation. In forgetting that

November 3 was

a hollist

of

coming hours.

murder plan

to wait for

for

the expressway toward

planners inadvertently added Sakamoto's wife and son to the

people they would

action

modern

tone for

major national holiday that

commemoration of the birthday of Emperor iday, the

and headed

was never one of Aum's strengths and

in planning

of the forays that followed. As they motored

formed Japan

kill

guru raised his hand and

Yokohama, the small group had overlooked an important 3

men to "take a man in five

ordered the

drug that can

recalled, the

major operation outside the

November

specific

fingers.

Yokohama. Excellence this, their first

to take place.

member

November

day,

to the police,

Nakagawa has

that, the

snapped his

The next specialist

murder

the

into a vehicle.

minutes." With

ning:

and

son.

According about

his wife

as laid out

Sakamoto

where he arrived each afternoon on

by Asahara called for the

the local train station in

at

his

Aum

Yokohama

way home. Hayakawa and Niimi had

him for the home, members of the

both met Sakamoto in an earlier legal session and could identify group.

As he walked out of the

team would snatch him off the

nesses and perhaps even police

getaway

car.

station

toward his

—in broad daylight with crowds of nearby— and bundle him quickly the

street

wit-

into

Speeding away from the scene, several team members would

hold Sakamoto

down

while Nakagawa injected

potassium chloride. They would then return

where they would burn the body and

him with

to the

a lethal dose of

Kamikuishiki

scatter the ashes.

The

idea

compound was

for the

troublesome Sakamoto to simply vanish from the face of the earth, never to be heard from again.

But as the group waited impatiently outside the forth in the brisk winter

air,

Sakamoto's usual

When darkness began to descend and he suspect something had gone wrong.

It

still

station,

arrival

pacing back and

time came and went.

hadn't appeared, they began to

was about

this

time that

it

dawned on

Holy Terror: Armageddon

one of them that

it

was

in

Tokyo

a national holiday. That led to the realization that the

young lawyer had probably not gone

home

to his office

but instead had stayed

with his family. Later in the evening, team-leader Hayakawa sent

Kazuaki Okazaki to inspect the Sakamoto apartment and determine

how the

group could gain entrance. In his reconnaissance, Okazaki

tried the

the darkened apartment and discovered to his surprise that

it

Hurrying back

to the

The Japanese

who

group he conveyed the good news.

police later learned that a hasty call

apartment,

to wait until 3 a.m., enter the

bring their bodies back to the

When

was made

to Asahara,

problem of the no-show lawyer and then ordered the

listened to the

team

door of

was unlocked.

the entire family, and

kill

Aum compound.

the police investigated the family's disappearance they said the

door showed no signs of forcible entry. They speculated that Satoko Sakamoto

was happy entry

is

to

have her husband

when

the door

home

for the

day and simply forgot to lock

the family went to bed. Further, residential breaking and

very rare in Japan and

it is

not so

doors unlocked. Whatever the reason,

uncommon for people to leave their

at 3 a.m. the

squad opened the apartment door, quietly slipped

Aum

inside,

Shinri Kyo death

and then began

its

brutal work.

When ing of

the

team

November

arrived back at the

4,

During that meeting the guru noted

was

if he

not say so

at

ill.

on the morn-

that

Nakagawa, the doctor who admin-

was pale and shaking. Asahara asked

Years later Nakagawa would confess that although he could

down inside he was "horrified" by murderhaunted him because he was the only member of the

the meeting, deep

ing an infant; guilt also

team who was personally involved depressed

early

they immediately briefed Asahara on the murders.

istered the poison to the Sakamotos,

him

Aum compound

the other

state,

in

all

three deaths. Concerned by his

members of the team

tried to cheer

him up by

praising his role in the killings to Asahara.

Discussion next turned to getting rid of the bodies. Originally they had

planned

Day

to

cremate Sakamoto, but due to the oversight about the Culture

holiday, they

large fire

would

now had

three bodies to burn and the guru

attract attention.

Within the next few years the

was

afraid a

cult solved its

growing body-disposal problem by purchasing an industrial-size microwave oven that a

it

adapted into an incinerator for the purpose. The bodies of at least

dozen or more

Aum members along with a number of victims outside the

cult are believed to

have been cremated in the device.

— Beware Beginnings: Murdering

Dangerous Man

a

After pondering the body problem for a few minutes, Asahara told the

group

to

wrap them

away from the

in blankets

and bury them

By burying the bodies

he hoped

far apart

graphical separation tion because each

body would be in

a different prefectural legal jurisdiction.

and the baby was interred

snowy regions facing the Japan

instructed,

it

police investiga-

buried, in Niigata Prefecture; his wife in adjacent

would be

six years

Sea.

Nagano

in nearby

Mount

All three prefectures are northeast of the cold,

postpone their discovery and

would further delay and confuse any

Thus Sakamoto was Prefecture;

to

chance they were uncovered, the geo-

identification as long as possible. If by

Toyama

in different prefectures well

Aum compound and as far away from each other as possible.

Prefecture.

and located

Fuji area

With the bodies buried

as

in

Asahara

before the Japanese police finally recovered

them, and only then because they were told where to look by members of the

Aum death squad. On November 9, after the team returned from burying the bodies, Asahara called

them

murders.

to a

meeting

at

which he personally thanked each one

justifying the infant's death

Sakamoto,

who was

assured the

killers that the

On November

by saying: "The child ended up not being raised by

trying to repeat

15,

bad deeds from a previous

Relatives

life."

He

baby would be "born again in a higher-level world."

the people of Japan

first

hama lawyer named Sakamoto had disappeared earlier.

for the

He spoke to them about the fourteen-month-old child they had killed,

heard the news that a Yokoalong with his wife and son.

and coworkers, of course, noticed the absence

—and the silence

Sakamoto's mother had telephoned the small apartment repeatedly

from November 4 through November

7,

and grew more worried

as each day

passed without an answer. Both Sakamotos kept in frequent touch with their relatives, especially their parents.

her parents and her in-laws to

tell

them

On November 2,

Satoko phoned both

that a vacation to the southern island

of Shikoku had been canceled because her husband was coming a cold

and had decided

o'clock in the evening

ing her for a

gift

to rest over the long holiday

on November

3,

appointments related

to his

would be staying overnight important paperwork.

after

Then

silence

the office

He

relative,

thank-

fell.

November 4 included

Japan Railway cases. at

weekend. At seven

Satoko called another

of apples that had arrived.

Sakamoto's work schedule

down with

several important

told his colleagues

on November 6

to

he

complete some

When he failed to show up at work or return calls, his

coworkers became concerned; Sakamoto was the reliable type.

24

Holy Terror: Armageddon

On November 7,

Sakamoto's deeply worried mother and an

went to the apartment

ciate

Tokyo

in

office asso-

They were extremely disturbed by what

together.

they found.

The door and lights

were

Sakamoto's

all

out. After suit

the

windows of the apartment were

making

their

way

in,

and company badge were

their clothes; the wallets of

locked,

and the

they found a perplexing scene.

in the closet, as

husband and wife were both

were the

there,

rest of

Sakamoto's

containing several ten-thousand-yen notes. His glasses were on the desk.

The

rice

cooker was on, and dirty dishes lay in the sink. The baby's diaper,

his stroller, car seat,

and carrying

sling

were

ding was missing as were their pajamas.

all

there. Oddly, their futon bed-

A dresser was

marred with

a

smear

of blood and on the threshold of the open closet was a badge from what was identified in press accounts for several days as "a certain

Shinri Kyo.

Nakagawa had dropped

new religion":

it.

Alarmed by what they had seen

in the apartment, Sakamoto's

who began an investigation that continued disappearance was made public on November 15.

called the police,

before the

Aum

mother

week

for a

While the public grew more intrigued by the mysterious disappearance of the Sakamoto family, Shoko Asahara was busy tying up loose ends. The English-language Mainichi Daily News reported that shortly after the murders Asahara called

all

the

members

a reading of the Japanese Penal

Held

of the death squad in to have them hear

Code

as

it

relates to

punishment

in the guru's personal quarters at the Kamikuishiki

members

attended, along with

Aum

Finance Minister Hisako

meeting, the Mainichi report stated, Asahara asked penalty was for

murder and she read aloud

for

murder.

compound, Ishii.

all six

At the

Ishii what the maximum

the provisions of the penal code

dealing with murder. During the meeting there was never any specific tion of the Sakamotos. Okazaki, said

who

men-

confessed to his part in the kidnapping,

he believes the purpose of the meeting was

to

make it

clear to those pre-

sent that they had committed a crime that carried the death penalty. The

Mainichi said police theorize that Asahara wanted to ensure unity action-squad police, all

members and

would

to tacitly indicate that if one

of them went to the

face the death penalty.

With the public announcement of the dance of the Japanese media, relatives began.

among the

On November

police,

family's disappearance, a strange

Aum, and Sakamoto's coworkers and

16, the

day after the announcement of Saka-

moto's disappearance, his law office held a news conference. Suspicions of

Beware Beginnings: Murdering

Aum's involvement

in the incident ran high

among Sakamoto's

but before they had a chance to speak they got a phone

denying any connection action if

Aum

call

associates,

from Aoyama

disappearance and threatening serious legal

to the

Shinri Kyo's

Dangerous Han

a

name was mentioned. The law

bowed

office

to

demand.

this

What followed was even more announce

the Tokyo Press Club to

mystifying. its

On November

own press

Aum called

18,

conference, to be held in an

apartment in Yokohama. They would answer questions about the Sakamoto incident

on the condition,

dictated by

Aoyama

at the outset, that neither per-

sonal names nor Aum Shinri Kyo would be mentioned in any reporting. The

Japanese press agreed, resulting in news reports that began, "A certain religion

announced today

that

it

had no involvement

new

in the disappearance of

the attorney Sakamoto."

However well.

been

Aum was

clumsily,

left at

its

tracks

perform

on other

It

was then

a deft public flip-flop.

several occasions that purusha

left to

fronts as

called a purusha,

the Sakamoto apartment, Asahara ordered a speedy

duction of the trinkets.

faith

busy covering

When it became known that an Aum lapel badge,

mass

had pro-

Aum spokesman Fumihiro Joyu to

Aum spokesmen and literature had stated on were only awarded

who had achieved a certain level

to serious

members of the

of spiritual attainment. But

at his

press

conference Joyu explained the presence of the badge by saying that they were

produced in great quantities and were commonly available not only

ple,

members of Aum.

from people outside the

In

fact,

he

sect for the badges.

the Soka Gakkai, another

new religion

for

said,

to all sorts

of peo-

Aum had received requests

He then went on to

suggest that

which Asahara exhibited

a special

Aum in the Aum would not cooper-

hatred, left the badge at the apartment to purposely implicate

disappearance. Joyu concluded by saying that while ate

with attorneys investigating the matter, they would cooperate with police.

The

police

were quick

The next day, November

to accept the offer,

but not quite quick enough.

Aum's cooperation with members, including Hayakawa, suddenly decided to embark on hastily scheduled "overseas propagation activities." They left Japan on November 21, effectively removing themselves from questioning. The police did not learn of their 19, they formally

requested

the investigation. Unfortunately, Asahara and other high-ranking

departure until after they were gone, and only then by witnesses at the port

who phoned Sakamoto's law

retinue.

office to report the

exodus of the

air-

Aum

25

Holy Terror: Armageddon

in

Tokyo

Despite posters, exhaustive media coverage, and the offer of a reward,

no

trace of the

Sakamoto family was

to

be found. Sakamoto's mother,

had found the empty apartment, continued each year increasing the sizes to

fit

a

to knit clothes for

growing

who

her grandson,

child. In the end,

it

was an

act

of faith and hope that went unrewarded. The Sakamoto family bodies were recovered in 1995.

Matsumoto's Miasma: A Nocturnal Prelude

They ule.

probably started It

rorists anxiously city

late to

begin with and then never got back on sched-

had been a busy day speeding

for the small

down

group of Aum Shinri Kyo

when

mountain

the expressway toward the

of Matsumoto. Somewhere in the rush they had they rolled into the outskirts of the scenic city

lost track it

was

ter-

of time, and

late in the after-

noon of June 27, 1994. They had come to Matsumoto to conduct a field test on the effectiveness of a new batch of sarin nerve gas that the sect's chemists had recently produced

in their lab near the slopes of

Mount

Fuji.

The plan

of attack, tossed together in a last-minute frenzy of discussion, was as bold as

it

was dumb. Not only was the

method of

its

dissemination

—a

sarin gas

new and

untried, but so

refrigerator truck the cult

had

adapted to spray the gas. Their confidence in both the gas and the

system ran high, and

all

that

remained was the

field test in

was the

specially

new

spray

Matsumoto

to

prove that both components worked.

They planned

to

park the truck directly outside the

located in the heart of downtown

major police headquarters

Matsumoto

—only

district

courthouse

a short distance

from a

—and then spray the sarin through the front doors

of the multistoried building to the rooms inside. They intended to do this in

27

— Holy Terror: Armageddon

Tokyo

in

broad daylight as large numbers of innocent people walked along the walk, entering and leaving the busy courthouse Predictably,

it

was

a legal matter that

The

the doors of the courthouse.

side-

and other buildings nearby.

brought Aum's nerve-gas team

to

targets selected for the sarin attack by

district court judges who were deciding a tangled Aum's purchase of a piece of land near Matsumoto

Shoko Asahara were three real-estate case involving

in

1

991.

The man who

sold the sect the property

had

filed a civil suit

charging the religious group with buying the land through a front company to

purposely keep

its

which meant

their

controversial sect facility

on the

The property owner and other

identity hidden.

were distressed because

Aum

was opening

a

young people might become

—and

by

Aum's

many

vory reputation and the

office

targets of recruitment by the

plans to construct a religious training

The unspoken core of their concern was the

land.

residents

Matsumoto branch

ugly rumors circulating about

unsa-

cult's

its

antisocial

behavior and strange practices. Most residents didn't care whether the

rumors were

true; their

They wanted

Aum

looked as for

if they

mere

existence

was quite enough

to stir opposition.

and

Shinri Kyo off the land and out of Matsumoto,

were about

many months, and

The

to get their wish.

the three judges were expected to

decision in mid-July. According to

many legal

it

now

case had been in litigation

hand down

their

observers, the sect's prospects

of winning the suit were not favorable.

One key trial

lawyer

who

did not like the

was Yoshinobu Aoyama, head

later,

legal counsel to sect leader

Aum Shinri Kyo's Justice Minister.

guru and advised him of the strong against them. But his disposal, rifying way. cials

now Asahara had

who were

In early June,

new and

a

strike

to police confessions

in the

Asahara and,

Aoyama met with the

possibility that the judges

one with which he could According

way things were shaping up

would

rule

extremely deadly weapon at

back

at his

made

later

tormentors in a hor-

by senior

Aum offi-

present at the meeting, the angry guru promptly ordered his

top aides to launch a sarin attack on the judges. If they were killed, he told the group, then they could not return a decision against the sect. For scientific test

and technical

staff the order presented

Aum's

an excellent opportunity

to

not only their latest technology for producing sarin, but also the truck

they had modified to disperse the toxic gas.

from experience, producing sarin was nating

it.

As they had

relatively easy

recently learned

compared

to dissemi-

Matsumoto's Miasma: A Nocturnal Prelude

The

human

sect's first abortive

attempt to

test their

new

weapon

gas

police that

Shoko Asahara personally ordered

against

members

targets occurred in the early spring of 1994. Senior

told

a sarin attack against Daisaku

Ikeda, the leader of the large Buddhist organization Soka Gakkai. Dressed in protective clothing, the

Aum

action squad conducting the operation parked

their specially converted truck outside the building in

was speaking and

activated the sarin-spraying

Tokyo where Ikeda

mechanism. But instead of

ejecting the deadly gas into the building as planned, the dispersal system

malfunctioned and caught

fire,

The group managed

the truck.

leaking gas fumes and acrid

to

escape unnoticed, but one

team was overcome by the nerve gas and had

to

be taken

to

smoke

inside

member

of the

an Aum-operated

hospital for treatment. Military chemical-warfare specialists familiar with sarin speculate that

the failure of

Aum's

first

spray system was probably due to a fault in the

mechanism that turns the liquid sarin into a sprayable gas. In its normal state at room temperature or lower, sarin is a liquid. Spraying it into the air the most effective dispersal method requires raising its temperas a gas ature, a process that is not only time consuming but extremely dangerous.

—

—

Developing a foolproof dispersal system had plagued Aum's Science and

Technology Ministry for months, but gradually they learned from their past mistakes. In the weeks following the abortive attack scientists

went back

to their

on Soka Gakkai, Aum's

drawing boards and developed a new computer-

controlled spraying system that contained three tanks to hold the liquid sarin, a heater to generate the right

vapor,

and

a fan to disperse the

compound Fuji.

built the device at their

located next to the farming village of Kamikuishiki near

When

it

was completed, Aum's technicians

two-ton, white refrigerator truck that ratus. All that

Asahara

temperatures to produce the deadly

atomized agent. They

remained was

at the

was modified

installed the

to conceal the

a target for a field test,

On the afternoon of Monday,

Aum

some

compound

sixty

est batch

new

appa-

and with the mercurial

group's helm, that was not long in coming.

June 27, the new sarin truck, accompanied

by a rented black station wagon which served as a lookout the

Mount

system in a

at

car,

pulled out of

Kamikuishiki and headed directly for Matsumoto,

miles away. In the tanks on board the truck was the group's

of sarin, manufactured only ten days before in

processing lab

at

Aum's

lat-

nerve-gas

Satyam Number 7 in the main compound next

to

29

Holy Terror: Armageddon

in

Tokyo

The nerve gas was made by Masami Tsuchiya, chief of Aum's chemical team and a subordinate of Hideo Murai, the sect's ambitious Kamikuishiki.

Minister of Science and Technology. Asahara liked the bold and confidant

Murai and had personally selected him

En route alter the

again to

numbers on

when attack

Matsumsoto. to

the vehicle's license tags with spray paint, and then

they purchased several workmen's uniforms that they planned

use as disguises.

noon

to lead the attack in

group was delayed when they stopped

to their target city the

It

on the

was those two stops

district

that

made them late

for their after-

courthouse. Both stops undoubtedly saved the

many innocent people who happened

be in or near the large building that

to

afternoon. But one of fate's fickle trade-offs resulted in the deaths of seven equally innocent victims

neighborhood not

in a quiet

far away.

Matsumoto, "the River in

and the injury of hundreds of others

city

of mountains,"

sits

Nagano Prefecture on Japan's main

the soaring peaks of the Japanese Alps,

beside the banks of the Takase island of

Honshu. Flanked by

two hundred thousand residents

its

quietly live their lives in the best of both worlds, a scenic rural setting that

is

most of the creature comforts of a big

its

also blessed with

breath-taking beauty and the fact that

somehow remains

Tokyo, Matsumoto tional tourists.

The

city's

it's

But despite

off the beaten track for

dominant feature and main

known

sixteenth-century feudal fortress

city.

only three hours by train from

as

locally

most

interna-

tourist attraction

is

a

"Crow's Castle"

the

because of its black stone walls. Declared a national treasure by the govern-

ment, the four-hundred-year-old

castle is

bathed in light

at night, a starkly

beautiful reminder of Matsumoto's ancient samurai past.

Like late

many

regional Japanese cities during the "bubble

1980s, Matsumoto was eager to expand

tourism income, so the

city fathers

paign to modernize the to

promote the

to organize to lay it

city

city's

came

embarked on

appeal.

in 1990,

its

The

first

a discreet

festival in

promotional cam-

Seiji

Ozawa agreed

Matsumoto, allowing the

claim to being the Tanglewood of Japan. Another big break came

was decided

that the

and

important step in their drive

when famed conductor

an annual classical-music

economy" of the

cultural attractions

city

when

1998 Winter Olympics would be held on the snow-

capped mountains nearby, an event that promises Matsumoto greater promi-

nence on the international

tourist

map. With Ozawa appearing annually and

the Olympics in the offing, things were looking June, 1994. But the

month was not

over

up

for

—not by a long

Matsumoto

shot.

in late

Matsumoto's Miasma: A Nocturnal Prelude

FUKUSHIMA

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Japan Sea

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1

I

/

TOYAMA

Nagano

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CIFU

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'

/

TOCHIGI

cunma

.

Matsumoto

/

N

SAITAMA

\

X

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/

NAGANO

/

j

YAMANASHI TMmM.NM^r,.

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-Kofu

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tokyo

^

.Funabashi Tokyo Bay

C hiba

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•

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Kamikuishiki

Yokohama

KANAGAWA n

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"--/

Chiba Peninsula (

—

.

Fujinomiya-

Miura Peninsula

SHIZUOKA /

aichi

Shizuoka

Izu Peninsula

Pacific

Map

of Central Honshu, the region of greatest activity by

Any

lingering hopes for the success of the

Aum

Aum

Ocean

Shinri Kyo.

team's plan to spray

sarin through the front doors of the district courthouse vanished

tardy group arrived

already

left for their

on the scene well

when

the

By then the judges had

lodgings in a government apartment house located a

quarter-mile away. At that point a ist

after 5 p.m.

group would have called

it

more experienced and

a day

and gone home

professional terror-

to critique their

problems and await a more favorable opportunity. But the

Aum

timing

team was

not composed of professionals. At best, they were a group of lucky amateurs led by a

man who was

ministry's science

singularly determined to prove the effectiveness of his

and technology. That

leader,

Hideo Murai, meant

to carry

out the orders of his guru, and no small detail like being a few minutes late

Holy Terror: Armageddon

was going

Tokyo

him. In that regard, he had the solid support of his team,

to stop

a group that

in

Murai had been

like

As he did with most of the

carefully selected.

sect's terrorist operations,

Shoko Asahara, in

consultation with his senior ministers, personally chose each

group making the

men with skills

field test in

Matsumoto. His selection

in martial arts, driving ability,

and

member of the

criteria called for

total loyalty to

the sect.

As

events that night would prove, Asahara's most important decision was to

appoint Murai as the attack team leader. Murai was considered by

be the sect's nominal

some

number-two leader under Asahara, even though

to

that

post was officially held by Kiyohide Hayakawa. Widely recognized and feared

within

who

Aum, Murai had up

liked to stir

devoted his

determined and aggressive leader

a reputation as a

trouble for other people.

No one doubted

carrying out Asahara's orders, although later

life to

bers would describe Murai to the police as

Aum's

that

he had

some mem-

war criminal." In

"biggest

him to head the Matsumoto team, the guru was certain he had chosen someone who would not falter in the face of adversity. appointing

Three days before the courthouse and

its

attack,

Murai went

surroundings for

During that time he happened

sites

to

Matsumoto

from which

Monday

launch the sarin.

to

to learn the location of the

ing where the judges lived. That small bit of information

to case the

apartment build-

became

crucial

on

when he faced the prospect of either failing in his mission new attack plan. Dreading the idea of returning to compound and telling Asahara they had failed, he decided to

evening,

or quickly improvising a the

Aum

release the sarin at the judges' apartment building.

Gathering his six-man team together in the parking ket near the judges' quarters,

lot

of a supermar-

Murai briefed them on the new plan

changed into the work uniforms they'd bought and made ready phase.

A

men

for the final

quick check of the truck's dispersal system showed that everything

was ready was

as the

to go.

But there was one element they

one

a vitally important

Unlike capability.

many

still

had

to consider,

and

it

—the weather.

other weapons, nerve gas does not have an "all-weather"

Conditions must be exactly right to successfully carry out a gas

attack in the

open

air,

and nothing

As the long summer evening faded

is

more

soggy, gray skies hanging low over the right conditions.

He

sniffed the

wind had been moving

critical

into night,

air;

city,

than the wind direction.

Murai anxiously scanned the patiently waiting for just the

the outward signs were not good.

gently, but in the

wrong

direction.

Then

The

shortly after

Matsumoto's Miasma: A Nocturnal Prelude

10:30 p.m.

it all

came

together.

The

soft northwesterly current

slightly, shifted steadily to the west, "It

was not even

may. But

it

and stayed

a breeze," a city meteorologist

was enough

to

slowed ever so

there.

would

later

convince Hideo Murai that the right

note in dis-

moment had

arrived.

Monday

Before that

evening, none of the residents of

very few of the citizens of greater Japan

Matsumoto and

had ever heard the word

"sarin."

Among the truly innocent in Matsumoto was an industrial-machinery salesman named Yoshiyuki Kono. But like everyone else in Matsumoto and Japan, Kono was poised on the edge of a night was over his

The new

life

cruelly steep learning curve,

would be changed

attack site selected by

and before the

forever.

Murai was a small public parking area in

the quiet, middle-class neighborhood of Kita Fukashi. First the small group

and

inside the spray truck changed into protective suits

gloves, but before

buttoning up they injected themselves with a precautionary sarin antidote.

Next they put special plastic breathing bags over their heads connected to small, portable

pumps

that injected fresh air into the bags through tubes at

the bottom. But like so

another of the great

much

unknowns

else about the operation, the air bags

facing the team.

were

No one really knew how well

the headgear would perform if the sarin leaked inside the truck. Finally, cov-

ered from head to toe and looking something like astronauts, they were

ready to begin. All business in his leadership

role,

Murai wasted no time in

activating the heater to transform the liquid sarin into a gas.

Once

that

was

accomplished he switched on the computer system that began spraying the toxic

warm night air outside. move, Hideo Murai became the man who launched

fumes from the atomizer nozzle

With world's

that

into the

the

first ultraterrorist attack.

The gas apartments,

left

the truck's nozzle and

some

thirty feet away.

Or

moved on so

its

path toward the judges'

Murai thought. But shortly before

Murai turned on the spray nozzle, the wind again changed

moving slowly west from the launch course, sending the sarin spraying direction.

That was

just the

Satoru Hashimoto,

Sakamoto murders, was

site, it

direction. Initially

suddenly shifted to a northerly

from the truck swirling off in the wrong

beginning of the disaster that would follow.

Aum

martial-arts specialist

driver of the sarin truck

see everything during the attack.

He would

and

and

a veteran of the

in the best position to

later confess to police that the

team spent nearly twenty minutes on the edge of the parking

lot

spraying

33

34

Holy Terror: Armageddon

in

Tokyo

from the dispersal system's three heated containers,

sarin

tion of

wrong

drifting off in the

it

all

but a small por-

Tomomasa Nakagawa, Aum's

direction.

Household Agency chief and another member of the Sakamoto death squad,

was

also present during the attack.

Matsumoto had added

He

told police that the sarin

a cobalt blue color because too

to the mixture, creating

ride evaporated in the

warm

hydrogen

air

outside

much

fluoride. it

When

it

at

the hydrogen fluo-

huge cloud of

instantly created a

white vapor that surrounded the truck before

used

isopropyl alcohol was

floated off.

The

large white

cloud enveloping the truck also attracted the attention of residents in the

neighborhood. Later they told police they had seen a "big white mist" and two people clad in "space suits" near the parking

lot

on the night of the

The appearance of the white mist was undoubtedly

attack.

the point at which

panic took a firm hold on the action squad. Frightened by the mist

alarmed above

the probability of being spotted by neighborhood residents,

at

all,

itself,

terrified that they

were about

to

become engulfed

and

in the nerve gas

they had just released, the group departed the neighborhood at high speed.

As he sped from

the parking

into a concrete pillar

But

car.

it

was

left to

on the

lot,

the agitated driver of the lookout vehicle ran

side of the street, slightly

damaging the

team-leader Murai's group in the truck to

worse mistake. In their haste

rental

make an even

to get away, they forgot to replace the

cap on

the nozzle of the sarin spray device.

As they sped through the narrow, dimly

public streets near the launch

deadly nerve gas poured out of the noz-

lit

zle

and

into the night

air.

site,

Fortunately, only a small

sarin tanks, but even that small

amount was

amount was enough

to sicken a

left

in the

number of

residents along the group's exit route.

The kuishiki

terrorist

team

left

the city immediately, heading back to the Kami-

compound. En route they

called

code to inform him of the successful

descending upon

mare was slowly had

Asahara and used a prearranged

attack.

Behind them

just attacked.

In the

first

few minutes

after the

team departed, the

primary mission. Though the wind had shifted sending erful

it

slightly

fumes

seriously. lives

a horrifying night-

the residents of the neighborhood they

began

its

to spray,

north of the judges' apartment house, enough of the pow-

drifted into the building to sicken

There

sarin achieved

just as the gas

is little

all

three of them, one quite

doubt that the change in wind direction spared the

of the judges and the other residents in their building. Others were not

so fortunate.

Matsumoto's Miasma: A Nocturnal

A fifteen-year-old student named in her school newspaper,

Kayoko Meguro recounted the gassing

which was reprinted by the mass-circulation

newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun. At the time of the with her family on the second

floor of

Company. The

Meiji Life Insurance

Prelude

The young

judges' apartment house.

Meguro was

attack,

daily

living

an apartment house owned by the

Meiji building student's

first

located next to the

is

symptom was

a bout of

severe coughing. "After a coughing

room

to gargle,"

fit

in the living

room

n

at

p.m.,

went

I

into the bath-

she wrote. "All of a sudden the lights were half as bright as

they usually were.

dropped some eye drops into

I

my

eyes but they did not

heal."

She went

to

bed shortly

ambulance siren

outside.

after that

Then

and

recalls

hearing the loud wail of an

she was about to

at 11:30, as

asleep, she

fall

heard a voice speaking on a megaphone outside her building. a gas leak," the voice

announced

urgently, "those of you

are feeling unwell should notify the

ambulance

officer nearest you."

"There

Aware dressed,

is

that

something unusual was happening, Meguro

and went

left

who

her bed,

apartments in the building to wake the residents

to other

there.

"The only resident who did not wake," she continued, "was one living on

We opened the door with a master key with my father. [Mr.] 'E' was not moving in

the third floor.

apartment

.

was in the bathroom on the north

A dead.

.

.

and

I

entered the

the bathtub, which

side [of the building]."

medical technician checked the man's pulse and pronounced

The "Mr. E"

in

Meguro's account was

a Meiji Life Insurance

Company employee. The

room were open. Meguro's

him

forty-five-year-old Tetsuji Enokida,

small windows in his bath-

symptom of sarin poimore than

vision problems, a classic

soning, worsened later that evening and she was hospitalized for

week. Sixteen-year-old Shingo

Fukazawa

left

his

tainer of juice at a nearby convenience store.

noticed that the air

I

at 11 p.m. to

When

buy

a con-

he went outside, he

seemed smoggy.

"After walking a

stung and

home

felt like

little

while," he said,

"I

started feeling dizzy.

throwing up." Later he became extremely

ill

My

eyes

and was

hospitalized.

The best-known victim of the Matsumoto gassing he remembers

it,

is

Yoshiyuki Kono. As

the evening of Monday, June 27, started out like any other

35

Holy Terror: Armageddon

in his at

life.

He had

Tokyo

in

put in a long day

with a cold beer to read the newspaper until 10 to

home from work Then he settled down when the couple decided

returning

at the office,

8 p.m. to eat a light dinner of rice pilaf with his wife. p.m.,

watch a television program, a cabaret on the government-sponsored

work NHK. The Kono

children, a son

and

Quiet, reflective,

many

like

racy of details, Kono's personal

member

reads like a laundry

life

relatives,

tant societal squares. Indeed, there

and

he

friends,

was nothing

home on

devoted to his

hard working, unflinchfills all

of Japan's impor-

men and women

until the

June 27.

The Kono family residence two-story, traditional

of what makes a

class,

in Kono's life to distinguish

millions of other law-abiding Japanese

sarin swept into his

list

of Japanese society. Solidly middle

company,

ingly loyal to his

It is

teenagers, were

salesmen, keenly attentive to the accu-

wife, a caring father of three well-behaved children,

him from

all

rooms studying.

upstairs in their

responsible

and two daughters,

net-

is

large by Japanese standards, a rambling,

wooden house

set

on the edge of a spacious, treed

lot.

surrounded by boxlike multistoried apartment houses and company

dormitories on one side, and on the other by a script residential

occupies pride of place in in dark ceramic

samurai

tiles, is

past, the

its

is

a large,

The garden

is

easily

neighborhood. The roof of the house, covered

the dominant feature. In a

bow

Japanese character for the Kono family

bas relief on the end of the

house

number of smaller, nonde-

homes. Though not luxurious, the Kono residence

to the region's rich

name

is

molded

in

extending over the eaves. In front of the

tiles

manicured garden

amid

that sits placidly

tall,

leafy trees.

interspersed with decorative rocks placed in traditional Japa-

nese fashion and includes a small pond near the boundary of the Kono property.

The back edge of the Kono

waist-high wire fence.

On the

property, near the pond,

other side of the fence

in a public parking area easily approached by car

Approximately

thirty feet

district

hemmed

from the adjoining is

court judges lived.

in

by a

streets.

the government

The easy

access-

of the public parking area on the edge of Kono's property and the close

proximity of the judicial apartment house for

is

a cul-de-sac that ends

from the parking area

apartment house where the three ibility

is

Hideo Murai and

his team.

made

it

an

ideal gas-spraying site

They had no trouble finding parking space

for their vehicles.

The

NHK cabaret program ended at eleven and the couple were prepar-

ing to go to bed

when Kono heard

a strange, scratching noise in the garden.

Matsumoto's Miasma: A Nocturnal Prelude

Kaichi Heights 3 dead, 12 injured

Matsumoto Rex Heights 3 dead, 7 injured

Parking sarin

lot

Meiji Life Insurance

from which

1

was released

Dormitory

dead, 3 injured

Kono residence

The scene

at

the

Matsumoto

sarin attack.

Stepping outside, he found his setter dog squirming on the ground in agony.

Looking closer in the dim

light,

he saw that white foam specked with blood

was oozing from her mouth. Alarmed, Kono spoke "Hold on,

softly to the stricken dog:

girl."

Hurrying back inside the house, he got some water and returned the dog dead, along with her puppy,

whose body

lay nearby.

by the dogs' violent deaths, Kono immediately decided to "Mother!" he yelled back inside to his wife, police.

"I

to find

Extremely upset

summon the police.

think

we should

Mother!" But the interior of the house was ominously

silent.

call

the

37

38

Holy Terror: Armageddon

Tokyo

in

Quickly returning to the living room, he found his wife writhing in pain

on the

floor,

to assist

her body twitching violently in muscular convulsions.

tried

her by loosening her clothes, but as he worked the spasms became

much more

grabbing the phone, Kono called for an

violent. Frantically

ambulance, then yelled upstairs for his children the few seconds

and

his breathing

his eyesight

to

come down

quickly. In

took the children to reach the living room, Kono himself

it

was suddenly overwhelmed. He had ning,

He

a severe headache, his

became labored and

was fragmenting, breaking

lights in the living

room grew

difficult.

nose was run-

Most frightening of all,

into kaleidoscopic pieces as the

he was dying, he

darker. Panicking, certain

reached for his son's hand.

"Mom

and Dad might not make

it

through

this,"

he told the frightened now on, son."

youth. "You're going to have to take care of things from

Kono's

call for

help was the

first in

the flood of tortured cries

neighborhood recorded that night by medics,

emergency teams

that

police,

from

and firemen. The

his

first

poured into the area witnessed a scene of mass con-

fusion and terror. Scores of men,

women, and

about drunkenly in the dark

while others were fully prostrate on the

sidewalks, unable to

move

streets,

or unconscious.

children were staggering

Many were wheezing and

gasp-

ing hard for breath, vomiting, coughing blood, unable to see, crying out in

agony

for help.

somewhere

The emergency crews

initially

in the neighborhood. But as the

assumed

there

number of

was

a gas leak

casualties steadily

grew, the doctors noted with increasing alarm that what they were seeing

and hearing were not the usual symptoms associated with

And how were

then what?

gas,

a gas leak. If not

the injured to be treated? Meanwhile, there

were the growing numbers of victims, some already dead. Blood

tests quickly

taken from the

gave the baffled medics their

first

first

persons to arrive

important clues. The

victims had abnormally low levels of cholinesterase, an electrical signals

through the body's nervous system.

esterase levels were

down by

vision, this is a another

twenty-five to

fifty

at

the hospital

tests revealed the

enzyme

Some

that carries

patients' cholin-

percent. Like diminished

prime indication of sarin poisoning, though

be two weeks before doctors could put a

name to the deadly gas.

it

would

In the mean-

time they treated the victims for organic phosphorous poisoning. The standard antidote for that

is

the

same

as for sarin: injections of atropine.

Before the night was over, the doctors in Matsumoto's hospitals would treat

more than

five

hundred victims and

hospitalize fifty-nine of them. But

Matsumoto's Miasma: A Nocturnal

some were already beyond medical morning there were seven bodies in

Among

tims of nerve gas.

When

help.

Prelude

came up the next all of them vic-

the sun

Matsumoto morgue,

the

the luckiest Japanese survivors of the sarin attack

was the one who would become best known, Yoshiyuki Kono.

The batch of sarin produced by Aum's chemists

Matsumoto

for the

test

proved to be extremely pure, and as with most nerve agents, the purer the gas the ity

more

lethal

its effects.

In a macabre twist of fate, the stunning lethal-

may have

of the sarin unleashed in Matsumoto

inadvertently saved the

lives

of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of Tokyo subway riders nine months

later.

The potency of the Matsumoto agent surprised even Hideo Murai. In

one of his

of the attack, he forcefully told chief chemist

first critiques

Tsuchiya that the gas was "too dense, too in the future.

of future

toxic,"

and ordered him

No humanitarian, Murai was undoubtedly thinking

to dilute

it

of the lives

Aum dispersal teams when he gave the order to his head chemist.

Nonetheless, the people he really saved were the innocent citizens of

Tokyo. But

how

did the deadly gas find

its

victims once

it

was dispersed

in

Matsumoto? Released on the edge of Kono's property, the odorless and invisible sarin at first

remained low on the ground

as

it

crept silently forward

Kono

wafting through the trees in the garden, then into the Swirling round,

in,

and past the house,

it

air,

climbed slowly

it

eventually to disperse, but not before

sonous fumes entered the upper floors of the concrete buildings. the gas did

who

its

most deadly work. The

becoming only mildly

Kono was

ground

at

tend his dying dogs. This ing

afflicted in the

died or were seriously injured, had their

their air-conditioners on. People in ter,

him from

full

were not enough

were enough others.

ill

if

may have

exposure to the gas. Even

him from being

to avoid the direct

its

poi-

was there

neighborhood, those or

rooms with the windows closed fared bet-

they were affected at

activity

It

windows and doors open

level as the gas spread,

to prevent

residence.

then pushed up against the walls

of the dormitories and apartment buildings nearby, where

upward on the warm night

on the breeze

all.

moving back and

saved his

life

by

so, his location

stricken,

forth to

partially shield-

and movements

though they apparently

exposure that killed or permanently injured

His wife, inside the house the entire time, was not nearly so lucky.

After being sickened by the gas, a deathlike trance.

He

recalls

Kono remembers events

wandering out

to the street,

as if he

was

in

knocking in slow

motion on the window of the ambulance, thinking perhaps of food poisoning,

39

40

Holy Terror: Armageddon

Tokyo

in

speaking slowly, deliberately, and desperately to the attendants inside:

"I-ate-

rice-pilaf-for-dinner. "

Inside the ambulance, speeding to the hospital, he

ited uncontrollably.

Then he watched

keeping her

failing heart,

coma from which she

is

own

"What's happening to me?!" His

someone, "If the police tree. "

Then

woman on voice

his wife's

she would slide into a

swarming

a stretcher scream-

seemed

don't need the dogs for evidence, bury

be saying to

to

them under

the lilac

the painful muscular spasms that had seized his wife took

in their grasp,

whipping through the

remain in the hospital

for

entire length of his body.

more than

him

He would

thirty days struggling to regain his

But long before he was released, Yoshiyuki Kono discovered his prob-

health.

lems were police

later

unlikely to ever recover. In the hospital

with victims, he heard the terrified voice of a ing,

pumped

in fear as medics

even though

alive,

vom-

just beginning. Less

than a day

Matsumoto

after the attack, the

and the news media had targeted him

as their

prime suspect in the

gassing.

The Japanese National Police were quick to respond Eventually more than three hundred investigators fanned out

to the crisis.

across Matsu-

moto, interviewing victims, taking chemical samples, talking

They seemed

to

miss nothing, but in

thing, at least as far as Yoshiyuki

an indiscriminate

nature,

is

insects,

and plant

life

reality they

missed

Kono was concerned.

Sarin gas, by

large

killer. It kills birds,

to residents.

practically everyits

very

and small animals,

with the same relentless efficiency that

it

kills

humans.

In Matsumoto, the gas killed pigeons, insects, and even the carp and crayfish in Kono's small garden pond. But

it

was the dead plants

that intrigued the police investigators

and

first

Plants exposed to sarin quickly wither, then turn

gas had carved a small swath of dead,

was one thing the

and

that

feet

behind the Kono's property

brown

to his bedside.

brown and

die.

come up with an immediate

The deadly

foliage across Kono's garden,

from

a point a

few

the

trail

of dead foliage pointed a pow-

one of the

first

victims of the attack.

line,

Despite Kono's impeccably normal

life, if

the

Matsumoto

police

had

to

suspect for the gas attack, they couldn't hope to

find a better-qualified candidate. All the leads

The gas was

drew them

police did not miss. Leading

erfully incriminating finger at

in Kono's garden

seemed

released just behind his property, but not

repeatedly point out to police and journalists.

to point

on

He would

it,

tell

again that the track of dead, wilted foliage clearly showed that several feet across his property line. But the police

toward him.

Kono would them time and as

it

was released

and reporters simply nod-

Miasma: A Nocturnal

Matsu moto's

ded when he made his defensive points. Kono, the worse

to get for

company

the

more

salesman

as a

Though he had

in Kyoto.

before, the police noted

And

the police looked at

him. The police background check

Kono had previously worked

revealed that

ufacturing

seemed

it

Prelude

ominously that he

left

still

for a

chemical man-

that job six or seven years

had

a license to handle haz-

ardous chemicals. Even more incriminating was the cache of chemicals they

found on his property. Because he had been the

first to call for

help on the night of the attack,

and because the gas had been released near his property, the day gassing the police took a search warrant to Kono's

after the

home and seized what one

Among

detective described to the press as a "treasure trove" of chemicals.

was

the chemicals sarin.

Kono

a

form of cyanide, one of the ingredients used

repeatedly protested his innocence, explaining over

that the chemicals

were

hobby of photography. But no one seemed

As the Japanese

how

to

for

He

for his

swore he hadn't touched them in a year or more.

be listening.

rumors began

accidentally

make

and again

mixing insecticides for his garden and

investigation proceeded in the slow, methodical

police,

to

way of the

spread in Matsumoto that Kono had some-

to

brewed a batch of poisonous

gas. Largely

stemming from

public statements and leaks to the Japanese press by the police, the rumors

became

so persistent that Yoshiyuki

a pariah in his

Kono was

well

on

his

way

to

becoming

own community.

But in their pursuit of prime suspect Kono, the police and the media had overlooked or ignored several important attack, police

new and alarming. The of home chemicals, but

thing tion

requires a

details. Just

chemical analysis of the traces gas

left

over a

after the

was not some accidental deadly combina-

sarin, a

complex nerve agent. To produce

sound knowledge of organic chemistry and

rather sophisticated equipment.

week

by the gas revealed some-

Any good

it

a laboratory with

organic chemist in Japan could

have told the police and the media that their accidental insecticide theory contained three robust contradictions. First,

even though sarin

is

old technology,

untrained chemist to accidentally

Kanagawa University Professor

make

it.

it is all

but impossible for an

One week

after the

attack,

Keiichi Tsuneishi, a scientist familiar with

the gases used in chemical weapons, bluntly told the press that sarin could

not be

made accidentally "by mixing chemicals." Science University of Tokyo more direct. He said the possibility of

Professor Shunji Ishikura was even

42

Holy Terror: Armageddon

in

Tokyo

making sarin was about the same as makes sense while playing with a word

monkey

accidentally

"a

tence that

processor."

Second, the cyanide notwithstanding,

impossible to

it is

the "treasure trove" of chemicals seized by police at Kono's

writing a sen-

make

sarin with

home. The nec-

essary ingredients for producing a nerve gas simply weren't there.

production of sarin requires the knowledge of a graduate-

Finally, the level organic

chemist

who

has access to a laboratory with special equipment.

probably safe to say that in the entire

It is

and equipment needed

to

make

sarin

of Matsumoto, the chemicals

city

were not

time for the Japanese police and the press

to

available.

But

it

took a long

uncover and absorb these

In the meantime, traces of the deadly gas surfaced again, once

most unlikely

facts.

more

in a

place.

In July the residents of Kamikuishiki, a small farming village near the front range of

Mount

Fuji,

complained

to police

smells that were coming from the sprawling located next door to them. lagers, rural

Aum's

reclusive sect.

compound

of Aum Shinri Kyo

property abutted the village and the

and conservative, had grown

They wanted them

about strange, offensive

to actively dislike the strange

vil-

and

out.

When the police came to investigate the complaint,

the villagers pointed

out places near the cult property where vegetation had mysteriously died.

They thought

it

might be connected somehow

from the compound. The and then

ples,

taken cal

at

left.

What

police listened politely,

the police learned

Kamikuishiki was that the

compounds used

months

later,

on

tant discovery.

in the

New It

to the strange smells

soil

made

coming

notes, took soil

sam-

from analysis of the samples

contained trace elements of chemi-

manufacture of

But

sarin.

it

would be

five

Year's Day, 1995, before Japan learned of this impor-

was then

that the following carefully

worded report

appeared in the Yomiuri Shimbun: "Traces of an organic phosphorous com-

pound

that could have resulted

from sarin [have been] detected

kuishiki, a small village at the foot of

Mount

Fuji.

.

.

.

in

Kami-

Police suspect sarin

could have been produced in Kamikuishiki about twelve days after Matsu-

moto's poisoning incident."

By now in sleepy

it

had

to

be self-evident that

Matsumoto and found

if a

nerve gas had been unleashed

in the volcanic soil

on the slope of sacred

Mount Fuji then the deadly gas just might turn up anywhere. The Japanese police were also realizing that Yoshiyuki Kono was

a very

slender reed on which to hang the deadly events that occurred in Matsumoto.

Matsumoto's Miasma: A Nocturnal Prelude

Yet they kept Kono on the books as a suspect in the investigation, though they

made no move

to arrest

him. The distinction

is

a critical

In the eyes of most Japanese, being arrested by the police to a verdict

of guilty in a court of law. There

public conviction.

The Japanese

in Japan.

tantamount

solid evidence to support this

from making

The primary reason

for this

high

arrests until they're positive their

case will produce a conviction in court. Despite the police failure to arrest

is

police have a ninety-nine-percent arrest-con-

viction rate, easily the highest in the world. rate is that the police refrain

is

one

Kono spoke volumes

rumors of his

guilt,

the

to the perceptive.

Yoshiyuki Kono would have to wait almost a year for complete vindication.

When

laid to rest.

it

came, the ugly accusations and rumors about him were

In the process,

news media and

He

still

Kono

received

more

police than any other Japanese citizen in recent

lives in his

home

finally

public apologies from the

in the Kita Fukashi district of

memory.

Matsumoto, and his

wife remains in a coma. In the unlikely event she ever recovers, she will be

permanently blinded.

43

The Dawn of Ultraterrorism

urn Shinri Kyo's sudden emergence as the world's only

A

rorist

group

is

a

phenomenon

that

most Japanese find hard

stand. "Ultraterrorism" or "ultraterrorist"

terrorist

weapons

known

is

biological,

to under-

mean any

defined here to

group that possesses or uses chemical,

—weapons of mass destruction—

ultrater-

or nuclear

for political purposes.

The

idea

that a religious

group would unleash weapons of mass destruction on inno-

cent people

both foreign and incomprehensible in a nation that prides

itself

on the

came

along,

is

safety of its streets

most Japanese,

ered themselves try.

whom

shrines. That

same

if

its

famously low crime

they thought about

to religious terrorism

Extreme religious fervor

most of

is

an

and highly

—

it

at

all,

rate.

Until

probably consid-

at least in their

own

coun-

attitude largely unfamiliar to the Japanese,

an individual's or group's religious passion could

is

Aum

worship privately in the sedate calm of their temples and

violent emotions as political ideology

This view ist

immune

and

common

is

ignite the

a very strange notion.

elsewhere besides Japan. Although some extrem-

now getting more attention new phenomenon is still not peace and order in many parts of the

politicized religious factions are

in the media, the coverage of this relatively

comparable

to the challenge

it

poses to

world. But whether in Asia, the Middle East, or elsewhere, religious zealotry

45

46

Holy Terror: Armageddon

and

politics,

in

Tokyo

when blended together, almost always

of emotions that are

difficult to

result in a

dogmatic brew

contain and control.

Late in the eighteenth century America's founders recognized this prob-

lem by including

a

number of safeguards

in the U.S. Constitution to insure

the separation of church and state. Other nations were not so fortunate, and the inevitable clash between politicized religious extremists and the state is

a

growing trend that will extend well into the twenty-first century. To under-

stand the increasingly aggressive role of religious politics in contemporary life, consider the recent impact

it

has had in the dark arena of terrorist violence.

was not

Thirty years ago, in 1965, there

anywhere sixty-four

a single religious terrorist

in the world. Fifteen years later, in 1980, only

known

terrorist organizations

number of groups has climbed

to

had

group

two of the world's

a religious basis. Since then the

more than

a dozen, all of them driven

by

religious rather than political zealotry. Located in such diverse areas as

Europe, North America, the South Asian subcontinent, Northeast Asia, and the Middle East, these extremist religious groups include Christian white

supremacists, radical Jews, militant Sikhs, and most threatening of

all,

Islamic fundamentalists.

The dynamic hard core of modern-day

religious terrorism

is

located in

the militant Islamic groups operating in and out of the Middle East and

North Africa. Fanatically dedicated will enforce

imposing Islamic governments that

to

"God's law" as revealed by their fundamentalist interpretations

of the Koran, they are the most pervasive and deadly religion-based terrorist

groups operating in the world today. Anti-Western, and in particular

anti-

American, the Islamic radicals have in recent years pushed well beyond their traditional areas of activity

and the once

"terrorist-free

ist

Muslim

all

but paralyzed the

nate

terrorists

bombing As the

they have

and

are

attacking targets in Western Europe

zone" of the United

who bombed city

now the

States.

It

was fundamental-

World Trade Center

of Paris during a

in

summer campaign

New York and of indiscrimi-

attacks in 1995.

limits of their operational ability have

become decidedly more

expanded

effective. U.S. State

steadily outward,

Department counter-

terrorist experts recently reported that while the overall incidence of terrorism

has declined in the past few years, the death and injury rate in individual attacks has increased.

number of these

The spread of religious terrorism accounts

for a large

deadly operations. Terrorist attacks conducted by extrem-

Dawn

The

ists

of the

Muslim

were responsible

Shiite sect

for

Ultraterrorism

of

more than

a quarter of all

deaths from terrorism in the past fifteen years. International terrorism experts

and

growing number of academic and

a

diplomatic specialists in Middle Eastern politics believe

Muslim

radical vio-

lence could increase dramatically in the future because the prospects are

—increasingly bolstered with human extremists find unacceptable —with the

bleak for reconciling secular law

and other social baggage rigid

and

rights

Muslim

less tolerant interpretations

damentalists.

The Middle

militancy and a

model

of Islamic law

demanded by

East, then, is the current cutting

for the

emerging

the fun-

edge of religious

may be

religio-political violence that

the dominant feature of terrorism in the early twenty-first century.

Further east, in Asia, religious emotions have been a good deal calmer

and more

predictable, at least in the twentieth century. Despite

of contradictory religious and spiritual beliefs,

its

rich array

modern Asia has been

largely

spared the religion-inspired political violence occurring in the Middle East

and elsewhere. The

latter

number of Asian

small

half of the twentieth century has produced only a

examples worthy of note. In the

religious-terrorist

mid-1950s, several syncretic and highly politicized religious sects in South

Vietnam

violently

opposed the government before being squashed by the

army. Directly across the South China Sea from Vietnam, a centuries-old animosity between Muslim separatists in the southern Philippine islands

and the predominantly Christian central government in Manila continues fester,

sparking

random

terrorist incidents

large southern island of

to

by the Muslims, mainly on the

Mindanao. Except

for isolated incidents

these, however, terrorism in twentieth-century Asia has

been

such as

largely moti-

vated by political ideology and nationalism. Japan, like the rest of Northeast Asia,

ism or violence by religion-based groups shattered by a peak in the

Aum

Vietnam War

terrorist activities consisted

fanatics, or

its

spiritual

calm was rudely

Shinri Kyo. Japanese domestic terrorism, which reached protests of the 1960s, has never posed a serious

threat to the stability of the government.

wing

had no modern history of terror-

until

Taking

its life

from

politics, Japan's

mainly of sporadic incidents conducted by

more commonly, by

right-

radicalized left-wing youths. Incidents

of domestic terrorism were always treated as criminal matters for police to handle. Japan's police force

world

at

monitoring the

is

considered one of the most efficient in the

activities

of its violent political groups.

47

Holy Terror: Armageddon

Japan's

Army,

Tokyo

in

most publicized

a bizarre

best

remembered

their

members

for the

was the Red

international terrorist group

band of highly

radicalized

young

leftists.

The Red Army

1972 Lod Airport massacre in which three of

indiscriminately slaughtered twenty-six people and

seventy-six others,

gious pilgrims.

is

most of whom were

Two members

group of Puerto Rican

a visiting

of the Red

wounded

Army

reli-

team, which had been

recruited for the attack by the People's Liberation Front of Palestine, an

extreme

anti-Israeli terrorist group,

diately after the attack; a third

the Israelis. Near the end of to a vicious internal

committed suicide

member was

its life

it

imme-

Red Army subjected

in Japan, the

purge in which

in the airport

captured and imprisoned by

tortured and killed a

itself

number of its

own members. The 1980s saw the nation's

emerged

most

a resurgence of militant activity by Japan's leftists,

persistent violent group.

During

that fired inaccurate, makeshift rockets

throwers.

A

this period radical

still

groups

and used homemade flame

land dispute over the construction of Tokyo's Narita Airport, a

frequent target of violent radical protest, turned the airport into one of the

most

heavily guarded in the world. Terrorist violence

in the 1990s,

and groups showed

order explosive or pyrotechnic

motive behind

a

from the

marked preference

smoke

to

declined

for detonating low-

devices in public places.

many of these ritualistic acts was

left

The primary

embarrass and intimidate

the government rather than to inflict injury on innocent civilians, even

though some injuries and deaths did occur.

When

television screens suddenly filled with scenes of the

dead and

injured being hauled out of Tokyo's subways, astute Japanese immediately realized that the nation's assiduously earned reputation as safest societies

avoidable:

Aum

had suffered

a terrible blow.

The harsh

one of the world's

truth

was now un-

Shinri Kyo's nerve-gas attack had driven a long nail in the

coffm of Japan's uniqueness as a peaceful the island nation be confident

it

society.

Perhaps never again would

was immune from

the indiscriminate vio-

lence plaguing other parts of the world.

The question uppermost in the minds

many Japanese was twofold: How And where did we go wrong?

could something like this happen in

of

Japan?

Almost

as

soon as the Tokyo subways started running again, the

Japanese public began a nervous and uncertain inward search for the reason for this

massive violence. In the months ahead no end of pundits, commen-

tators, politicians, educators,

and ordinary

citizens stepped forward with

The Dawn of Ultraterrorism

answers

to those questions.

Employing the perfect

of hindsight, the

clarity

Japanese press, police, and government agreed, more or

numerous

warning signs

early

sounded by the gas

attack in

—not the

Matsumoto

least

—had been there

out like beacons for those with the vision to see them. For

was

precisely the problem:

less, that

of which was the

There had been no

vision,

all

Aum's

shrill

alarm

along, shining

many

critics, that

no questioning, no

sense of urgency, even after Matsumoto, the one indubitable sign that

rorism of a particularly lethal type was

now

ter-

and almost

loose in the country

certain to strike again.

Dismayed activities

critics in

the press noted that

had taken place over a

five-year period

serious criminal complaints were

group. But plaints.

yet

The

Aum

seemed

Aum

made

Shinri Kyo's criminal

during which a

to enjoy a curious

police investigated each charge

number of

and press about the

to the police

immunity from public com-

made

against the sect promptly,

never went any farther, and there were never any arrests. But there

it

were

solid reasons, at least to the police

cracy, for their affairs

unusual reluctance

to

and the

larger

government bureau-

become more deeply involved

in the

of Aum Shinri Kyo, or any other religious group for that matter.

Fearful of being accused of religious persecution, Japanese officials at levels

were often extremely hesitant

to aggressively

plaints lodged against religious groups. In

was not

a recent

selves; its seeds

American

problem

all

put the fear of

God

in

The road

From the

first

for

them-

ago

when the constitu-

jest, it

forty years

was the Americans who

modern Japanese government. But Americans today

would probably view what happened gious truth:

had created

government drafted Japan's postwar

were unwittingly planted more than

As one Japanese wag noted, only half in

tion.

pursue criminal com-

fairness, their foot dragging

that the Japanese authorities

military occupation

all

to hell is

as a ringing affirmation of

an old

reli-

paved with good intentions.

quarter of the nineteenth century through the

first

half of

the twentieth century, Japan experienced a sudden growth of new religious

from outside the well-established Buddhist, Shinto, and Christian

sects

denominations. That growth was not unlike the flowering of new religions

which occurred Although

at least

Second World War and continues

one of the prewar

sects exhibited

and preached an apocalyptic message similar

tures

Kyo,

after the

some

to this day.

paramilitary fea-

to that

of

Aum

Shinri

none of the new groups openly advocated violence or strong opposition

to the

government.

49

Holy Terror: Armageddon

in

Tokyo

The Japanese government had

controlled religion since the intro-

strictly

duction of Buddhism in Japan in the seventh century.

From about 1600 on, that control was strengthened, as the government basically made Japanese religion part of the apparatus of the state. The modernization policies adopted from about 1870, on the model of European governments, allowed nominal recognition of religious freedom, but the government kept all sects, new and

under careful watch and

old,

made

emperor, was observe Shinto

By the

the state religion, and

all

government began

ing memberships of the

new

to

head when Japanese authorities concluded

numbers and problems

hefty financial resources for a nation

a military

many

of the

new

armed

conflict in Asia, its

The matter

that the

new

finally

to total control

sects

a

government

was cause

for concern.

were

religions in Japan today, the prewar sects

Using radio and newspaper advertising

lytizing, the

internal

of the population, the

highly skilled in marketing their spiritual messages and attracting verts.

came

sects' increas-

might pose potential

on the brink of a wider war. For

accustomed

growth of the independent new religious Like

Japanese were required to

sects with suspicion.

ing

security

deified the

view the independence and rapidly grow-

to a

dominated by

which

Shinto,

both in public and private.

1930s, as Japan drifted deeper into

late

authoritarian

rites,

strict regulation.

new

con-

as well as street-corner prose-

groups brought in millions of members and in the process accu-

mulated huge amounts of money. Recognizing the serious threat of this new competition, the powerful hierarchy of State Shinto, in concert with the other established religious denominations, urged the government to take action.

The charges

much of new religions today. The press, the

leveled against the sects during this period echo

the public criticism raised against Japan's

government, and some segments of the public accused the sects of bilking vulnerable people of their

money and

assets with promises of spiritual

attainment and miracle cures for illnesses. Charismatic sect leaders were portrayed as charlatans preying on the marginal, uneducated elements of society with superstitious nonsense.

At the time, rumors of sexual orgies and

physical abuse of members, fueled by lurid press accounts, were pervasive.

Undoubtedly, with some of the

new

the accusations, as there undoubtedly

is

sects there

tissue of truth in

in the criticism levied against

of the sects in Japan's current crop of new religious sects,

was a

some

religions. But unlike today's new-

which are protected by scrupulously observed freedom of reli-

gion laws, the prewar groups had no constitutional or other legal protection

The

to shield

them from

state interference

Dawn

Ultraterrorism

of

and persecution. As the new

religions

soon learned, in prewar Japan religious organizations were legitimate only the government said they were. Otherwise they had

no

right to exist at

Even though the constitution in force in the 1930s allowed of religion,

no

that

it

was always

and order or

religion could prejudice peace

for

freedom

constitution stated

conflict with a citizen's

government got around even

duties as a subject of the state. Eventually the this limited

The

a carefully qualified right.

if

all.

freedom of religion by declaring the new

sects to

be "false

reli-

gions" to which the constitution did not apply.

By the mid-i930s, senior

officials

had decided

that the

were trouble. Launching a nationwide campaign aimed evil cults,"

at

new

religions

"eliminating the

the government quickly established a nationwide network of "reli-

gious police" that in the late 1930s and early 1940s

quash the new

sects, forcing a

number of the

moved

aggressively to

larger groups to disband.

The

government's tough measures were supported by a large portion of the

who regarded the new reliMany of the new prewar sects, however, new religions flourishing in Japan today.

Japanese public, especially the educated classes gions as purveyors of superstition.

were the

spiritual ancestors of the

In an article recently published by the Los Angeles Times, Princeton University professor

Sheldon Garon noted a striking resemblance between the

prewar Omoto Kyo sect and

Omoto Kyo organized

Shinri Kyo.

paramilitary groups

Asahara's creation of his

He

Aum

The charismatic

from

his

own Household Agency,

patriarch of

membership, and

flirted

like

with lese majeste.

openly mimicked the sacrosanct emperor while reviewing the troops

from atop

a large white horse similar to that ridden

by Emperor Hirohito

during formal military reviews in the prewar years. Garon writes that Kyo's eeriest resemblance to lyptic

war with the United

for the sect's

Omoto was the

new

Aum lies

States, a

war

its

belief in

an impending apoca-

would destroy

all

of Japan except

compounds.

Kyo, then, was a fascist sub-state, and the sect's headquarters

first to

be raided by police in the government's crackdown on the

religions. After jailing nearly a

Kyo was

in

that

Omoto

officially

thousand leaders and followers, Omoto

disbanded and the police ordered wrecking crews

to

smash

the sect's holy buildings into pieces smaller than a foot in size, fearing any-

thing larger could be used to rebuild the shrines.

This brutal treatment of the

American

military occupation

new

religions did not go unnoticed by the

government

that took control of Japan in 1945.

Holy Terror: Armageddon

Charged with turning rican occupiers it

first

was allowed

for

Japan into a democratic nation, the Ame-

eliminated the status of Shinto as the national

more

stroke of a pen; a

Tokyo

militaristic

remain

to

in

difficult objective

Japanese citizens. To achieve

all

own

back into their

cult,

though

as a non-official religion. This required only the

history

was

to

that, the

and decided

ensure freedom of religion

American occupiers reached

that religious organizations

must be

given adequate, enduring protection under the constitution and law. Thus,

when framing strong,

the 1947 draft of the Japanese constitution, they wrote in the

unambiguous guarantees of religious freedom

down by

Following the firm guidance laid acted the Religious Corporation

Law in

that exist to this day.

the Americans, the Diet en-

195 1, further strengthening the rights

of religious organizations by giving them tax exemptions and unusually strong protection from state intrusion into their

affairs.

ments have given postwar Japan's one hundred

eighty-five

Both these develop-

thousand

and

registered religious groups unprecedented legal protection

legally

a high degree

of practical and psychological autonomy. But as history repeatedly demonstrates,

when

even the most well-intended

they are,

it is

legal protections

can be abused, and

almost always to the detriment of the public they are

intended to serve. It

is

ironic that the

believed, based

on

their

American

own

drafters of the Japanese constitution

experience, that the state and

its

police appara-

freedom in Japan. In many respects,

tus

were the primary threats

the

American occupiers were ignorant of the intensely bureaucratic nature

to religious

of the culture which they were intent on reforming.

them

that future generations of Japanese officialdom

It

never occurred to

would obey

their legal

dictums about freedom of religion and the sanctity of religious organizations so

literally.

Once

it

was inscribed

into law that officially sanctioned religious

groups were to be treated with deference and not interfered with, Japanese authorities at religions

all

levels generally

were prosecuted

such instances were It is

complied without dissent. Though the new

for criminal activities

on

several occasions, overall

rare.

ironic that forty years later,

Aum

Shinri Kyo, a

minor Japanese

reli-

gious sect headed by a half-blind, soft-spoken man, would shelter securely for years

under the constitutional legacy of religious freedom drafted by the

Americans he so despised. Beneath the American-inspired that kept Japan's police at bay for

many

critical

legal

umbrella

months, the guru would

introduce religious terror to Japan and ultraterrorism to the world.

Dawn

The

When

Aum

Shinri Kyo launched

Matsumoto and

in the

subways of Tokyo,

became the

first

group ever

at Saint

etly talked

The

War

It's

is

Terrorism and

in Scotland recently put

Political

"We've

it:

def-

the cutting edge of high-tech terrorism for

the nightmare scenario that people have qui-

about for years coming true."

on Matsumoto was a precedent- shattering episode

sarin attack

the history of

seemed

for the Study of

Andrews University

initely crossed a threshold. This

2000 and beyond.

it

use chemical warfare on a mass population.

to

As Bruce Hoffman of the Center

the year

Ultraterrorism

the terrorists of the new-religious sect

the sarin attacks in the streets of

Violence

of

modern

terrorism, but

much

to attach

no one,

either inside Japan or out,

significance to the fact that a highly deadly

II-era nerve gas, an agent

all

but

in

World

unknown in Asia, had been unleashed

with deadly results in a remote mountain town in central Japan. U.S. intelligence officers in Tokyo noted the initial

news

reports in the

Japanese media and, after a brief flurry of interest because of the sarin angle, apparently classified the incident as a domestic Japanese issue. Instead of actively

pursuing the case to learn more, they decided

Japanese authorities to waited.

And

tell

and then review

police to investigate it

went. But

verbal update

when no

on the

sarin nerve gas.

their findings

And

to find out

One

to allow

was probably

Japanese

correct, as

Japanese report appeared, not even an informal

situation, U.S. intelligence

examined other options were

waited.

waited. Eventually this "minor," local-interest intelligence item

dropped off their radar screen altogether. Their decision

far as

to wait for the

them what had happened. And they

easy

way

should have immediately

what happened. The key words, for

American

after

intelligence to learn

all,

more

about the incident would have been to monitor the Japanese news media,

which continued

to

hammer away

Nine months would intelligence,

new and

at

drift lazily

and the world

horrific threshold

the

Matsumoto

story.

by before Japanese authorities, U.S.

Matsumoto

finally learned that in the

attack a

had been crossed in the world of terrorism,

a

threshold beyond which lay the potential for inflicting deaths and injuries on a scale so massive ist

it

could, in a single attack,

casualty counts that

had gone

dwarf all the combined

before.

Matsumoto was the dawn of the use of chemical weapons a

terror-

in terrorism,

development that had been long anticipated and feared by terrorism experts

and government intelligence services around the world. arrived unheralded because the terrorists

who made

Ironically, the event

the attack kept their

53

Holy Terror; Armageddon

and the Japanese

silence,

Tokyo

in

police did not immediately appreciate the gravity

of the startling evidence that was mounting daily before their eyes. But in rorism, as in

operation

was

all

much

other criminal

successful,

is

too successful,

there

is

an axiom that

ter-

states if an

worth repeating. The gas attack on Matsumoto

it is

and

activity,

it

was soon repeated.

Kyle Olson, an authority on chemical- and biological-arms control and

counterterrorism, was the attack in

American

first

specialist to visit the scene

U.S. and Japanese intelligence and international experts realized there

was

characteristically blunt

"From

gas attacks.

it is

late

October 1995, he

about the meaning of the Matsumoto and Tokyo

a security planning perspective,"

we must assume we have cal,

on terrorism even

a case. Called to testify at hearings conducted by the U.S.

Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in

was

of the

Matsumoto. His investigations into the case began months before

he declared,

"I

believe

entered a world in which the chemical and biologi-

and perhaps even the nuclear cards are

in terrorist hands.

do not believe

I

coincidental that in the weeks after the Tokyo attack, terrorists in the

Philippines and in Chile both threatened the use of chemical weapons." After learning of the

Matsumoto

Japanese television network to

what seemed

to

visit

gassing, Olson

mountain

the scenic

On

be a mysterious incident.

a

was

invited by a

city to investigate

bleak winter day in

December 1994, Olson inspected the site of the gassing, interviewed witnesses and local authorities, and eventually reached a disturbing and novel

The seven Matsumoto dead were

conclusion:

Though he were, in

did not describe

fact,

the world's

them

first

as such, the

killed in a terrorist attack.

Matsumoto dead and injured

victims of ultraterrorism.

In reviewing the totality of the circumstances

Matsumoto a

new

gassing, Olson also concluded that the attack

sarin

weapon

course, has proven

him

Western

and understand

political violence

worst.

specialist to peer into the

exactly

report

on

his findings in

urgency in Japan or in the West.

this

all

seemed

left

that the future

irreversibly changed,

conclusions and predictions,

be deadly accurate. Again, however,

dark abyss of

what he saw. By the time he

man. For him, it was apparent

and terrorism had

The January 1995

number of startling

a field test of

right. first

Matsumoto, he was a different of

was

rather than a full-blown terrorist strike. History, of

Kyle Olson was the ultraterrorism

surrounding the

and

for the

Matsumoto contained

a

of which would prove to to

produce no sense of

— Dawn

The

"I

concluded that an organized

demonstrated the tion,"

Olson

and willingness

ability

told the Senate

sons behind that

attack

first

would be much higher

get

year [1995],

I

"It

my report, and

also pointed out the symbolic

Tokyo subway system

at

was

for the first

me

clear to

and

likely strike again,

profile. In

—

time

use a weapon of mass destruc-

to

subcommittee.

would

group had

terrorist

Ultraterrorism

of

that the per-

that the next tar-

circulated in January of this tactical vulnerability

of the

rush hour to a nerve gas assault."

But while Olson had viewed the nerve-gas attack in Matsumoto with perfect vision,

attacks in

Japan and the rest of the world urgently needed an eye

Matsumoto and Tokyo, the

or biological

ical

weapons against

stated, only a quietly cal

a

test.

Until the

specter of a terrorist group using

mass population was,

as Bruce

discussed possibility, one that seemed

more

chem-

Hoffman

hypotheti-

than real given the scientific and technical complexity of successfully pro-

ducing the poisonous agents and the systems needed to deliver them. Intelligence reports of groups in, if infrequently,

and other

intelligence

unfortunately,

Given the

interest in

such devices did come

but up until Matsumoto there was no credible evidence to

— sources —had

suggest that a terrorist group

Aum,

showing

at least

none monitored by

actually developed chemical

had never appeared on the

sect's history,

U.S., Japanese,

none of which was

weapons.

intelligence "radar screen."

secret,

it is

almost impossible to

understand how Aum managed to avoid being included on one or more of the terrorist

watch

lists

maintained by intelligence agencies around the world.

Prior to both sarin attacks,

doomsday philosophy;

vitriolic

Aum's

public activities included a strident

anti-American rhetoric; extraordinary pur-

chases of chemicals and sophisticated laboratory equipment from around the world; extensive connections with former Soviet ians,

and military figures; unusual

weapons of mass

weapons

scientists, politic-

interest in acquiring data

and research on

destruction; the acquisition of conventional

weapons

tech-

nology and the machinery needed for weapons production; the purchase of a civilian version of a military helicopter

and

several drone aircraft; the lease

mined for uranium and conducted sarin tests on sheep; the arrest of a number of Aum members for burglaries of weapons-research centers in Japan; plus numerous other criminal complaints made to the Japanese police, including murder. of a ranch in a remote section of Australia where

Despite this disturbing

remained undetected life.

list,

—indeed,

During that time,

it

Aum

Shinri Kyo as a terrorist organization

largely

managed

it

unknown

to build a

—

for

most of

its

active

worldwide organization and

55

Holy Terror: Armageddon

Tokyo

in

accumulate a financial fortune that was used to develop and deploy, in

Matsumoto, Tokyo, and other

locations, the

most powerful arsenal of mass-

death weapons ever possessed and used by a terrorist group.

How

one small,

managed

to

obscure religious cult operating out of Japan

relatively

produce some of the deadliest weapons known

remain undetected while

modern terrorism.

It is

it

did so,

is

more than

The questions posed by

teaches.

it

man, and

new kind of modern terror that must

a case study of a

be examined for the lessons

to

just a fascinating story of

Kyo are many, but key among them are

Aum

Shinri

these:

How extensive was the threat posed by the cult's religious zealots? How did they manage to become the world's first ultraterrorist group in such a short period of time?

What exactly

what were they trying

Finally,

the

new

how

to achieve?

prepared are governments around the world to deal with

threat of ultraterrorism that

The answers in Japan

to these questions,

and the United

States.

respects one of the

cies in the world, is

most

now

confronts them?

and many

What the world

Kyo about the future of terrorism

many

more important,

did they believe, politically and spiritually, and

is

others, are slowly unfolding is

learning from

Aum

Shinri

uniformly grim. Japan's police force, in

efficient

and

effective

law enforcement agen-

on the cutting edge of acquiring knowledge and

insight

into the nature of ultraterrorism.

Aum

Shinri Kyo's

shadowy

obtain and use weapons of well

beyond the

highly successful efforts to

mass destruction

raises questions that extend

specific threat

incredible ease with

which the

nucleus of scientific experts

and

its

is

rise

posed by Asahara and his

more

The

and well-trained

cult recruited a dedicated

troubling, but even

disciples.

troubling

is

the ease

with which those scientists were able to gain access to the vast international

supermarket of weapons and weapons technology prediction of Armageddon.

How much

can accomplish

is

advance their prophet's

they acquired and

they could have obtained remains a mystery. ultraterrorists

to

How much

how much more the next group of

one of many pertinent question now facing

the world.

Another

is

the vexing problem of collecting critical intelligence in a

democratic society. Central to meeting any terrorist threat

and

one

exists,

it is

that the

if the

is

knowing

that

deadly work of Aum Shinri Kyo demonstrates anything,

West with

all its

democratic freedoms

is

uniquely vulnerable to

Dawn

The

ultraterrorism. Despite

of

all

Aum's

Ultraterrorism

of

overt, far-flung activities, not a single

Japanese or U.S. law-enforcement or intelligence agency perceived them as a terrorist

group until the attack on the Tokyo subway system, eight months

more innocent Matsumoto gassing. Undoubtedly there are a number of constitutional and

after the relatively

why

this

was the

concealing

its

case, but the fact

presence or

largely unprofessional

potential of smaller,

intentions. If

its

group that

went can operate so long with

more

remains that

left

big footprints practically everywhere

is

at

it

that say about the

terrorist

groups

who

"profitable" course of ultraterrorism?

another sobering truth that must be confronted. In

his testimony before the Senate

Olson made

what does

and professional

may now be tempted to adopt the more Equally disturbing

cultural reasons

was not very good

an amateurish, untrained, and

relative impunity,

disciplined

Aum

this statement:

subcommittee hearing on

"We do

Aum

Shinri Kyo,

not presently have the capability in place

to defend our cities against a clandestine attack involving chemical and bio-

weapons. In the case of biological weapons,

logical

even

know we had been

it is

attacked until people begin to

unlikely

fall.

We

we would

do not have

we have adequate planning in place at the manage the effects of even a small, relatively

adequate vaccines on hand, nor do local, state

and

federal levels to

unsophisticated biological warfare attack. better against chemical warfare, but

We would probably fare somewhat

more because of

the localized nature

of the weapon's effects than because of any efforts on our part. In the

absence of a commitment

we can attack

realistically

is

a

hope

to civilian defense, the only

to offer the victims

organized response

of a terrorist biological warfare

form of triage: bury the dead, comfort the wounded, and pray

the survivors."

for

57

I

Aum

Shinri Kyo:

One-Eyed Man

Asahara's real name, the

Shoko

recorded by

them

Where the King

Is

name he was

given by his parents and

in the official Japanese family registry,

is

Chizuo

Matsumoto. Born in 1955 in the small rural village of Yatsushiro on Japan's main southern island of Kyushu, Asahara entered the world afflicted with infantile glaucoma, a disease that

diminished vision in the other.

left

He was

him

blind in one eye and with

the sixth of seven children in an

impoverished family living in a tiny house. His father struggled ing as a craftsman

used as

who made

tatami mats, the tightly

floor coverings in traditional Japanese

was sent

to join

an older brother, who was

funded boarding school

woven

earn a

rice-straw

homes. At age

totally blind, at a

for the blind in the city of

to

six,

liv-

mats

Asahara

government-

Kumamoto, some

thirty

miles from his home. The family's decision to send the youngster to the gov-

ernment school was based would fund late

his education

strictly

on need. At the school the government

and provide him with

free

room and board.

In the

1950s and early 1960s, times were hard in rural Kyushu; the nation's

economic miracle had

As he grew older limited vision gave

yet to reach the southern countryside. at the

boarding school, Asahara discovered that his

him an advantage

59

over the other sightless students. In

Holy Terror: Armageddon

in

Tokyo

the country of the blind, the one-eyed

man

and the adolescent

king,

is

Asahara quickly realized that he was king absolute. In the dark world of his

power

fellow students, he possessed the

depended upon

to interpret their

to

shed

light, to

be the one others

surroundings and to guide them to places

they could not find by themselves. But perhaps the most important lesson

Asahara learned in the school for the blind was that power over others could be easily translated into personal influence and money. People sought out his favors

and some paid

wanted

go off campus to have dinner

to

them, but only

if

to share his precious vision. If a

group of students

at a local restaurant,

they agreed to pay for his meal.

It

he would guide

was heady

young teenager obsessed with acquiring power and money. And By the time Asahara

effective.

stuff for a it

was

also

high school, he had accumulated more

left

than three thousand dollars, an extraordinary amount of

money

for

an

unemployed high-school graduate. Asahara's limited vision was not the only advantage he had over his

remember him

classmates. Teachers

physique

who was good

as

boy with

a

at sports, especially judo,

a

well-developed

which he began in junior

high school and continued until he reached the second highest rank of pro-

Asahara was rated as better than average by some

ficiency. Academically,

teachers,

who

felt

he had promise. But other teachers remember a darker

side to his personality. fights

He was

also manipulative

school's rules.

Asahara in

A

lost his

which he

for

They say he was frequently disciplined

and on one occasion reportedly broke sly

former teacher

when brought

When

swiftly

changed his

in a brawl.

breaking the

one disciplinary session

burn down the dormitory

he realized that he was about

he

threat,

to

for picking

eardrum

to task for

recalls that after

temper and angrily threatened

lived.

making the

and

a student's

to

attitude

be punished again

and began meekly

pleading for leniency, arguing that he should not be disciplined for simply

making

a statement.

His early tendencies toward violence surface frequently in the tions of the

Kumamoto

dorm

staff. One of his housemothers says he was a who was domineering and aggressively hostile.

school

friendless, arrogant bully

"He was bossy and

recollec-

violent,"

she

said.

supervisors whenever he was

"He was

very volatile and fought with

warned about minor things

like switch-

ing on the lights at night or taking a bath after the scheduled times."

But tent

it

was Asahara's fellow classmates who rendered the most

judgment of him

as

an avaricious

bully.

Down

consis-

through the years they

Aum

Kyo:

Shinri

him when he

repeatedly rejected

high-school elections,

"We

As one bold student

moto

as

Later

he became involved

an acupuncturist, a

him

told

in 1975,

Kyushu

which

several people

were seriously

for Tokyo. Before leaving

politics.

become prime

A

few classmates

minister.

lection of Asahara declaring

Law

Faculty

One

he wanted

he often expressed

recall that

of them has a more chilling recol-

kingdom, where he

to create a robot

ruler.

moved

In 1977, Asahara as

Kyushu, he

—the Japanese equivalent of Harvard or Yale Law School

—and then go into was supreme

after the

Asahara worked in Kuma-

confided to his brother that his great ambition was to enter the

a desire to

King

traditional occupation for the blind in Japan.

in a fight in

injured and was forced to leave

of Tokyo University

Is

are afraid of you."

from high school

After graduating

One-Eyed Man

the

ran for student-body president in elemen-

junior high, and high school.

tary,

Where

an acupuncturist and

to the

at the

Tokyo area where he again found work

same time entered

a prep school to study for

Japan's rigorous college entrance examinations. Acquaintances say that dur-

ing this period he

of

Mao

became

a devoted reader of the revolutionary philosophy

Tse-tung and taught himself to read and speak Chinese. Whatever

the true nature of his ambition, the grueling hours of study necessary to

marks on the

score high

the college entrance

college

exams and never attended

He met Tomoko

Ishii, a

young

mer of 1977 while commuting and on

their

Tomoko

exams did not pay

to

off.

reportedly failed

college.

college student,

prep school.

He

on

He was

a train in the

sum-

immediately smitten,

second date he announced that he would marry her. Though

told friends she

ously mutual.

thought he was "strange," the attraction was obvi-

They began

living together that

summer, were married

in

January 1978, and then opened a one-room Chinese herbal medicine and

acupuncture Prefecture. tle

clinic in the city

of Funabashi, southeast of Tokyo in Chiba

A year later a daughter was born, the first of six children. The lit-

shop did very

well,

and one account of his

life

says he

made

several

hun-

dred thousand dollars selling potions such as orange peel soaked in alcohol.

From Later

his arrival in Tokyo,

he would claim

1977 seems

to

mark

to

Asahara began

to take

interest in religion.

have had an out-of-body experience

at

age three, but

his first serious attraction to religion, a fascination that

grew stronger

as his personal circumstances changed.

in the big city

and

Tokyo University

an

in a very short time

shattered, plus

Things happened

fast

he found his ambition of attending

he had a wife and child

to support.

Though

62

Holy Terror: Armageddon

his small business

was going. In

life

Tokyo

in

was doing

well,

his later books,

he began

to seriously question

Asahara described himself at

where

his

time as

this

beset by a deep-seated anxiety, experiencing a "raging conflict of self-confi-

dence and personal complexes" which made him

on

feel that

he "could not go

like this."

To

he began

resolve his personal crisis,

Chinese

to study traditional

medicine, fortune-telling, and astrology, which are

closely linked to each

all

He read the writings of Shinji Takahashi, founder new religion GLA (God Light Association), who claimed to be an incar-

other and to acupuncture.

of the

nation of the teachings.

Buddha and

scholars as

Hajime Nakamura and Fumio Masutani,

books on Early Early

or, as

dhism not found at attaining

stifled

it is

Buddhism was

sometimes

popularity in the West,

yawn from most young

traditional

sincere seekers

Buddhism

left their

show

aimed

Zen Buddhism, which

more than

elicits little

The same

Japanese.

practiced in Japan.

of traditional Buddhism temples, and most

who

their entire lives to rigorous meditation practices

Nirvana, or enlightenment. By contrast,

much

kind of idealized Bud-

for Asahara, a

Buddhism of

in particular their

Buddhism.

called, "Primitive"

"new" thing

a

in Japan, a

homes and devoted enjoys so

also incorporated aspects of Christianity in his

Soon Asahara came across the writings of such eminent Buddhist

is

a barely

true for the starchy

To many young people the image

one of elaborate funeral services held in ornate

is

little

interest in the

many

established sects of Japa-

nese Buddhism.

Asahara was profoundly moved by what he discovered in the Early Buddhist writings, particularly in a group of texts called the Agon Kyo, which

were supposed

to record the original

Pali language. "I read "I

Buddhist

texts

sermons of the Buddha in the ancient and

was

also a polluted person,

I

I

meditated," he would later

recall.

When

I

realized that

could not stop weeping.

I

also learned the spirit

realized that everything in the world

is sin.

I

myself

of self-sacrifice."

Throughout

his early career,

Asahara was a passionate autodidact.

He

loved books, but he hated the authority that a teacher would have over him, so he studied and practiced

ordinary

new

member

on

his

own. His

first

and only experience

of an organized religion came in 1981,

religion called Agon Shu. Agon Shu was founded in 1978 by

Seiyu Kiriyama.

the general public for the dramatic Fire

Ceremony

it

when he

It is

best

as

an

joined a

known

to

holds annually, the

Aum

numerous

Shinri

Kyo:

Where

One-Eyed Man

the

(nearly fifty at last count) publications of

aggressive international promotional

campaign

many

a

is

The

first

is

the

Early

Buddhism

Buddhism emphasized eliminating "karmic

that

bought

heady cocktail of

new

of the elements floating around in the world of Japanese

gions.

and

founder, and the

its

that the sect has

from Japan's leading advertising agencies. Agon Shu

King

Is

attracted

Asahara.

reli-

Early

—the bad mental —through long, involved,

obstructions"

physical habits that prevent enlightenment

step-by-step meditations. In order to break the cycle of rebirth into a world

of suffering and thereby achieve Nirvana, both

A

Agon Shu and

Aum

place

on freeing oneself from bad karma.

great importance

second element of Agon Shu was Tantric Buddhism.

Now

practiced

mainly in Tibet, Nepal, and by small groups of converts in America and Europe, Tantric

Buddhism emphasizes

visualization of deities; a strong

master-disciple link; complicated meditation programs, aided by a series of initiations

from master

to disciple; the

superhuman powers; and and other

in

some

enjoyment,

esoteric

if

not the pursuit, of

and advanced teachings, sexual

practices that transcend the boundaries of conventional morality.

Asahara found

Agon Shu

of these concepts highly appealing.

all

also taught the

use of the ancient Hindu system ofkundalini

yoga and Taoist yoga from China. To this Kiriyama added a pseudo-scientific theory of the brain, and his writings are rists

and

New Age

scientists of

that if they successfully applied a

superhuman being who,

that lofty standard,

By

all

Aum's

all

stripes.

Kiriyama taught his followers

of these "tools"

literally,

was

it

was possible

would never age or

early religious goals

accounts, Asahara

Agon Shu. He

many

with quotes from brain theo-

filled

a sincere

die.

to

become

Judged against

were modest.

and hard-working member of

faithfully attended training sessions at

one of

its

centers in

Tokyo. In his later writing about this period, Asahara claims that he was deeply involved in

Agon Shu

practice, particularly a ritual called the "thou-

sand-day offering," which required forty minutes of daily devotional ties carried

activi-

out over one thousand consecutive days. Asahara would later

complain that his Agon Shu practice only increased his "karmic obstructions,"

but even during the toughest times he maintained the daily devo-

tional cycle to the

end of its required three

years.

During

this period

he also

claims to have experienced the "kundalini awakening," a yogic state in which the body's male and female essences are united to produce a higher level of

consciousness.

Holy Terror: Armageddon

in

Tokyo

Sahasrara chakra

Ajna chakra Pingala nadi Ida nadi

Visudha chakra

Sushumna

nadi

Anahata chakra

Manipura chakra

Suadhighthana chakra

Mudlahara chakra

The chakras, or centers of energy, and the as described

in

nadis, or channels of breath,

the practice of kundalini yoga (from The Secret Method

of Developing Superpowers).

Disaster struck in 1982, however,

cion of peddling fake Chinese cures

soaked in alcohol each.

He was

of the charge

sand

—which he sold

jailed for

highly

—

specifically, the

for four

hundred

and many see

critical local

arrested

on

suspi-

magic orange peels

to six

hundred

twenty days, after which the court found

—which he vigorously denied—and

dollars. Friends said

inal felony,

when Asahara was

dollars

him

levied a fine of

guilty

two thou-

Asahara was devastated by his conviction, a crimit

as a

newspaper

major turning point in his

article detailing his arrest

life.

and

Following a

conviction, his

business quickly went broke and he was too embarrassed to face his neighbors. For

some time

after the trial

and bankruptcy, he and

hermit-like existence, only venturing outside at night to essentials. This dramatic about-face in his life

in the direction of religion.

his wife lived a

buy food and other

pushed him more

forcefully

Aum

Kyo:

Shinri

Where

One-Eyed Man

the

Asahara quit Agon Shu in 1984, taking a dozen or so of the bers with him.

He blamed

Is

King

sect's

mem-

the "thousand-day offering" practice for his mis-

member

fortunes, but during his studies as a

of

Agon Shu he

discovered

something that would be of immense value in the immediate future it-yourself salvation

manual

called the

Yoga

Sutra,

described the stages of yoga practice in great

him from Agon Shu, he opened

that followed

Tokyo's bustling Shibuya

Inc., in

mystic Sanskrit syllable that

With the small group

Aum,

a yoga training center,

"Aum," often written "om,"

district.

it

was

is

a

name for a yoga club. and named his wife and a

a perfectly natural

Asahara appointed himself managing devoted follower, Hisako

detail.

—a do-

text that

often chanted in yogic meditation, or at the

is

beginning and end of prayers;

an ancient Hindu

director,

of the corporation. In addition to

Ishii, directors

holding yoga training classes and seminars, the company also sold health drinks and started a small publishing enterprise.

Because of his good physical conditioning, Asahara was an excellent yoga practitioner and teacher who became

known among his

exceptional control over his breathing technique.

appearance, too, from the at this

fat,

pale, long-haired

He was

guru of

students for his

very different in

later years.

Photos

man who early mem-

time show a slim, reasonably shorn, muscular young

may indeed have been bers, at this time

a charismatic yoga teacher.

Aum was

a fairly relaxed

According

to

and casual group without

a rigid

hierarchy.

"There was no religious atmosphere," one gathering, you know, 'Let's

powers.'

We

member recalls.

goal that Asahara held out to his followers

was the kundalini awak-

center prospered during the next two years as

more than

to create a tual

new

guidebook, the

Sutra.

The to

was a fun

guy who was our yoga teacher."

ening he had experienced and which was taught in his

Yoga

"It

have fun with yoga and acquire supernatural

were members, not followers, and Asahara wasn't a religious

leader, just this

The

all

three thousand followers.

new

identity for

Sometime

its

ranks swelled

in 1985, Asahara

began

himself as a charismatic leader of supreme

spiri-

accomplishments with a divine mission. In the early part of the year

he claims Twilight

to

have levitated for the

first

time.

Zone ran photographs of Asahara

interest for

many

When

levitating,

the popular magazine

he became a focus of

of Japan's young spiritual seekers. Several

members of

Aum later recalled that the article in Twilight Zone led them to seek out Aum.

65

66

Holy Terror: Armageddon

Asahara also began

went

Mount Goyo

to

to

Tokyo

in

have meetings with the gods about

this time.

He

in Iwate Prefecture in northern Japan to visit a shrine

that possessed a text supposedly given by the gods to the prewar historian

and rabid anti-Semite Katsuisa

Sakai.

The

text is

an account of Armageddon,

the catastrophic battle between the forces of good and evil at the end of the

world, and there later

is little

become Asahara's

doubt that

this

book planted the seeds of what would

apocalyptic vision of the future.

Asahara also reported that in spring of 1985, while meditating on the beach

at

Miura in Kanagawa Prefecture

by the Hindu god Shiva,

who

appointed

who had

south of Tokyo, he was visited "the

him with

armies of the gods" and charged of those

just

him

god of light who leads the

made up Kingdom of

building an ideal society

attained psychic powers, a society called the

Shambhala.

The Kingdom of Shambhala

is

an ancient concept appearing in Islam,

Hinduism, and Buddhism, but Asahara's knowledge of

Shambhala

Tantric Buddhist text in which located

somewhere

According will

in Northeast Asia

to this tradition, at

—

is

derived from a

portrayed as a hidden valley

a Shangri-la for spiritual adepts.

some unspecified

future date a messiah-king

appear in Shambhala, defeat the infidels in a

final war,

universal reign of Buddhism. Asahara's seaside epiphany his claim to be a

it

messiah and his leadership

role in the

and

establish a

was the origin of

Armageddon, or

final

war, which would destroy Japan. It

was

also in 1985 that

Hindu and Buddhist

Asahara introduced his

meditation, initiation

is

for his students to speed their spiritual progress. ritual, shaktipat,

thumb on located. tual

first "initiation ritual."

In

a rite that the master performs

Asahara selected a Hindu

which he performed himself. In the

rite,

the guru places his

the follower's forehead where the yogic "third eye"

is

said to be

Aum teachings held that shaktipat injected the guru's positive spiri-

power

into the follower

and

at the

same time

triggered a discharge of the

bad karma into the body of the guru. In

follower's

later years,

it

was widely

rumored that Asahara's health was suffering because he had performed the rite

so often, and that he would soon stop administering

marketing "If

staff used the

you want

to

rumors

to

heighten

be emancipated in

demand

it.

Aum's

aggressive

for the costly ritual.

this life," the sect's bulletins urged,

"you must receive shaktipat. There are only 595 times of Master's shaktipat left.

Probably his shaktipat will cease this August [1988]. If you want to

receive

it,

earn sixty credits [of training] early."

Aum

Kyo:

Shinri

Where

the

One-Eyed Man

In addition to the sixty training credits required for

members had

to

pay

there was the basic

for,

who

to his leading disciples,

more modest

fee of three

hundred

rite after

reported that he had suffered considerable physical damage. fell

which

eligibility,

shaktipat charge of five

August 1988, Asahara stopped performing the

dollars. In

King

Is

The

it

was

task then

required only thirty training credits and a

hundred

dollars.

name was changed to Aum Shinsen no Kai, or "The Aum Group of Mountain Wizards," and its headquarters moved to Setagaya In 1986, the group's

Ward, a more suburban Tokyo area southwest of Shibuya. Asahara published his

first

summer

growing, Asahara

"Aum

of the

Nation" were sprouting.

of 1986, with the yoga center firmly established and

left

Japan on his

first

journey abroad, an extended

travels

visited a

he met with senior Indian and Tibetan religious leaders

number of Tibetan

monasteries. Asahara played the role of the

"Ugly Japanese" with great success on his travels in India.

man

trip to

and the Himalayas where he studied Hinduism and Buddhism.

During his

and

that

and the relaxed atmosphere of the Shibuya yoga center began

natural Powers,

India

was there

book, The Secret Method for Developing Super-

to disappear. In its place, the roots

In the

It

studying

at

one of the Indian ashrams

group came barging into the center very nounced, and demanding

late

A young Japanese

recalls that

Asahara and his

one evening, uninvited, unan-

be admitted as students. As foreigners, the

to

brusque Japanese were given considerable leeway by the tolerant Indians, but Asahara soon managed to abuse even those polite concessions. In a few days he was heaping criticism on the other meditators, insisting that he was far

more advanced than they and demanding that the ashram's guru teach him

more advanced

practices.

His embarrassed fellow Japanese reports

resume while abroad, one to Japan.

that

When the time to leave the ashram came,

picture taken with the guru, insist."

As

a final insult,

as the shutter

who

his first

On his

Asahara asked

to

have his

only agreed with a very reluctant "If you

Asahara threw his arm over the guru's shoulder

snapped even though he knew

rude to touch a guru. In 1995,

among

how Asahara built a photo-album

would serve him very well when he returned

when

words were, "No one

full

well that

it

just

was extremely

the Japanese police finally arrested him, is

allowed to touch the guru's body."

return to Japan, Asahara announced that while meditating in the

Himalayas, and as a result of eight previous years of ascetic experiences in

Buddhism and

yoga, he attained Nirvana.

He

also immediately

began work

68

Holy Terror: Armageddon

on

to cash in

known

Tokyo

in

his wafer-thin credentials as a self-proclaimed "internationally

authority

on

An

religion."

important

step

first

works on the supernatural and mysticism that he

campaign aimed

clever public-relations

at getting

was writing

later

used

several

launch a

to

himself and his fledgling

sect before the public eye.

Demonstrating an impressive

flair for

headlong into Japan's media mainstream.

on

late-night television talk shows,

other

new

several of

Some

religions

on which he appeared with leaders of religion,

whom touted him as a sincere and important new religious leader.

their lack of

make

humiliating public apologies for

judgment and one was pressured

to resign his position.

who was

accounts Asahara was a brilliant television performer

all

able to shift

from pronouncements about the future delivered

of compassion for

to tears

a regular guest

and with well-known university professors of

of the professors would later

By

public relations, Asahara leaped

He soon became

suffering things.

all

cessfully courting the media's attention, the

persona he needed

to

He

in lofty tones

understood that by suc-

media would

promote himself and his group. His

create the public strategy

was very

and soon increasing numbers of earnest new followers were

effective,

flock-

ing to the door of his small yoga center in Tokyo.

The year 1987 was

Lama

Asahara and his followers. In February he

crucial for

Dharmsala, the north Indian center for Tibetan

visited

often in residence. Asahara was able to

is

exiles

where the Dalai

meet the Dalai Lama, and he

described their session together.

"Imagine

my

delight at being able to meditate with His Holiness, the

"And

Dalai Lama," he wrote later.

room!

me

.

.

give

.

'I'll sit

you

a

here where

I

always

Buddha image.'

Lama moment,

ing, all traces of the Dalai

his

breath.

At that

Shakyamuni Buddha steadily,

without a

talking about,'

I

.

radiated

.

.

in His Holiness's private meditation sit;

vanished.

he instructed me.

'Let

He must have

completely stopped

the astral vision of the golden face of

from

my

ajuna chakra. The vision persisted

the

Buddha image

continued

I

sit there,'

After a few minutes of loud, deep breath-

flicker. 'Ah, this is

thought.

you

the Dalai

Lama was

my meditation."

Asahara also claimed that the Dalai Lama had told him that Buddhism

was about there.

to disappear in

Japan and that he should spread true religion

Asahara had his picture taken with the Dalai Lama, and this became the

centerpiece of his

PR

Armed with the books and his photos with the made the rounds of editorial offices of a number

effort.

Dalai Lama, he personally

Aum

of religious,

New

Kyo:

Shinri

Where

One-Eyed Man

the

King

Is

Age, and mass-

market magazines. Sensing public

an internationally

interest in

Mahayana

res-

pected Japanese guru, the magazines published the photos

and

Asahara was on his way. The Dalai

Higher

c ausal

Lama,

it

should be noted, has a

dif-

Realm

ferent recollection of Asahara's

During a 1995

visit.

visit to

Japan he Higher

Middle Causal

Astral

Realm

denied making any endorsement of

Aum

Shinri Kyo or Asahara.

Realm

In July of 1987, Asahara decided it

was time

to

change the name of Lower

the group once again, this time to

Aum

Shinri Kyo, or

Truth. But hara's

more

Aum

Supreme

Lower

Causal

Six

Astral

Realm

Desire

Realm ..••••'' Cau

Realms

importantly, Asa-

popularity and the large

influx of

new members was

..-••

Phen

put-

'|

«"»«n.lR

M rn

^L ,?

str al

sal

Realm

^less

Realm)

Realm

(h ° rrnR

'

"H

ting his ecletic religion to the test.

Many

of his leading followers

were catching up spiritual

to

him

levels

of being adopted as a

guide for meditation practice by Shinri Kyo (from

achievement, attaining

kundalini awakening

Mahayana

Aum

Sutra).

and whatever

other new tests he set them

to. It

time to change the rules and First,

The three

in their

he added several

was

set

higher religious goals for them to aspire

layers of cosmic existence that they

work through, then he introduced

a

new

set

to.

would have

of practices and goals,

all

to

cho-

sen from ancient Buddhist meditation systems. But his disciples stayed hot

on

his

trail.

In

May

1988, Hisako

Great Master Kheema, attained the goal.

was

now known by her Buddhist name, maha mudra, Asahara's most recently set

Ishii,

This put her one step behind Asahara in spiritual accomplishment. this pressure

from

his overachieving disciples

nation to keep the place of Enlightened

One

to

It

and Asahara's determi-

himself that transformed

Aum from a yoga club into a charismatic religion. From

the beginning

the salvation of society,

Aum,

like

and Japan

Agon Shu,

as a whole.

linked individual salvation to

But in 1988, Asahara expanded

his vision, calling not only for the salvation of Japan, but of the world. In

an

70

Holy Terror: Armageddon

in

Tokyo

Aum recruiting pamphlet published that year, the sect laid out its scheme for bringing happiness to the god Shiva,

is

all

mankind: "This kingdom (Shambhala), ruled by

world where only those souls which have attained the

a

complete truth of the universe can go. In Shambhala, the ascetic practices of messianic persons have

made

great advances in order to lead souls to gedatsu

(emancipation) and save them. Master Asahara has been reborn from there into the

human

world so that he might take up his mission as a messiah.

Therefore, the Master's efforts to

embody truth throughout the human world

have been sanctioned by the great

will

of the god Shiva.

"Let us take a look, however, at the situation of Japan

Clearly

we

face a very dangerous situation,

due

to the rapid

and the world. growth of ego-

ism. Master Asahara's prophecies, such as a worsening of the trade friction

between the United States and Japan, an increase in defense spending, and abnormalities in the Fuji volcanic region and the Pacific Plate have already

proved

true.

"If we allow the to prevent the slide

demonic energy

"For that reason

Aum

extend

Aum's

at the

is

will

be extremely

difficult

end of the century.

without equal in

sacred sphere throughout

base for the salvation of the

it

Shinri Kyo's plan to transform Japan into

Shambhala was presented. This plan to

to increase,

towards a nuclear war

its

scope, as

it

wants

of Japan, making Japan the

all

whole world by fostering the development of

multitudes of holy people. This plan cannot be realized without the help of

our believers. Please come and join us!

"Wouldn't you

more and more

like to

help to build a society based on truth, and help

souls to live the

higher world? Wouldn't you future of happiness? Let us great will of the

"The plan

life

like

of truth, leading to gedatsu and

combine our

efforts,

in a

and

translate into action the

god Shiva and our guru, Master Asahara.

to

transform Japan into Shambhala

making the whole world Shambhala. And your result in great merit

and lead you

is

the

first

step towards

participation in this plan will

to a higher world."

The pamphlet then provided an "Outline of the details for the

life

help the world avoid disaster and build a

establishment of a type of

Plan,"

commune

which includes

called

"The Lotus

Village":

"This live a life

means

Aum village, so that everyone can We will build a completely independent society,

the construction of an

founded on

truth.

providing everything from clothing, food, and housing to a place for

reli-

Aum

Shinri

Kyo:

Where

gious practice, medical and educational

and opportunities

and

ical, scientific

employment.

for

One-Eyed Man

the

facilities,

We will

King

Is

weddings and funerals,

med-

also establish facilities for

agricultural research, so that

it

will

become

a place to cre-

ate a culture of truth."

This Utopian optimism was widespread

time and

among

Aum

members

appeal to Japan's alienated younger generations, a group

its

mated by some

new

Ishii

headquarters

spoke

at

at

Aum completed

Fujinomiya, in Shizuoka Prefecture.

the dedication ceremony, she called

it

When

Aum's

Hisako

first

"Lotus

But the purchase of large amounts of land and the construction of

Village."

other Lotus Villages required considerable to raise

esti-

sociologists to represent ten percent of the nation's youth,

was both persuasive and appealing. In the summer of 1988, its

at the

it

The

—from

first

its

sums of money, and Aum

set out

members.

thing the sect needed was

more members, and Asahara

insti-

new mechanism for increasing the group's membership. Recruiting new members into the sect became a high-priority spiritual requirement for those who had already joined. But who were these new recruits, and why did they harken to the call of tuted a

guru with a bizarre plan for saving the world? By the

a half-blind

Japan's "Bubble Era" of economic growth nation's per capita

income

rise in affluence also

One

sures.

were the

was

late

in full swing, boosting the

to the highest level in the world.

But the sustained

widened a number of long-festering generational

sociologist says that those in their their twenties in the late

first

young Japanese

Japan's "fun generation," ing, leisure,

and the

1980s,

and

to

fis-

1980s

be free of financial pressures. They were

their attitudes

virtues of hard

toward

work and

—borrowing, spend—were quite

life

loyalty

different

from those of their parents, and worlds away from those of their hardworking grandparents.

But there was also a serious, introspective side to people.

many

of these young

As some of the newer generations graduated from

college

and

entered the work force they began to have ideas and questions that their education

had not prepared them

for.

In examining their

own lives and the

soci-

ety in

which they lived, many felt lost and wondered whether job security and

social

conformity were

all

there

is

to

life.

Seeking answers, they often naively

reached out to anyone or any group that professed to have a solution or held out the promise of involving

them in something bigger than themselves. made the leap to a new faith, they wrapped

Earnest and sincere, once they

72

Holy Terror: Armageddon

themselves in to

be

it

in

Tokyo

with the single-mindedness of people

who

never intended

lost again.

why would young

But

group

join a

like

doctors, scientists,

and highly trained technicians

Aum Shinri Kyo? Anthropologist and author Sheila Johnson,

in a recent artcle published in the Los Angeles Times, says the to

answer seems

be "precisely because they are experts. They are trained in one

specific,

make them wise. Nor does it make them happy. These people, when they join such a movement, are among its most dangerous members, because while they may not be the most violent, they may be the most able to plan and carry out dangertechnical field, but this does not necessarily necessarily

ous missions."

The

new

recruiting success of

sect leaders

Japan's

—was due

Shoko Asahara

—and many of Japan's other

to the fact that that

young were searching

for

he understood perfectly that

meaning and value

in their existence, that

in order to be happy, to have real fulfillment in their lives, they

needed

world view they could claim for their own. Asahara knew,

itual

a spir-

too, that in

the spiritual world-view business he could conjure with the best of them. By

on the way

the late 1980s, he was well

In establishing his

new recruiting

to

proving

policy,

it.

Asahara was doubly

clever.

He

members as recruiters, but he actuthem to purchase the flyers, handouts, and books that they used to bring new members into the fold. With his natural instinct for PR, he also insisted that only attractive and appealing members be assigned as not only exploited the free labor of junior ally

forced

recruiters.

Around believers

this time, the

membership was divided

and monastics. Lay believers

and attended

Aum

donations to

strongly encouraged to

lay

in the outside world,

Aum. Anything was

make

accepted, but cash

was

large

and regular

preferred. In addi-

paid for various religious services and training, including a series

of rites of initiation. The shaktipat

As each year went

more

and worked

two groups,

seminars, lectures, and practice sessions after work and

on weekends. They were tion, they

lived

into

by,

ritual

was

first

offered to

Aum's menu of religious

aids

members

in 1985.

grew longer and ever

costly.

For example, there was the purusha, a small ceramic badge engraved with the price

Aum

symbol and containing "the Master's energy";

its

purchase

was one thousand dollars. Then there was the "Purus/ta-model Pandora's

Box" for one hundred

dollars,

designed to "purify the

terrestrial

elements"

Aum

Kyo:

Shinri

Where

One-Eyed Man

the

TRAINING COURSES GENERAL FEES ¥30,000

Registration fee

Monthly fee

¥3,000

Change of course

¥5,000

fee

YOGA COURSES Beginning course (10 sessions)

¥30,000

Intermediate course (20 sessions)

¥35,000

Advanced course (20 sessions) Correspondance courses Part Part

¥80,000

One (60 days) Two (60 days)

¥70,000 ¥70,000 ¥6,000 ¥7,000-8,000

Evening seminar (one 6-hour session) Intensive overnight seminar.

ADVANCED COURSE FOR SUPERNATURAL POWERS Comprehensive program (two sessions/month) Initiation

¥15,000

(one session)

¥15,000

Correspondance course

¥15,000

Seminar.

¥20,000

INTENSIVE "MADNESS" SEMINAR

¥220,000 and Up

SHAKTIPAT From Asahara From Asahara's

60

credits

and ¥50,000

30 credits and ¥30,000

disciples

INITIATION RITUALS Initiation

Bardo

of Love

¥300,000 ¥500,000 ¥1,000,000 more than ¥1,000,000

Initiation

Initiation

of the Blood

Secret Initiation

RELIGIOUS ITEMS Purusha-model Pandora's box

Aum

¥10,000 ¥ 15,000

seminar videotapes

Sandalwood rosary

¥15,000

Miracle Pond (Asahara's bathwater, 200CC)

Purusha badge

Yoga and training videotape sets Perfect Salvation Initiation headset

A menu

¥22,000 ¥100,000 ¥80,000-400,000 ¥1,000,000 / month rental

of Aum Shinri Kyo's training courses and religious services.

Is

King

74

Holy Terror: Armageddon

Tokyo

in

by releasing a perfumed smell. The "Miracle Pond," Asahara's bath water,

which members were dollars per

The

liter.

DNA," which was tiation offered

to

maximum was

effect, sold for

to

one thousand

a bottle of Asahara's "cultured

priced at three thousand dollars.

was the "Blood

from Asahara himself, sand

drink for

"Initiation of Love"

The most expensive

be drunk by the member.

ini-

of blood, supposedly

Initiation," a small vial It

cost about ten thou-

dollars.

Later rituals included the Bardo Initiation. Bardo

the state between

is

death and reincarnation described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. This cost

more than chased

five

thousand

dollars,

and according

to

one member who pur-

included an intravenous drip. The "Initiation of Christ" involved

it,

Aum — illegal drugs were to play an increasAum religious practice from about 1993 on.

taking a drug manufactured by

ing role in

many

spheres of

Perhaps the most photogenic tiation) telepathy

initiation

was the "PSI

(Perfect Salvation Ini-

headgear." This was a helmetlike affair with electric wiring

that supposedly synchronized a follower's brain

waves with Asahara's. The

PSI telepathy headgear could not be purchased, but members were permitted to rent a set for a fee

often thousand dollars per month. The PSI alone earned

Aum something around two billion yen, The believer

or about twenty million dollars.

piece de resistance was "The Ultimate Donation to the Sonshi."

was asked

to

pledge a

total figure that

he would donate

to

Asahara

over his lifetime, and then was given the generous option of paying for a

lump sum

it

in

or installments.

Constant pressure was also exerted on tics.

The

Asahara claimed that high

levels

lay

members

to

become monas-

of enlightenment could only be obtained

who left their families and devoted every moment to religious practice in a sect commune. This policy did not, of course, apply to Asahara and his family, who were the very core of the organization. Aum reaped a huge financial reward from each person who became a monastic. This is how they did it. Each new monastic was required to swear an oath to "trust my mind and by monastics

body as well as

all

properties to Shiva

and Asahara Sonshi and sever

all

con-

nections with this world." They also signed a release stating that "Whatever

me], there shall be no responsibility on the part of

happens

[to

Asahara.

It is

sible."

solely

my will to choose the path of practice;

The monastics moved

room and

—very

paltry

into

an

only

I

Aum

or

am respon-

Aum commune, where they were given

—board. Meals were served once a day and consisted

Aum

Shinri

Kyo:

Where

One-Eyed Man

the

Is

King

of bland, overcooked, cheap vegetables, with an occasional package of Aum's

ramen

instant

as a treat.

They were allowed

to bring

one bag and two card-

board boxes of personal belongings, mostly clothes. Everything else they

owned became the property of Aum. Once inside, contacts with the outside world phone

calls to relatives

ceased; even letters

and friends were forbidden.

and

All property, including

cash, belongings, real estate, royalties, and any intangible properties were

donated

to

Aum. To

insure that nothing of value was overlooked, the sect

developed detailed procedures for handing over property, starting with an exhaustive inventory of personal worth: as postage

(i)

stamps and telephone cards;

Cash and cash equivalents, such

(2)

Bank accounts with amounts,

account numbers, PIN numbers, and personal

seals; (3) Stocks

and bonds,

including names, amounts, purchase date, purchase price, maturity date,

and current

value; (4) Life insurance policies, with full values

tion rebates;

required that to

(5)

all

and

Real estate, including addresses and values.

debts, such as telephone bills, taxes,

cancella-

Aum

also

and student loans, were

be paid before entering a commune. Immediately

after the inventory

whatever could be turned into cash was quickly converted.

Once practice"

that

is,

inside, the

—various

monastics devoted their days to a combination of "hard

meditation regimens

—and what Aum

called "waaku,"

money into Aum's coffers. In the early large number of businesses in which its

work. This work also brought

nineties the group

founded a

monastics were used as a free labor force.

his

With the publication of The Day of Destruction in 1989, Asahara offered interpretation of the New Testament Book of Revelation, or "John's Apo-

calypse" as

it is

Union would

sometimes referred

in

to,

collapse in the year 2004,

which he predicted

that the Soviet

China would be destroyed

at the

end

of 2004 or the beginning of 2005, and that "the American president elected in 1995 to

[sic]

and the Soviet Party Secretary

at that

time might lead the world

Armageddon." Of course, the Soviet Union collapsed well ahead of

Asahara's timetable, the American presidential elections take place in 1996,

and Soviet Communist Party Secretaries are now

The book

also predicted that

"super-human

race," origins unspecified,

Apparently pleased with his

Asahara published Emptiness:

A

first

a sequel later the

Sequel to the

a subject for historians.

Europe would survive Armageddon and that a

would

rule the world.

venture into apocalyptic literature,

same year

titled

From

Destruction to

Day of Destruction. Gloomier and more pessimistic

Holy Terror: Armageddon

than the efforts

first

Tokyo

in

book, Asahara lamented in this work that despite his best

he was running behind schedule and the hour had grown short

mankind.

"It will

be possible

to limit the destruction if

Aum works

for

at pro-

who have reached Emancipation," he wrote. "It will be possible to limit those who die at Armageddon to one-fourth of the world's population. However, right now my plan for salvation is running behind schedule and the percentage of those who will survive is getting ducing large numbers of people

lower and lower.

It is

already impossible to limit the victims to under one-

fourth."

Armageddon

Asahara's growing fascination with

Aum

was on the verge of becoming

Shinri Kyo

had been

truly millenarian,

it

is

nothing in

As the quote demonstrates, Aum's

from one of prevention of Armageddon small

number of chosen

geddon was not

word

—

that

to

do

to

do the

trick.

that

Aum

still

public rhetoric that suggests

apocalyptic doctrine

was

had changed

of assuring the survival of a

clear that prevention of Arma-

believed

—

if

one

is

to take

him

at his

Shinri Kyo could save people outside the sect and intended

Equally clear was the fact that religion alone would not be

so.

Something more was needed, and

without ideas about

The

he

its

to that

people. Asahara

possible, but

Aum

mean

would have regarded the approaching end of

the world as unavoidable; there this.

did not

a millenarian sect. If

how

as usual,

enough

Asahara was not

to proceed.

drive for political

power

for

Aum

began

at a

meeting in

late July

1989. Assembled around Asahara were his closest advisers and disciples. The subject under discussion: the future of Aum and its plans to save the world. During the discussion activities

became apparent

it

to

everyone that religious

alone would not be enough to advance the sect's plan of salvation.

This was an astonishing conclusion that confirmed, failure of the sect's faith system,

marked by those

present.

Asahara had been mulling over answer. The

sect,

himself would stand for a it

seat.

into

campaign

literature

field a slate

of twenty-five candidates

house of the Japanese parliament. Asahara

He was supremely

was decided. In August

called Shinrito, ("Truth Party")

dilemma and was ready with the

this

he announced, would

in the next election of the lower

Thus

at a certain level, the

but that not so subtle point went unre-

Aum

and

Shinri Kyo formed a political party

large

and promotion

confident of victory.

amounts of money were poured

activities.

Aum Shmn

Kyo:

Where

Asahara could not know that with

he was

There

thrived.

out

is

it

had

to

a

famous Japanese proverb

was the beginning of the end, the

to

"The

that goes,

first

step

practice of having

its

sect's

first

outraged

at

bid for a

commune members

policy of confiscating

Parents watched as their children gave for a

polit-

big problem to arise

sever

links to the

all

and

all

friends,

Aum commune members were

being denied access to their children, and they were

Aum's

it

members.

aroused anger and suspicion. Parents of the at

which

path that would

secular world, including contact with their parents, relatives,

outraged

King

nail that sticks

it

down the

paranoid isolation and ultraterrorism. The

do with the parents of the

Aum's

society in

increased visibility of Aum as

hammered down." The

ical role

lead

is

and the

sect

Is

onto the public stage,

this bold stride

between his

setting a collision course

One-Eyed Man

the

at least as

the financial assets of members.

up savings

that should have

been used

wedding ceremony or education; wives or husbands were aghast when

their partners disappeared with the family nest egg. In society at large, big

trouble

was brewing

Aum

for

had applied

Aum, and

at a particularly

bad time.

for recognition as a religious corporation,

Asahara and his top advisers

it

seemed

as if the

government

and

officials

to

were

dragging their feet in granting approval. They interpreted this as the work of the

unhappy parents of Aum commune members and

member who had been won

over to their cause.

The

a sympathetic Diet

sect's

response was to

stage a series of vigorous protest demonstrations outside the offices

during which they charged

oppression.

On August 25,

tantly gave in this

new

1989, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government reluc-

and recognized Aum Shinri Kyo

official status

Japanese society

government

with religious persecution and

officials

was

a

major victory

as

an

official religion.

for the sect,

its

Though

problems with

were mounting.

In October 1989 Asahara stated that

Aum Shinri Kyo had a total of three

hundred eighty monastic commune members and approximately four thousand regular members. Also in October, the popular mass-circulation magazine Sunday Mainichi began publication of a series of extremely cles

under the

title

"Aum

Shinri Kyo's Insanity," in which

for its aggressive recruitment activities

and

it

critical arti-

attacked the sect

solicitation of forced donations.

This unpleasant bit of publicity represented a major threat to the

may have been

given recognition as an

official religion,

through a one-year probationary period.

A

but

legal setback

it

sect.

had

Aum

yet to get

would doom Aum

78

Holy Terror: Armageddon

both in terms of its

in

Tokyo

official status

and

at

the ballot box in February,

Aum slate of candidates would be running for office in the Asahara, as

we have

Tsutsumi Sakamoto, the its political

seen,

man

it

panicked and ordered the murder of

he believed was a major threat

to the sect

and

ambitions. Following the disappearance of Sakamoto and his

family, the parent's organization, active

when the

Diet.

and would prove a

The Victims of Aum

Shinri Kyo, remained

legal thorn in the sect's side for years to

come. But

lacked the drive and intelligence that Sakamoto had provided. Asahara,

relieved of the threat to his small empire,

coming

elections

was now

and the fulfillment of his

ing real political power in Japan.

free to concentrate

early schoolboy

on the

dreams of achiev-

Countdown

Aum

Armageddon

to

ran a remarkable political campaign in the

amused, then appalled, and

first

first

months of 1990

that

many

The

finally frightened

campaign began with a kick-off rally

at a

rented auditorium in Nakano

Ward, Tokyo. Shoko Asahara and the other twenty-four were lined up across the wide

stage,

Asahara himself and his wife,

who

Seitashi

—Asahara's

named

after the

—presented her father with

the hallowed Japanese It

but the only speakers

campaign

was odd indeed

that

a

campaign

literature: so

Young

than

Hindu goddess of

elite universities,

so

The average age of the

Aum

many

especially

political party)

bright

young peo-

Aum slate was a little less

three or four decades younger than

Aum

most Japanese

Jivaka, Milarepa,

politi-

candidates was that they

running under their "holy names": Maitreya, Mahakassappa,

disciples,

were

tradition.

Another distinguishing feature of the

all

at the rally

none of the other candidates spoke,

many

the keyword.

thirty, at least

cians.

were

is

candidates

bouquet of flowers, in

given their glowing resumes touted in Shinrito (the

ple.

Aum

gave a short introductory speech. Durga

eldest daughter,

death and destruction

in Japan.

Naropa. Most of these were names

Ajita,

of the Buddha's leading

taken from the ancient scriptures of Early Buddhism; others

79

'

80

HOLY NAME

DISTRICT

sex/ace

Shoko Asahara

Tokyo 4th

M( 34

Maha Kheema

Tokyo 3rd

F(2 9 )

i.

2.

)

employment/education Sect founder

Kumamoto

Prefecture School for the Blind

Nissan

and Marine Insurance Company

Fire

Industrial Efficiency Junior College 3.

Maitreya

Tokyo 5th

M(2 7

4.

Maha Angulimala

Tokyo 11th

M

)

Aerospace Development Group

Waseda (29)

Onoda 5.

Milarepa

M(2 5

Tokyo 7th

)

University (Engineering)

Nishin Pharmaceutical Industrial

Marusan

Company

High School

Ai, Inc.

Aichi University School of 6.

Sakula

7.

Kisa

Tokyo nth

F(28)

Nissan

Tokyo 7th

F (35)

Clerical

Fire

Law

and Marine Insurance Company

Bunka Women's Junior College

Cotami

Jissen 8.

Punna-mantaniputta Saitama 3rd

M(37)

9.

Machig Lapdron

Tokyo 8th

F(2 9 )

Manjushrimitra

Tokyo 5th

M( 3 i)

Tokyo loth

M( 34

worker

Women's

Junior College

Acupuncturist

Tokyo Acupuncture High School Illustrator

Fukui Prefectural Ashiba High School to.

n. Mahakasappa

)

Kobe Copper Works Osaka University (Engineering) Designer

Asagaya Art School Kankha-Revata

12.

Tokyo

M

1st

(28)

Hitachi Manufacturing

Waseda 13.

Marpa

Tokyo 2nd

M( 3 8)

14.

Naropa

Tokyo 9th

M

University

Real estate

Chiba Industrial College (28)

Daiwa House Shibaura Industrial College

15.

Uruvela-kasappa

M( 3 o)

Tokyo 6th

Musician

Tokyo College of Music

M( 3 i)

Dance school

Saitama 2nd

M( 3 i)

Tosho Printing Company

Sukka

Tokyo 2nd

F(25)

Waseda

19. Jivaka

Chiba4th

M

Kyoto University Graduate School

20. Ajita

Kanagawa 2nd

M(2 5

2i.Tissa

Tokyo 10th

F(34)

16.

Siha

Saitama

17.

Vangisa

18.

1st

Nihon University (Science) Hokkaido University

(29)

)

University

Tokyo University of Fine Arts and Music

Hair

stylist

Iwamizawa Barber 22. Dharmavajiri

Tokyo 9th

23. Vajiratissa

Kanagawa

&

Beauty School

Freelance announcer

F(26)

Kyoto College of Education High School 3rd

M(2 7

)

Osaka Railroad Hospital

Doctor,

Kyoto Prefectural School of Medicine 24. Bhaddakapilani

25.

Sanjaya

The

Tokyo 6th

F( 2 8)

Saitama 5th

M(2 5

Shinrito slate for the Lower

House

Teacher

)

Toyama Waseda

elections

in

University University Master's Course

spring 1990.

Countdown

were the names of famous Tibetan monks of ages equivalent,

names

was

it

in.

Asahara gave one of his

tax;

typically

(5)

rambling speeches, in which he

points of the party platform:

educational reform;

(2)

reform; and

Why

the repeal of the

increased welfare benefits;

(3)

who then danced

Aum

did

(i)

new

(4)

laid

sales

medical

democratization of the political system. The guru's speech

was followed by the appearance of about Asahara masks,

get an idea of the

Luke, John, and Mark, with a few Marys, Magdalenes,

like Peter, Paul,

main

Armageddon

as if a U.S. political party ran of slate of candidates with

and others thrown

out the five

To

past.

to

to a

thirty

members wearing

giant

song called the "Asahara March."

run twenty-five candidates? Because Japanese election

minimum number,

law accords special privileges to a party with that leges such as permission to

make

privi-

election speeches in public places, drive

loudspeaker cars through the streets blaring campaign promises, put up posters lic

and hand out pamphlets, and

and its message

more emphasis on

Some

slate

gests that the

for publicizing

and Shinrito

pub-

Aum

literature placed

of candidates.

a journalist

who

has followed

Aum since the late

1980s, sug-

whole thing was no more than a massive public relations cam-

Aum,

the real intent being an increase in

the all-important donations that kept the

be said that

certainly

literature in

question whether Asahara really expected to win the election.

Shoko Egawa, paign for

to a broader public,

Aum than on its

campaign

methods

buildings. All of these were also ideal

Shinri Kyo

it,

distribute

if

Asahara

membership and, with

Aum juggernaut running.

truly expected to win,

It

he was already so

can far

divorced from everyday reality that there was no turning back.

Aum candidates campaigned in the diaphanous white robes of the

The

sect (except for Asahara,

who showed a preference

a gauzy gold overrobe),

which was a picture in

for imperial purple

itself

given the conservative

gray suits preferred by Japanese politicians. But what attracted the attention

—and

followers

who

finally

turned the most people off

under

most

—were the groups of Aum

gathered in front of subway stations and danced about wear-

ing huge papier-mache heads of Asahara Shoko, singing the Shinrito election song:

Shoko, Shoko, Shoko-Shoko-Shoko, Asahara Shoko

Shoko, Shoko, Shoko-Shoko-Shoko, Asahara Shoko

Holy Terror: Armageddon

in

Tokyo

Japan's Shoko, the world's Shoko, the earth's Shoko, Shoko, Shoko

He

Let's

To

now, shining

rises

brilliantly

put ourselves in the hands of this youthful ace

protect our Japan,

we need

his strength

Shoko, Shoko, Asahara Shoko

The

Japanese voters stuff

at first

— Japanese campaigns are

pretty dull

and predictable

—but in the end the whole thing smacked so powerfully of a twisted

idolatry of Asahara that the effect

In February

1990 the

results at the polls

chilling.

were as predictably humil-

ran for office

at

the school for the blind.

Aum candidate came close to election. The entire slate garnered

Not a single

mere

was decidedly

when Asahara

iating as in the days

a

bobbing around may have amused

sight of the giant, bearded heads

Asahara immediately cried

1,783 votes.

Aum

the vote as rigged, and stated that

of contesting

it.

foul, heatedly

denouncing

was considering the

legal option

Aum

But the undeniable truth was that

had from the

beginning only the barest chance of electing any of its candidates, and even those low prospects were

dimmed

by

its

bizarrely

misguided campaign

antics.

Asahara was not the only one disappointed by the election

campaign had been a major drain on Aum's which

Aum

rally,

1990. First he aster

itself resulted in a

results.

and the

The

ridicule to

major drop in membership. In an

and increase the membership — of the com—Asahara dreamed up the infamous Ishigakijima Seminar in April

attempt to

munes

exposed

finances,

made

was about

especially

unify,

to

a dramatic

doomsday prediction that an unspecified dis-

occur in Japan, with the approach of the

The word was put out

that

he would divulge the

seminar, and that only those

who

details

Comet

Austin.

of the disaster

attended would be saved, throwing

at

the

many

Aum members into a panic. The seminar was described

as free

thousand yen (some members have

announced

as thirty

thousand yen, but

ten times that amount).

by a

ship, but

—with

after the

was

hundred originally

seminar they were charged

Members were picked up

at

various Japanese ports

any indication of their destination was withheld. Finally they

found themselves landed on the

tiny island of Ishigakijima,

Ryukyu Islands (which include Okinawa), so ity

a travel fee of three

testified that the travel fee

as to be only miles

from Taiwan.

one of the

far to Japan's southeast extrem-

Countdown

The

Aum

the area to

all

outsiders.

Though

sect leaders

had reserved

had done so under

committed so many other violations of the rules the buildings.

on the beach, blocking off

forces occupied a public campsite

island for the seminar, they

Armageddon

to

a false

on the

facilities

name, and had

that they

were denied use of

The more than one thousand two hundred members ended

—which were promptly

up camping out on the beach

in cheap vinyl tents

blown away by

storm that arose that night. After taking

ter

also

a gale-force rain

wherever they could find

it,

tainers, the attendees eventually

the area. Meanwhile Asahara

shel-

including horse trailers and old shipping con-

found lodging in small family-run inns in

and

his retinue flew off in a private plane to

luxurious quarters farther inland.

The seminar on Ishigakijima was

finally canceled,

and everyone was

loaded back on the boat. There Asahara delivered his message to the faithful, several of

was

whom found it not worth the trip. One member relates,

"All

he said

Comet in 1986 and Comet Austin this year, something to happen. And we paid three hundred thousand yen to hear that, took off work. Some even quit their jobs." But to the faithful, the mesgot through: The end was coming, and only Asahara could save them.

that with Haley's

was going plus

sage

Organizational disaster that

it

was, the Ishigakijima Seminar

widely regarded as a turning point for

many members

complained,

beat of "money, money,

marked an

all

Shinri Kyo.

Aum

money" and "members, members, members."

Comet

and

a digest of his Ishigakijima

cited as proof the crisis in the

(yes, again),

Middle

drum It

also

message in an

East, the arrival

the appearance of saucer-shaped

zation of the Soviet Union,

bly be the beginning of the division of those souls

from those heading

"And

there

why we have

It

was out of

wrote. "That will proba-

which

will

head

for

heaven

for the true hell.

we can do about it. We are truly helpless. That is now what it is we can do to protect ourselves against

nothing

to explore

how we can control ourselves in order to enter heaven, or even how we can enter Maha Nirvana. We have to enter a protective mode

this danger, better,

is

of Haley's

UFOs, the democrati-

and the unification of Europe.

Aum's hands, Asahara said. "And what will happen after Armageddon?" he

/

that time on,

a double

magazine. The world was rushing headlong toward Armageddon, he

wrote,

right

From was

still

increasingly dark turn in Asahara' s apocalyptic thought. That

same month, Asahara published

Aum

Aum

one heard from

is

now.

83

Holy Terror: Armageddon

"So,

have

Tokyo

in

what kind of protective actions

live

Aum

and continue our

ascetic practice,

weapon, whether that be nuclear weapons, or

we will be protected no matter what kind

We

now we

are

working

about thirty-seven acres. This land as another place like to include a

"From even

weapons, but where

of weapon

is

thrown against us. 17, a place

.

.

We

will

.

be

have been preparing this place as quickly as possible.

"Next, right

to

no matter what kind of

bacterial

Around May

are beginning those preparations now. ready.

we

Shinri Kyo take? First,

where we can protect ourselves from bodily harm,

to secure a place

where we can

will

where

more

this day,

Aum

is

to acquire

can carry out

its

perfect nuclear shelter

from

stricter practice,

this

and

flat,

communal

on

be used

will

lifestyle.

I

would

this land.

moment on you'll

and quickly

another piece of land of

almost completely

have to dedicate yourselves

raise yourselves to the stage

where you

are prepared for death at any time."

In these passages, Asahara

message of bringing happiness

made

Armageddon, Aum's helplessness fect

for death. Fueling this significant

and

its

own

He conceded the

his desire for "a

it,

members

to train

earlier

inevitability

more

of

per-

harder and be ready

change in tone was the

sect's

growing

inability to cope with the continuing difficulties the sect

was experiencing with Japanese group's

major leap away from his

prevent

to

nuclear shelter," and the need for

alienation

a

to the world.

behavior

—

its

donations; barring sect

society.

But fueling those

difficulties

was the

aggressive recruiting; persistent solicitations for

members from

contacts with the outside world,

including relatives; and publishing severe criticisms of others while vehe-

mently denying any criticisms leveled against characteristic of exclusionary

Aum added a new weapon to its Namino

Village in

scheme

it

that

move

in

some degree

typical

to

and take

they

earliest days.

of the

sect's

its

over,

"invasion" of

arrogance toward

become an ingenious

Aum practiced on several occasions:

munity, threatening to at

what was

its

to

antisocial arsenal with

May 1990. While

also reveals

All of these traits are

and closed groups, and

had marked the behavior of Aum from

outsiders,

itself.

fund-raising

purchasing land in a com-

and then negotiating

a

buyout

double the price.

Namino

is

located in

Kumamoto

Prefecture

Kyushu, where Asahara was born. In May,

on the southern

island of

Aum filed the papers required by

the Japanese government for any land transaction, reporting the transfer of

ownership of a

fifteen-acre field to the sect as a gift

from the owner. By the

— Countdown

end of the month the house as many as ative

country

local press.

whom

visitors to the site away,

Namino

work

as trucks carried

fact that

license

warm and neighborly, either. And the commune members slapping together their

ance of

forty-five

Namino

alarm

members The

residents.

Hundreds of Aum their local

as

really set the

bells ringing,

followers

town

at the

villagers

government and

Aum

numbers, didn't

— always, Aum saved money by putting —was equally scandalizing.

What

and

feel all

sight of bearded, half-naked jerry-built structures

civilities

and made videotapes of any

down

cars that even passed their property, jotting

to

many

hours of the day and night, smashing

all

and damaging public roads on the way; the

the people in

to

a small, conserv-

is

the influx of so

They watched with growing apprehension

members chased any

make

at

camp

frightening rumors were flying in the national

construction materials to the site at into buildings

were alarmed

a training

not only showed no inclination to respect local

customs, but about

and

hundred of its members. Namino

village. Its residents

who

outsiders

six

had begun construction of

sect

Armageddon

to

members

though, was the sudden appear-

hall in June, there to register as

now knew

would flood the

their lives.

its

was

the wolf

at the

door.

village rolls, taking control

With the homegrown shrewdness

of

that

Japanese peasants were forced to cultivate over the centuries as a survival technique, the village officials quietly accepted the applications, as they were

required to by law, then simply forgot to process them.

wrangle between the village and the

Namino

"Protect

investigate a possible

village hit the first

its

—

home

for indeed that is

what

it

a

Aum attorney

concerning the land

had been, not a donation. But the

against the village in January 1993.

The

in

formed

applications.

run. In a police crackdown,

District

Aum, and

village residents

for filing false papers

team won the game. The Kumamoto registered as they

The

a long

called in prefectural officials to

members' residency

Yoshinobu Aoyama was arrested purchase

and

began

Aum violation of the land-use laws. Aum, in turn, sued

the village for not processing

The

sect.

Village Association"

Now

demanded. By now the

August 1994, they agreed

Court handed

Aum members villagers

a

Aum

judgment

should have been

were desperate

to a settlement.

the property for five million dollars; they

down

to get rid

of

Aum had purchased

now demanded

four times that

the entire annual budget of the village, or seventeen thousand dollars per

household! Eventually the two sides settled on a five million the first

little

over nine million dollars,

year and the rest in three annual installments.

86

Holy Terror: Armageddon

The

results of this

lar cases in

Tokyo

in

little

caper encouraged

lion dollars to relinquish land purchased for

In

Aum to try

it

again. In simi-

Tomizawa-cho, Yamanashi Prefecture, they demanded ten mil-

Kumamoto, they asked

one million

for

two hundred thousand

dollars for land that cost

dollars.

two hun-

dred eighty thousand dollars. Both of these generous offers to get out of town

were

rejected.

Aum's history of extortion can be traced back to the shaking down of its members for donations, which had begun very early on in its history. Though not made public until much later, it turns out that it also had a surprisingly long history of lethal violence. Some say that the decisive step toward violence had come in November 1989 with the murder of the Sakamoto followers

family, but in fact

had

Asahara had ordered

dutifully carried

sometime during 1988

them

out.

They committed

(the precise date is

tee "accidentally" died while

earlier

still

unclear),

undergoing what was

murders, and his their first

when

later

a

murder

young devo-

described as a

"severe religious training session" in a sect bath house.

While the exact circumstances surrounding

this "training accident"

may

Aum members who confessed to the police in 1995 confirmed that the incident did occur, although they were vague about the

never be known, several

details.

The dead man was

a twenty-five-year-old

ized as "extremely insecure"

members who were

and

in

need of

member who they character-

"special training."

According to

present during and after the training session, the young

man "drowned" in an Aum bath, and efforts to restore his heartbeat and breathing failed. Though police may never learn how the member really died, it is worth noting that the

sect's "special

bath training sessions" were normally

members who had fallen out of line with the sect's practices, or to members who express a desire to quit the sect and leave. As described by former Aum members who witnessed it, the "bath

administered to recalcitrant

training technique" consisted of immersing trainees in extremely hot water.

Though Aum has never explained the spiritual benefits of a scalding bath, modern medical science is replete with warnings about exposing the body to hot water. Unless a person

immersion

is

in unusually good physical condition, total

in extremely hot water can quickly bring

heart attack. In Japan, the steamy bath

number of elderly and was raised

a national passion,

even middle-aged people die

ciated with soaking in water that

ature

is

to near-scalding

is

on shock and

a fatal

and each year

from heart

a

attacks asso-

too hot. But in this case the water temper-

temperatures for

strictly

punitive reasons.

to

Armageddon

dead, the

news was con-

Countdown

After

it

was confirmed

that the

young

man was

veyed to Asahara and his top aides. The death constituted a major the guru immediately

summoned

one aide who was present

young member lic

at the

that disturbed

and

four of his closest advisers. According to

meeting,

Asahara as

it

was not so much the death of the

how

it

might

relations:

how

pub-

affect the sect's

much more

image. Actually, Asahara and his leadership were faced with a

immediate problem than public

crisis,

to dispose of the obviously

scalded body. Even though the death could be superficially explained as an accidental drowning, notification of the police

deaths in Japan

—might

especially after police

—

a legal

requirement in

even an autopsy,

result in a very nasty investigation,

and

relatives

man

of the dead

all

caught a glimpse of his

parboiled body. Little

imagination was required to figure out where

all

might

that

lead.

In such an obvious case of physical abuse resulting in death the police would

have no choice but to pursue the matter to

Aum's

its

end, and in the process ask

leaders a lot of knotty questions they'd rather not answer. Asahara

ordered his close advisers to burn the young man's body and scatter the ashes in the lava gravel covering the ground of the compound.

With the evidence thus destroyed, whether

Aum

Shinri Kyo's

first

it

was

a deliberate

accidental death caused by severe physical abuse. But that

Asahara and his top lieutenants conspired

death,

and in

Aum

it is

to cover

that conspiracy they forged a powerful

the very apex of the

never be

will probably

serious crime

up

beyond the

known

murder all

or an

doubt

young man's

bond of criminality

Shinri Kyo leadership. This only

made

it all

at

easier

the second time around.

In the early

fall

of 1989, Hideo Murai informed Asahara that he had

uncovered information strongly suggesting that a young the Kamikuishiki sions

made

commune was

to the

believe Murai,

planning to

Japanese police, several

who

kill

Aum

monastic

him. According

members of the

at

to confes-

top leadership

they described as a "vicious troublemaker"

who

often

exaggerated things to ingratiate himself with the guru, deliberately distorted the

young man's problem

to

alarm Asahara. The young adherent had also

angered the supreme master by violating a

strict

taboo forbidding

Aum

man had

been

monastics from having sex with each other. This young caught having an

affair

with a young

when Murai informed Asahara jealous rage.

Aum

woman,

also a monastic,

and

of that transgression the guru exploded in a

88

Holy Terror: Armageddon

in

Tokyo

According to one senior leader believed that

all

Aum women

who was

"belonged to

Again the senior advisers were

property."

hara ordered them to

kill

the

young

close to Asahara, the sect leader

him

exclusively, they

called into a

meeting where Asa-

man and burn his body.

Five of the guru's

top aides cornered the victim in a sect building and one of

him with

his bare hands. His

across the lava gravel in the

testimony of Aum

murdered or so grow

likely to

least

body was

also

compound. To

members have turned up

were his

them

strangled

burned and the ashes spread

date, police investigations

thirty-three

and

members who were The number is

severely physically abused that they died.

as the police continue their investigations into the fates of at

twenty other

members who

are currently listed as missing.

The increasing tensions with Japanese society outside and mounting violence inside the sect seem to have fed each other. The sect began a campaign to persuade

all

of

its

followers to join

Aum's communes,

the well-

guarded compounds in which they could be shut off from outside contact

and information. Recruiters stressed the impending Armageddon and urged followers to break ties with their families, give

Aum, and

all

their personal wealth to

devote themselves to ascetic practice as soon as possible. Only

then would they attain the salvation Asahara promised as the world around

them went up in the flames of Armageddon. But this pressure to enter communes did not produce results, and the number of followers who actually became commune members in 1991 and 1992 was disappointingly small. Aum responded in two ways. First, it emerged again with a number of initiatives aimed at improving its image with non-commune members and with the public

at large.

attract

new

bless a

newborn

lay

Aum devised its own

members. These included child; a

ceremonial system, mostly to

a birth ceremony, to

name and

wedding ceremony; and ancestor worship, which

is

a strong and familiar component of religion throughout East Asia, including

Japan.

It

also developed a

memorial

rite

observed on the forty-ninth day after

death, replacing a traditional Japanese Buddhist memorial. Rituals to

mark

the important events of followers' lives such as these were designed to comfort lay

members

seem more Other

at life's

like other,

efforts to

important junctures and

more

make

Aum

Shinri Kyo

familiar religions.

improve Aum's image included public

theatrical

and

dance performances, produced with professional help. Aum-sponsored works such as "Death and Transmogrification" and "Creation" attracted general audiences,

some of whom went on to become members. The

sect also

began

Countdown

aimed

a translation project literature into

modern

pointed to this as

at translating

the entire canon of Early Buddhist

Japanese, and widely publicized these efforts. They

an indication of their seriousness and devotion

Aum

dhism, using the project to counter media images of

—much

group

Aum was tage, finding

as they

to "pure"

Bud-

as a wild fringe

used photos of Shoko Asahara with the Dalai Lama.

even able

some

Armageddon

to

Namino Village incident to of religion who sympathized with

turn the

to

scholars

struggle with the conservative villagers.

supportive voices and set

up

their advan-

Aum in the Aum leaders cleverly cultivated these

interviews between

them and Asahara, which

were then published in mass-market magazines, again casting

Aum

in a

favorable light for a wider Japanese audience.

Second, presently task,

Aum

took increasingly drastic steps to keep those

commune members from

now became

leaving. Leaving

impossible. Guards were posted at

most trustworthy members were allowed was opened by

sect leaders,

and passed on

even then the presence of a senior

who managed to

who were

never an easy

all exits,

and only the

to leave the

compound.

members make

a telephone

to

innocuous. Special permission was required to

required. People

Aum,

member

only

if it

All mail

was deemed call,

and

within hearing distance was

escape the sect's

communes were

tracked

down by special strong-arm squads who seized them, then quickly brought them back to the commune. Escapees were sometimes drugged and thrown into waiting cars.

Aum

The

leadership produced a

techniques for luring apostates back to the

meeting

at a restaurant

before hustling

him

manual

that included

fold. It

suggested arranging a

and then slipping something

into the escapee's drink

out to the car in the guise of assisting a sick friend.

Those who were recaptured often faced extended periods of ing" in the black boxes, the small, dark isolation chambers

went drug-induced "meditation." More

lethal

bath-training session, also awaited recalcitrant

"special train-

where they under-

punishments, such as the

members. Psychological pres-

sure was especially intense. Asahara and his top executives repeatedly warned

Aum members "special hell"

that those

where the

who

left

the sect would eventually end

tortures awaiting

At the same time that

Aum was

up

in a

them were beyond imagination. its ranks, it was

clamping down within

reaching out to the world. First on the domestic front, and later worldwide,

Aum began in 1992 to establish or purchase several businesses. Aum's commercial activities were wide-ranging and included restaurants, a chain of bento (boxed lunches) shops called "It's Good!

It's

Cheap!," a fitness club, a

89

Holy Terror: Armageddon

in

Tokyo

baby-sitting service, noodle shops, dating services, travel agencies, hospitals

and medical and

stores,

clinics, laboratories, real estate,

a very lucrative personal-computer

pharmaceuticals, computer

manufacturing business that

undercut most of the competition in Japan.

The PC company, Mahaposha

or

Maha

gain since PCs of the

same general

The PCs were assembled

Posya, assembled and sold

hundred

in six outlets across Japan for about eight

sixty dollars

—

and up.

quality usually go for twice that

in factories in Osaka, Nagoya,

PCs

a real bar-

and Tokyo and

deliv-

ered direct to the sales outlets, cutting out the expensive Japanese distribution system (another

little

advantage to being a religion). They got their parts

from Taiwan and Hong Kong and bought Japan. In

Taiwan

Aum

Aum

all,

Sri

Lanka

it

owned and operated more than

companies and agencies located

in Japan and, later, the United

and Taiwan. Overhead operating expenses

States, Australia, Sri Lanka,

many

semiconductors wholesale in

had an import-export agency, and in

operated a tea plantation. All in thirty-five

their

for

of these companies were low since they were located in sect-owned

buildings and

manned by

sect

members, many of whom worked

for

little

or

nothing, as part of their spiritual training.

While the publishing companies and hospitals were publicly as

Aum

companies, the more usual practice was

nies that pursued

Aum's

to set

larger ends while covering

up

identified

dummy

up any trace of the

involvement. For example, Hasegawa Chemical, Tokyo, and Beck,

Yamanashi

Prefecture,

were

set

up

in 1993

compasect's

Inc., in

and placed under the direction

of the Science and Technology Ministry. Their purpose was to purchase the

chemicals the ministry needed for attention to

Many cess

its

weapons programs without

Aum.

Aum watchers

was Hisako

Ishii,

believe the person behind the sect's business suc-

Aum's

and most accomplished

Minister of Finance and one of Asahara's oldest

disciples.

A

former insurance company employee,

she was only a couple of years out of junior college

and began attending yoga sessions Described by

Aum

members

as

Exactly

how

is little

she managed the

doubt she was

at his studio in

when

she met Asahara

Shibuya Ward, Tokyo.

one of the guru's most devoted

she was said to be a tireless worker

there

calling

at

sect's

followers,

building the sect's financial resources.

money

is

not

known

at this time,

but

effective.

Aum began to extend overseas for the same reason,

setting

up branches

and offices in several countries, most of them minor operations.

Two

areas

Countdown

where the United

sect's activities

States.

The

first

Armageddon

to

were not minor, however, were Russia and the were forged in 199 1, shortly

links to Russia

after the

begin militarizing. The major proponent of the

sect's decision to

sect's

expansion into Russia was Asahara's primary deputy and most trusted conConstruction Minister Kiyohide Hayakawa. Like Finance Minister

fidant, Ishii,

Hayakawa had made the long march with Asahara from the very

est days,

and when the

arm

itself

head in Russia. In

1992

to

to April

and a keen promoter of expanding the

total,

Hayakawa

1995, spending more than

sect's

beach-

visited Russia twenty-one times

six

earli-

after the humiliating

he was the mastermind of Aum's

defeat at the electoral polls in 1990,

attempts to

began

sect's militarization

months

there.

from

From November 1993

1994, he visited Russia regularly, between one and two times each

month.

Aum devoted most of its overseas propagation energies to Russia, where it

recruited vigorously

specifically targeted

Finding

among

disaffected university students.

As

in Japan,

it

persons with scientific and technical backgrounds.

new members was

not

difficult.

After

more than seventy

years of

state-imposed atheism, any religious group using slick marketing cam-

paigns to offer spiritual salvation could easily attract thousands of Russian

young people. In 1995, a Russian government investigation into the sect's activities estimated that its membership stood at thirty-five thousand, with

up

thousand

to fifty-five

radic basis.

The Russian

time monks"

who

lay followers attending the cult's

sect reportedly

lived in

had

five

thousand

seminars on a spofive

hundred

"full-

Aum accommodations, usually housing donated Aum had eighteen branches in Russia, seven of

by other members. Overall,

which were located in Moscow. In 1992, as part of an effort to spread ble presence in Russia,

from one the three Radio. cast

The

its

of the contract was 2.4 million dollars, and

daily

program which was relayed

tower in Vladivostok to Japan every evening. also broadcast

on Russia's "2X2"

gious side of

more

its

air

Mayak

Aum broad-

via a sect-owned radio

Aum television programs were

it

was

clear that

was technology, weapons, and

work there was

visi-

time

television station.

But almost from the beginning interests in Russia

message and maintain a

signed a three-year contract for radio

largest radio stations in the nation, the state-run

total cost

an hour-long

Aum

little

serious militarization program.

military training.

more than an

The

one of Aum's primary

The

reli-

elaborate cover for

its

sect sent a delegation to Russia to

Holy Terror: Armageddon

discuss laser

in

weapons with

Tokyo

a top Russian expert in the field,

and

it

smuggled

submachine-gun-manufacturing blueprints and other weapons data back Japan for

its

was

From notebooks and

conventional-arms program.

dence obtained by the Japanese also interested in

to

other evi-

police, there are clear indications that

Aum

buying Russian rockets and nuclear weapons.

Documents taken from Hayakawa had information about

other notes referred to the

market" and noted

documents

its

lists

name

of a Russian

distance from

"where there

city

is

a

weapons

Moscow. Most ominously, Hayakawa's

also contained references to the desired purchase of nuclear

weapons. One contained

and

after his arrest in 1995 indicate he weapon. The Japanese press reported that

a gas laser

several prices.

this question:

It is

"How much

is

a nuclear

warhead?"

unclear whether the references are reflections of

actual discussions or negotiations.

Aum's connections with Russian

military, scientific,

ures and institutes extended to the highest

some

three

hundred members

to

levels.

and

political fig-

Asahara led a delegation of

Russia in March 1992. While there he met

with Parliament vice-president Alexsandr Rutskoy and former Russian par-

liament speaker Rusian Khasbulatov. The premier nuclear research in Russia, the Kurchatov Institute,

1992 and 1993,

Aum

had

Aum followers as employees.

facility

During

leaders visiting Russia approached science officials to

seek laser and nuclear technologies. Secretary of the Russian Security Council, Oleg Lobov, received anywhere from five hundred thousand to one million dollars from

Aum.

This relationship started in December 1991 and

continued through 1995. All of the Russian officials denied allegations that they helped

any way. But U.S. Senate investigators found photos in that

Aum

Aum

in

publications

showed Rutskoy, Khasbulatov, Basov, and Lobov with Asahara. Lobov

would

later

admit

to

duped by them due

meeting with

Aum

officials

to his "charitable nature."

but claimed that he was

He

said that neither the

Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs nor the intelligence services warned him

away from the

sect.

Another of the Australia,

where

it

cult's

more

intriguing overseas ventures occurred in

purchased a five-hundred-thousand-acre sheep ranch in a

remote, isolated location Perth. In the area there

some three hundred seventy-five miles northeast of is a known uranium deposit. While inspecting the

property, the group indicated they

wanted

a

remote

"conduct experiments of benefit to mankind." The

site

where they could

Aum officials who visited

Countdown

Armageddon

to

the sheep ranch included Construction Minister Kiyohide

Hayakawa and

Intelligence Minister Yoshihiro Inoue.

During

their tour of the site they

computer and electrodes

conducted several

tests

using a lap-top

that they placed in the ground. After purchasing

the property through a front company,

Aum members

met with an Austra-

September 1993 and discussed with her the possibility of exporting uranium ore from the ranch to Japan via ship. The following

lian geologist in early

week, Shoko Asahara arrived in Perth accompanied by twenty-four followers

from Japan, including

five

ing without their parents.

females under the age of fifteen

The group had with

and mining equipment on which they paid lars in excess

toms. tors,

baggage fees and

Among the baggage was

a

fifteen

it

who were

an assortment of chemicals thousand Australian

thirty

thousand Australian dollars

excess baggage, Australian customs searched the entire group

wide assortment of chemicals that were not

seven hundred

fifty

on board an

sect

Tokyo

attack, the

uranium

for

uranium and

sheep ranch was

ore, they also

sarin in Australia before the soil

ber of Aum

members

full

digital

set

up

a lab-

equipment.

sold. Australian police

were interested

conducted sarin experiments on sheep

Duncan Kerr

Tokyo subway

attack.

He

said that

Aum tested

said that tests

on wool

sighting

in protective clothing

unknown and,

on

on the ranch of a num-

and gas masks.

its

remote sheep ranch in south-

The

cult's

Shinri Kyo officially arrived in the United States in late 1987

when

activities in the

Aum

may explain the

extent of Aum's operations

ern Australia remains

it

it

samples taken from the ranch confirmed traces of the nerve agent

being present. This finding

The

a

and fined one thousand

and various types of

the ranch. Australian Justice Minister

and

and seized

customs declaration

investigations into the sect's activities indicate that while they

at

amount of

subsequently charged with

aircraft

began explorations

oratory complete with computers

in obtaining

to cus-

Australian dollars each by an Australian court.

At the ranch the

Shortly after the

listed in the

Two Aum members were

carrying dangerous substances

dol-

mechanical ditch digger, picks, gas genera-

gas masks, respirators, and shovels. Because of the large

or were mislabeled.

travel-

United

incorporated in

States,

New York City under the name Aum

a not-for-profit corporation.

mote book to act as a

sales

to a certain degree, a mystery.

however, are a good deal clearer.

Although the Manhattan

and recruitment of new members,

purchasing agency for the

sect's

U.S.

office

its

Company,

Ltd.,

purported to pro-

primary function was

attempts to obtain high-tech

Holy Terror: Armageddon

Tokyo

in

equipment, advanced computer software and hardware, and other items

needed in Aum's militarization program. Additionally, in the 1990s the used a purchasing agent in California

to

along

to facilitate similar acquisitions

with military equipment such as gas masks. The

buy equipment and technology in the United

total extent

States

is

sect

of Aum's efforts

unknown, but some

of the items bought were never delivered because U.S. company representatives

became suspicious of the

ucts.

Other purchases were preempted by the gas attack in Tokyo, which

exposed the ever,

sect's terrorist

sect

and the purported end-use of the prod-

nature to the world. In numerous instances, how-

Aum was able to legally buy sophisticated technology, the use of which

is still

unaccounted

for.

that the full scope of

because shortly

U.S. government investigators have also concluded

may never be known sect member apparently took

advanced technology purchases

after the

Tokyo subway

attack a

number of the New York office records back to Japan. The equipment Aum sought in the United States included a Mark IVxp interfrometer manufactured by a firm in Connecticut. The Mark IVxp is a a large

laser

measuring system

that has dual

commercial and military applications

including the measuring of plutonium. Additionally tion isolation table,

Aum requested a vibra-

which with modest reconfiguration can be used

to

mea-

sure spherical surfaces, including those of plutonium used in nuclear

weapons. The

sales

were never completed because the firm became suspi-

cious and contacted export-licensing officials. In 1994,

two thousand dollars worth of

H EPA

media, which

is

Aum

used

in "clean rooms." At their production facilities in Japan,

"clean rooms" to facilitate the handling of sarin, VX, biological

From

bought

thirty-

for air filtration

Aum

constructed

and other chemical and

weapons. a

company

in Oregon,

Aum bought molecular-modeling software

that enables chemists to experiment with synthesizing molecules

on

a

com-

more expensive and timely laboratory methods. Other major purchases that were not consummated or delivered puter screen rather than through

included extremely advanced lasers for industrial and scientific cutting and welding; and molecular-design software to develop the preclinical design phase.

develop biological toxins.

On

The the

new therapeutic drugs

latter could also be

West

Coast,

Aum

used

to research

in

and

agents wanted to pur-

chase thousands of serum bottles, hundreds of mechanical fans, and equal

amounts of camcorder

batteries,

along with military-style gas masks.

Countdown

to

Armageddon

In addition to acquiring technology and equipment in the United States,

Aum was also able to obtain helicopter-pilot licenses at

The two

an aviation school in Florida.

Agency Director Tetsuya Kibe and member required

number of flight

for

fledgling pilots Keiji

two of its members

were

Aum

Defense

Tanimura. After taking the

lessons and passing written and flight

tests,

they

each received a private pilot rating for rotor-craft helicopters on October

31,

1993. Soon afterward, the cult purchased a Russian civilian version of a mil-

and brought

itary helicopter

Aum America. States

Shinri Kyo

Some

it

was not

membership

New York

a success at recruiting

U.S. government sources have estimated at slightly less

and

dence to support that figure the

to Japan.

City area

—

its

than two hundred, but there

a recent Senate inquiry

main base of operations

few dozen followers. Part of the reason for Shinri Kyo never viewed

chasing house for

its

doomsday message go

down

well with

its

this

American branch

militarization program.

—with the United

and meditation

held his group together.

had only

may have

a

Aum

that

more than

a pur-

realized that

its

—would not

States as the

archenemy

Armageddon

in the 1990s

practice

Though

steadily in that direction.

and world

He

was

rapidly

salvation as the glue that

the sect was not yet fully

consumed with

and speeches, was moving

published in the early 1990s a

number of

among them The

Truth of Humanity's Destruction,

Secret Prophecy of Nostradamus, Declaring

Myself the Christ, and Declaring

books on doomsday themes, The

sect

may be

low figure

apocalyptic prophecies, Asahara, in his writings it

evi-

determined that in

—the

as anything It

no

is

most Americans.

Asahara's growing obsession with replacing yoga

new members in Aum's total United

Myself the Christ, Part

II.

In October and

November of 1992, Asahara made

—the

around the country

lecture appearances at several top universities

Tokyo College of Engineering, Shinshu University, Osaka University, Chiba University, versity.

Yokohama

National University, Kyoto University, and Tokyo Uni-

By now his apocalyptic vision had grown even darker, and the

Armageddon he presented

to students

and

faculty

was one

in

which atomic,

and chemical weapons of mass destruction would be used to wipe more than ninety percent of Japan's urban populations. Armageddon

biological,

out

would occur by the year 2000. By

this time,

Asahara no longer talked of Shambhala or a Lotus

Instead, in order to survive the horrors that the

Village.

guru predicted, one would

95

Holy Terror: Armageddon

Tokyo

in

have to become a "superhuman" through the told his audiences that for survival

among the

several projects that

was the construction of an underwater

even further by claiming that those

would earn a

ascetic practices

destruction that

As

if

sect's ascetic practices.

would

rain

who

Aum planned as aids

city. Later,

he would reach

entered the sect and followed

immunity

special

Asahara

its

weapons of mass

to the

down on Japan during Armageddon.

gearing up for Armageddon,

Aum

Shinri Kyo's practices took

on

the hard, even desperate edge of extreme and punitive asceticism. Practitioners spent days in the isolation

and confinement of the black box, often with-

out food or water, while videos of Asahara's sermons played continuously a roaring volume. In a variation

was bombarded,

on

this

grim

exercise, the

on end, with videos of the most

for days

at

person in the box grisly

and gory

scenes and sounds of death and destruction; this was supposed to drive

home

the point that everyone dies, and the only glory

is

giving one's

life to

the guru.

The black box was in Tibetan

duced

Buddhism,

at this

"inspired" by a practice of extended solitary meditation as

was another, much more

athletic practice intro-

time in which members threw themselves prostrate on the

ground and picked themselves up, over and over again. This went on from teen to twenty hours a day, while the practitioner recited:

Aum,

in the Guru,

In this

same

and in

Shiva. Please lead

period, Asahara

began

to

me

"I

six-

take refuge in

quickly to enlightenment."

emphasize what he

called Tantra

Diamond Vehicle" to salvation. Although he borterm and some practices from Esoteric forms of Tibetan Bud-

Vajrayana, or "the Secret

rowed the

dhism, he gave

it

a distinctive twist. Asahara's Vajrayana

absolute power of the guru selves completely of their spirit

—

that

own

is,

emphasized the

himself. Followers were to

selfhood so that they could be

empty them-

filled

with the

of the guru. Their only religious practice was to do whatever the guru

instructed,

The

and the guru was always

sect published a

pamphlet

right.

entitled

"The Vajrayana Vow" that

mem-

bers were encouraged to recite "a thousand, a million, a billion times":

I

take refuge in the Tantra Vajrayana! (repeated four times)

What

is

the

first

law?

To be mindful of the Buddha.

And I

in Tantra Vajrayana, the

Buddha and

the

Guru

take refuge in the Guru! (repeated four times)

are identical.

Countdown

to

Armageddon

What is the Guru? The Guru is a life form born to phowa all souls. Any method that leads to salvation is acceptable. My life will come to an end sometime. It

makes no

difference if the

end comes

in twenty years, thirty

years, or eighty years, It

come

will

regardless.

What's important If

give

I

it

is

how

I

give

my life.

for salvation, eliminating all the evil

accumulated, freeing myself from

and So

winners of truth

all

The

final battle is

will

among

be

And phowa I

without

will

karma

will

have

fail

lead

me to

a higher realm.

upon

Phowa

is

Obviously,

in the Bible approaches,

us.

the holy troops of this last great battle

the evil ones.

phowa one or two

evil

ones.

the highest virtue

And phowa

is

phowa

the path to the highest level of being.

is

a key

term here. Though the original Tibetan means

lead a soul to a higher level of being, usually at the for

I

karma, the Guru and Shiva

practice the Vajrayana without fear.

I

The Armageddon taught

I

all

Asahara and

for killing,

many

of his key followers,

and the Tantra Vajrayana became

it

moment

to

of death,

had become a euphemism

a very effective

form of brain-

washing that successfully convinced many of the guru's followers murder

was acceptable

if

Asahara ordered

it.

Beginning in 1994, and perhaps widely, both as

their

hypnotic drugs were also used

in initiations.

One member who

success-

1994 many members had "lost minds" because of drug experiences, were disoriented, didn't know

fully fled

who

punishment and

earlier,

from the group reported

that by

they were, and wandered helplessly around the compound. In one form

of initiation often used by the

hooked up

was kept

to

at

sect,

an IV bag from which a

the

member was

hospitalized for days

cocktail of chemicals dripped.

He or she

the margins of consciousness as Asahara's cassette tapes were

played continuously in the room.

Aum

also

found pharmaceuticals of certain

sideline. Police sources suggest that

illicit

sorts to

be a most lucrative

drug manufacturing

may have

97

98

Holy Terror: Armageddon

Tokyo

in

provided the sect with millions of dollars in revenue. In their investigations,

which are

still

ongoing, the police found evidence that

cal expertise to

manufacture

illegal

Japanese underworld. Japanese government

produced and sold through

Aum used its chemi-

stimulants and other drugs for the officials

concluded that the sect

underworld connections a large amount of

its

the potent hallucinatory drug LSD. Shoko Asahara reportedly dispatched one

member to

Russia to purchase materials for making

United States to find out

One

how

to

produce

LSD and

another to the

it.

report indicates that after a good start

Aum's

—eventually the word from the

have faltered badly

the sect's drug products were "garbage." But their

quality control

may

Japan was

that

street in

first efforts at

making the

hallucinatory drug apparently resulted in very potent LSD. Cult

who were

present

when Asahara sampled

members

the initial batches of the

Aum

drug say the guru had intense hallucinations, saw what he believed was the origin of the universe, It

and then "pissed

was probably not an accident

was adopting on

all

to

that this darker course

One

Aum

Shinri Kyo

with Asahara's expanding visions

levels also coincided

of impending apocalypse.

impetus

in his pants."

undoubtedly informed and added

factor that

Asahara's Armageddon-obsessed thinking, and perhaps was

spurred on by his top cadre of

Here was the world's

first real

vised scenes of missiles

scientists,

threat of

slamming

was the Gulf War

modern chemical

in early 19 91.

warfare.

The

tele-

into Allied-troop installations in Saudi

Arabia and falling on defenseless civilians in

Israel,

interspersed with images

of frightened journalists, soldiers, and civilians donning gas masks in the event the missiles carried chemical warheads, were a rich infusion for the guru,

who was

already possessed by dire visions of the future.

The Gulf War had demonstrated the awesome biological

weapons, and

it

manufacture some of the weapons.

was needed was the technology

to obtain these

for

making them; the

best places

were the former Soviet Union, economically shattered by the

implosion of the communist system, and the United

equipment were

available for the asking.

By

early

States,

1992

where data and

Aum

was well

entrenched in Russia and working on weapons procurement out of its

York and West Coast

offices.

sary for fighting the final it

and

took no particular genius for Asahara to realize that

his small core of scientists could easily All that

potential of chemical

The prospect of acquiring the weapons

war was suddenly within reach, and

with single-minded determination.

New

neces-

Aum pursued

Countdown

One of its

first

steps

was

to obtain the

Armageddon

to

technology for manufacturing AK-

74 submachine guns. The AK-74 is the modern version of the Soviet AK-47 submachine gun used so effectively by the Viet Cong guerrillas and the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War. The technology for AK-type

weapons has been around

them by

and the Chinese have manufactured

for decades,

armed

the millions for domestic use by their

forces

and

for export

to less

developed countries. By arms-manufacturing standards, making AK-

74s

a relatively simple business. But

is

Aum

never seemed to get the hang

of it. After receiving the plans for

making the weapons from

Russia,

By

take the sect's technical experts long to go into production.

more than one hundred

but reports indicate only a small

Japanese police raided the

else in

Aum's

parts,

same success with

finally

When

used rocket launchers, and

The AK-74 production program

is little its

Kamikuishiki com-

overall reliability.

aggressive conventional militarization

uninterrupted years

cal

its

Aum facility in March 1995, they discovered com-

submachine guns, additional gun

other military equipment.

high gear, but there

July 1994,

number of the weapons were

produced and there were serious doubts about their

pleted

did not

Aum members were busy turning out parts for AK-

74s with the aid of computer-controlled machinery in plex,

it

doubt that had the

cult

—

like so

program

much

—never

hit

been given a few more

determined technicians would have achieved the

the Russian submachine guns

it

had in creating chemi-

weapons.

At the same time they were trying tists

to

manufacture AK-74S,

were also pursuing an interest in "Star Wars" technology,

information on the development of laser weapons. traveled to

Moscow

to interview Dr.

An Aum

Aum

scien-

specifically

scientific

team

Nikolay Basov, a 1964 Nobel Prize win-

ner for his research on the principle of laser technology and the nation's

number-one authority on beyond doubt;

laser

weapons. That the meetings took place

sect publications later printed

is

photographs showing Basov

meeting with Shoko Asahara. What ensued from those discussions

is

not

known, but in November 1994, several cult members were arrested for breaking into the offices of Nippon Electronics. The purpose of the burglary

was

to steal

information on laser technology from the company's laser-

beams

laboratory near

Aum's

intelligence ministry,

Yokohama. One of those arrested was

on

whom

police

a

member

of

found sketches and maps of

the interior layouts of facilities at six other major electronic firms. Also

99

100

Holy Terror: Armageddon

seized were

worked

for

in

Tokyo

containing the

lists

names of dozens of

Aum members who

major electronic and chemical firms in Japan. The

arrests didn't

even slow the sect down. By the end of December 1994, several

Aum mem-

bers were arrested for breaking into the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries

Research Center in Hiroshima Prefecture. In their investigations, Japanese

group had broken into the center on a number of pre-

police discovered the

vious occasions in an attempt to steal documents and research data

beam

on

laser

research.

In

March 1995, documents on laser technology, including blueprints for were seized by police from an Aum member; in the same month

a laser gun,

on

data

laser devices

was found buried

in the

ground of the

sect's

Kamikui-

compound.

shiki

Aum's research-center burglaries raise the possibility of another, much more secret tie with Russian officialdom. In 1995, Russian parliamentarian Vitaliy Savitsky, chairman of the Duma's Religious Affairs Committee, complained to fellow members that "his committee seriously suspected that

Aum

Shinri Kyo

intelligence

had been

assisted in

Savitsky's

services."

its

penetration into Russia by Russian

suspicions about Russian intelligence

involvement with the sect could explain a great deal of Aum's unusual access to senior

which

it

Russian

political

soman, and

reports that the formula

VX

nerve agents. There have been unconfirmed

and process

Aum used to

and now Russian,

Japan have never been very nism, the

produce sarin was simil-

number of

its

effective. After the

The

service, again

publicly

War

old Cold

also streamlined

announced

The

implosion of Soviet a

known by

its

KGB

place

dance. Shortly after the

new SRV would and technology,

a streamlined

agenda used by the

and modernized. Top Russian

that the

was stripped of a

was

a three-letter acronym, called

intelligence-collection

areas of economics, science,

commu-

sweeping reorganization of

old Soviet

and what emerged in

duties,

Russian intelligence the SRV.

intelligence-collection efforts in

new Russian government undertook

the former Soviet intelligence service.

Aum

with

chemical-warfare technology developed by the former Soviet army.

Historically, Soviet,

was

relative ease

obtained weapons technology, possibly including the formulas for

sarin, tabun,

iar to

and military figures and the

intelligence officials

concentrate all

KGB

its

spying in the

things Japan had in abun-

new SRV agenda was announced in the early 1990s, Moscow to establish its religious centers, recruit

Shinri Kyo arrived in

new members, and begin

a rather overt, amateurish

—but ultimately

effec-

Countdown

tive

—campaign

to

acquire weapons technology.

to

Armageddon

Russian intelligence

is

highly suspicious of religious groups, especially foreign sects proselytizing

among its disaffected young of the SRV from day one. As they watched the ized that

Aum,

with

its

people,

and

Aum probably attracted the interest

operations in Russia, the

sect's

technical

and

SRV must have real-

scientific cadre, its

mosity against the Japanese government, and technology, would be easy to exploit for

its

its

own

Aum

Certainly the types of information that

unrelenting ani-

urgent quest for weapons intelligence collection.

sought in

its

break-ins at

Japanese research centers would also be of interest to the SRV. By allowing

Aum

to operate relatively

unimpeded

some of the weapons technology do on

its

technical

own and

turf

—

ing

SRV

wanted

might reasonably

it

SRV would

things the

SRV

quo share of the

from Japan's research

would be simple. Aum's top leaders

of clandestine intelligence collection.

used and manipulated by the

some

SRV

when

It is

it

centers, the

came

leav-

in Russia, like

business

to the arcane

entirely possible that the sect

without ever being aware of

members of the

top

could easily

managing the operation without

Asahara himself, were unsophisticated

possible that at least

all

with

it

be only too happy to provide.

intelligence perspective,

fingerprints

—

and by supplying

extract a quid pro

scientific data the sect stole

addresses of which the

From an

it

in Russia,

sect

It is

it.

may have been

was also

willing

accomplices working with the SRV. There are intriguing rumors, none of

them confirmed,

that

Aum received funding from foreign sources. were extremely heavy, a burden the

ational costs in Russia

SRV

Its

oper-

could have

alleviated if properly motivated.

Aum was also highly interested in so-called seismological or "doomsday weapons" capable of shattering the

earth. In Construction Minister Kiyohide

Hayakawa's notebooks seized by Japanese

police, there are

ences to nuclear and seismological weapons. There that

Aum

sent a

team

to the

former Yugoslavia

is

numerous

also reliable evidence

to research the

Nikola Tesla, the controversial discoverer of alternating current,

experimented extensively with the theory of seismic weapons

which have the

ability to create

Tesla, according to

one

work of

who

also

—weapons

—before he died in 1943.

with his work, was once quoted weapon technology he could "split the world

official familiar

saying that with his seismic two."

massive earthquakes

refer-

While in Yugoslavia, the

as

in

Aum members studied Tesla's work on high-

I

I

102

Holy Terror: Armageddon

Tokyo

in

energy voltage transmission and wave amplification, both of which Tesla believed could be used to create major seismological disturbances.

Even though

Their deadly trek into the poisonous gas business began in 1992, shortly

after the

Gulf War, which some

was the inspiration it

Aum's

produce chemical and biological weapons was extremely success-

efforts to ful.

conventional war program was largely a failure,

its

was

at that

time that the

related nerve agents

easy to produce.

it

to police

chemical weaponry. Certainly

cult's scientists started

research on sarin and other

such as tabun and soman. The Japanese police believe

that the cult chose sarin as

extremely deadly,

members confessed

cult scientific

for their interest in military

was

Aum

its first

nerve-gas agent because while

"old tech

still

also took

—low tech" and therefore

was

it

relatively

an avid interest in the Ebola virus which

broke out in Zaire in 1992. Several cult

members

traveled to Zaire

under

guise of a "medical mission" to assist in treating Ebola victims, but govern-

ment

officials believe the real

the Ebola strain and bring

claim

is

a

1994 speech

it

purpose of the

back

made

in

to

visit

was

to obtain a

sample of

Japan for cultivation. Underscoring this

Moscow by

Endo

Seiichi

in

which he

dis-

cussed the use of Ebola as a potential biological warfare agent.

Aum

not only prepared for global warfare; Asahara was already plan-

ning for the time

remain unharmed

after

Aum members

Armageddon, when only

—and ready

to rule Japan, at the very least. In

religion adopted a double organizational structure,

one

spiritual

would

1994 the and the

other political, with Shoko Asahara occupying the top position in both as

Founder and Sacred Ruler.

On

the spiritual level,

according to seven ranks of "enlightenment" and

all

members were

him were five Tomoko Matsumoto;

giance to Asahara, the Sonshi. Below

Great Masters

—Asahara's

wife

"Seitaishi," or

down

alle-

True

his third daughter,

Umabalavati Achariya; Hideo Murai; Fumihiro Joyu; and Hisako next rank

classed

pledged complete

Ishii.

The

was called "Seigoshi," or True Enlightened Master, of which

there were nine, including Asahara's eldest daughter,

Tomomitsu

Niimi,

Kiyohide Hayakawa, and Yoshinobu Aoyama. Next in rank were three ranks

of lesser masters, then the swami, or "y°gi c adept." Holy names were

bestowed on those from the rank of swami on up. Below the swami were the monastics, or shamana. Lay

members formed

But unlike other religions in Japan,

same

political lines as the

the base of the pyramid.

Aum also organized itself along the

Japanese government, complete with ministries,

departments, and agencies. The assumption was that after Armageddon, the

Countdown

to

Armageddon

Founder

Shoko Asahara

/ / /

Seigoshi

/

\

**

\ \

(True Enlightened Master)

/

MONASTICS

\

Seitaishi* (True Great Master)

Shicho

•

(Head Master

•

/

\ \

Taishi

Great Master)

HOLY NAMES

\\

SHl

/

RECIPIENTS OF

(Master)

Swami

/

(Yogic Adept)

\ Samana (Voice-Hearer)

/

''

LAY

* Asahara's third daughter, Hisako

Ishii,

FOLLOWERS Fumihirojoyu, Tomoko Matsumoto (Asahara's

wife),

and Hideo Murai. ** Asahara's first daughter, Yoshinobu Aoyama, Seiichi Endo,Kiyohide Hayakawa, Eriko Kazuko Miyakozawa, Naruhito Noda, Tomomitsu Niimi, and Mayumi Yamamoto

Aum

Shinri Kyo's spiritual hierarchy.

sect

would be ready

Almost

Aum

to step in

and

exactly paralleling Japan's

fill

lida,

the role of the government of Japan.

government, the

political organization

Shinri Kyo included twenty-four separate ministries

and agencies,

of all

of them comparable to the government with similar functions and responsibilities.

Aum

had ministries of Defense, Health and Welfare, Science and

Technology, Education, and times more

members

many more. Although

in Russia than in Japan,

all

the cult

the highest positions were

held by Japanese citizens. Furthermore, after Armageddon, ently preparing to replace

move

that bordered

on

more than

lese majeste

had nearly three

just Japan's

Aum was appar-

government. In a

—and which said

telling

a lot about the sect's

103

104

Holy Terror: Armageddon

1INISTRY OF SCIENCE

MINISTRY OF HEALTH

AND TECHNOLOGY

AND WELFARE

Hideo Murai

Seiichi

Endo

in

Tokyo

MINISTRY OF

HOME

MINISTRY OF

MINISTRY OF

HEALING

CONSTRUCTION

AFFAIRS

Tomomitsu Niimi

Ikuo Hayashi

Kiyohide

AGENCY OF

MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS

DEFENSE

Fumihirojoyu

Tetsuya Kibe

FOUNDER

MINISTRY OF

MINISTRY OF FINANCE

JUSTICE Yoshinobu

Aoyama

Hisako

Shoko Asahara

MINISTRY OF

Ishii

MINISTRY OF

COMMERCE

EDUCATION

Yofune Shirakawa

Shigeru Sugiura

HOUSEHOLD AGENCY Tomomasa Nakagawa

SECRETARIAT Reika

Matsumoto

MINISTRY OF LABOR

MINISTRY OF INTELLIGENCE

Mayumi Yamamoto

Asahara's 4th daughter

MINISTRY OF DISTRIBUTION SUPERVISION

MINISTRY OF POSTS

& TELECOMMUNICATIONS

Hideo Murai

Tomoko Matsumoto

EASTERN FOLLOWERS

AGENCY Eriko lida

The

Hayakawa

WESTERN FOLLOWERS AGENCY Kazuko Miyakozawa

political hierarchy

NEW FOLLOWERS AGENCY Sanae Ouchi

MINISTRY OF VEHICLES Naruhito Noda

of Aum Shinri Kyo.

vision of the future of Japan's

Emperor

—Asahara ordered the establishment

of a Household Agency for himself and his family like the one that manages the daily administrative details of the Japanese emperor

provides security and medical care for Japan's lofty

dreams Asahara had

for

first

and

family.

his family

and

Among the many

himself in the post- Armageddon

era,

Emperor

Countdown

of Japan was surely a Secretariat,

ministers in

among them. On

which was headed by

a less regal level, the

Armageddon

to

guru also formed

his eleven-year-old daughter, Reika.

Aum's shadow government along with

The

the head of his House-

hold Agency formed Asahara's inner circle of advisers. Unlike the tens of

thousands of devotees circle

knew

who were unaware

the full extent of the cult's criminal activities.

By the spring of 1994, the accusations,

sect,

urged on by Asahara's increasingly

began to claim that Japanese and American

ing chemical and biological closed religious sect

new

weapons on them. The

aircraft

drift

as their

shrill

were unleash-

toward becoming a

was now almost complete. Ties with outside

which they now viewed aggressive

of the sect's true nature, the inner

society,

enemy, were severed. At the same time,

many new members as possible from the These new members would become soldiers in

efforts to recruit as

outside society continued.

the group's preparation for a

war

that

would feature both conventional arma-

ments and weapons of mass destruction. In his inner councils, Asahara was that held

Aum

must

actively

defend

now

mies confronting them, and that in order

enemy has

a

chance

at

must

fight. It

was

an imagined enemy before

to strike first.

But for Asahara and

Aum

Shinri Kyo, the agenda never

on track or follow the timetable they laid down. So for

growing array of ene-

to survive they

making, striking out

a classic paranoia in the

the

preaching an extreme doctrine

itself against the

it

seemed

to stay

was with the predictions

Armageddon in 1997, a date that had been chosen for numerological reaThe importance of the mystic date 1997 was shoved aside sometime in

sons.

1994, perhaps

late in the

investigation of the

year after the Japanese police began to press their

Matsumoto

clysmic war was established: selected

is still

gassing,

and

November

a

new

date for Asahara's cata-

1995. Exactly

why

this date

was

shrouded in mystery, but Japanese government sources con-

firmed to a U.S. Senate investigating committee that they became concerned after analyzing cult materials that

Aum's

leadership had decided "to speed

things up" by starting their predicted war between Japan and America two years early. This

may be

a polite Japanese bureaucratic

way of saying they

were troubled because the date coincided with the scheduled

visit

by

President Clinton and seventeen other world leaders to Osaka, Japan, for the

annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) from November 16 to 19. In any event, President Clinton did not attend the meeting because of press-

ing budget problems with the U.S. Congress.

105

106

Holy Terror: Armageddon

The

Tokyo

in

security precautions planned for the

meeting were not exaggerated,

especially given Asahara's long history of anti-American rhetoric. In early

1994, he accused the United States of masterminding and carrying out a series

Aum

of chemical attacks on himself and

same year

facilities in

Japan. In the

the cult produced a video titled Slaughtered Lambs, which

it

claimed documented the American poison-gas attacks. In this video, an

Aum

was not the

narrator calmly reassures his audience that the sect

He

ducer of sarin gas, but the victim of it.

some two hundred

forty Japanese

thing from helicopters to military

pound spraying The

and American jets,

pro-

charges that in the past few years aircraft,

including every-

have swooped low over Aum's com-

the deadly gas.

narrator claims that by using Russian gas-detection equipment

(a

system, incidentally, that can also be used in the production of nerve gases),

Aum's medical

staff

has found samples of poisonous gas in the compound,

including sarin and mustard

The video

gas.

states that at least eighty

Aum

monastics were sickened by the gas, and the medical staff was forced to inject all the stricken

the

end of the

members with

atropine, the antidote for sarin.

tape, in a voiceover, the charismatic

survives these [gas] attacks because

it

Aum

is

Asahara speaks:

a mystic religion that transcends

the boundaries of

life

and death.

rules this world.

am

suffering the effects of mustard gas.

I

is

Near

"Aum

mighty obstacle

a

I

to the evil that

am now facing

death."

The

strident

selection of the

January

an

anti-Americanism

November 1995

1995 when

article

—and

date for the

the mystery surrounding the

new Armageddon

—continued

in

the cult's monthly publication, Vajrayana Sacca, printed

asking "Will Clinton Be Assassinated?" In

it

the sect editors noted:

"Clinton will be without doubt a one-term president. At best, he will not be reelected.

At worst,

it

would not be strange

that appears accidental."

The same

if

he were assassinated, in a way

publication contains an article raising the

possibility of planned terrorist assassinations of various Japanese officials.

number of prominent Japanese officials are listed as crats who have sold their souls to the devil." Included

"black-hearted aristois

Daisaku Ikeda, the

honorary president of Soka Gakkai International (who tried to kill in

what was

its first,

A

Aum

had

earlier

unsuccessful attempt to use sarin), a major

Japanese religious group that Asahara despised and regarded as his biggest religious rival in Japan;

Ozawa, head of the

Yukio Aoshima, the governor of Tokyo; and Ichiro

New

Frontier Party,

who was

labeled by

Aum

as the

Countdown

to

Armageddon

"king of darkness" for his close ties with the United States; and

Crown

Princess Masako, an "agent of American business."

There are other unconfirmed reports that President Clinton was also

named on Aum. The

a separate, similar cult's

death

list

list

of assassination possibilities circulated by

gained increased significance on

May

16, 1995,

when Tokyo Governor Aoshima, who had publicly called for disbanding Aum Shinri Kyo and who was prominently mentioned on the January assassination list, received a mail bomb which exploded, blowing off a number of fingers on one hand of his secretary outthe date of Asahara's arrest,

side the governor's office.

in the

The governor,

in another office,

was not injured

bomb's detonation.

Whether Aum's

hostility

on U.S. population centers

is

toward America would have resulted in attacks uncertain, but such attacks were being actively

considered by the sect's top leadership. Reliable Japanese press reports indi-

Aum's chief doctor, Ikuo Hayashi, confessed to police that as early as November 1994 Aum was planning to mail packages of sarin nerve gas to unnamed locations in the United States. Hayashi was quoted as saying that the sect's intelligence chief, Yoshihiro Inoue, wanted him to travel to cate that

America and receive the parcels

for local delivery. U.S. Senate investigators

confirmed that Inoue kept a number of detailed diaries in which he jotted

down random thoughts and

plans concerning future

Aum

operations.

Seized by the Japanese police, these diaries outline a plan to conduct indiscriminate nerve gas attacks in major If

nity

US

America was Aum's number-one

came

in a close

number

cities,

including

New York

target, the world's

two. There

seems

little

Jewish

City.

commu-

motivation for the

same could be said of the has been a conspicuous and growing

group's belligerent anti-Semitism (though the bizarre strain of anti-Semitism that social

problem in Japan

for a

number of years). There

and those there are represent not the the Japanese,

on

commented on is

either

an individual or a group

similarities

are few Jews in Japan,

slightest threat or mildest challenge to level. If anything,

among the two peoples.

Yet

many have

Aum's anti-Semitism

a well-established fact. In January 1995, for example, the sect formally

declared war

on the Jewish people, which

it

described in a special edition of

Vajrayana Sacca entitled Manual of Fear as "the hidden enemy" and "the

world shadow government": "On behalf of the world's

5.5 billion

people,

Vajrayana Sacca hereby formally declares war on the 'world shadow govern-

ment' that murders untold numbers of people and, while hiding behind

107

108

Holy Terror: Armageddon

in

Tokyo

sonorous phrases and high-sounding principles, plans to brainwash and control the rest. Japanese awake!

The hidden enemy's

plot has long since

torn our lives to shreds."

Quoting

liberally

blames the Jews

from a number of anti-Semitic works, the

for the

mass murders

in

for

which

will

sacres

year 2000. In

masterminding

its

tribal killings in

a sinister international plot of similar

Aum tied Jews to its enemies in Japan, the "black

current and former politicians and statesmen.

many

mas-

reduce the world's population to three billion people by the literature

aristocracy" of Japanese "internationalists" that included a large

rhetoric

tract

Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge,

the massacres of Serbs and Croatians in Bosnia, the

Rwanda, and

Aum

persons that

it

Aum

number of

also targeted in

identified as "Jewish Japanese," people

were not Jewish but rather cosmopolitan Japanese, government

officials

its

who and

members of the Tokyo and Osaka business communities who personified Aum's perception of the internationalism and materialism that were destroying Japan.

Aum

Shinri Kyo's transformation from a new-religious sect to a crimi-

nal cult devoted to bringing about

rorism had entered

its

guru Asahara Shoko.

most deadly

Armageddon through stage.

the use of ultrater-

Leading the way, of course, was the

Wine

Sarin: Old a

in

chemical

Its

fluoridate.

in

name is

the average

Battle

not sarin, but the heftier isopropyl methylphosphono-

Benign in physical appearance, sarin

pure liquid

its

New

state.

it

colorless

and odorless It

will kill

human being in five to fifteen minutes if less than a minute drop

of it penetrates the pores of the skin. That function

is

But don't be deceived by appearances.

has

—

is

what it is designed to

do, the only

to kill people.

In the deadly world of nerve gases and military chemical warfare sarin

has a code

what are is

now

name

that's straight out

called "G-agents."

so old that

it is

mass death and

It is

one of a

series of

But unlike the high-tech stuff Bond uses, sarin

from another time, an early-model typewriter in the

age of advanced word processors. the ultraterrorist can

of James Bond.

still

use

it

to

And

like the old typewriter

pound out

a grisly

it still

works;

modern masterpiece of

injury.

Today chemists say there are more than one hundred ways in which sarin can be produced,

most of them

fairly

simple processes that would not

tax the abilities of an average graduate-level chemist. Probably the

blesome step in the process technology that looking

is

is

no longer

is

most trou-

finding the formula, but because sarin

difficult at

all.

is

old

In England the best place to start

the patent office. In the United States, the chemical formula for

109

1

10

Holy Terror: Armageddon

sarin

is

in

readily accessible to

Tokyo

anyone who knows what he's looking

universities with large chemistry departments have

reference libraries, and if it can't be found there

wackier fringes of the Internet, where

its

it

for.

somewhere

Most

in their

always available on the

it's

deadly secret has been spelled out

in detail with disturbing regularity.

Sarin takes

its

name from an erroneous acronym

German chemist

of its

Ambrose, Rudriger, and van der Linde. According

inventors, Schrader,

one source, the four accidentally discovered the nerve gas in 1938 while

to

try-

ing to produce an agricultural insecticide using organo-phosphorous chemicals,

the

many modern pesticides. Their officials, who refined it as a unconfirmed reports that German sci-

same chemicals found today was turned over

lethal discovery

to

in

Third Reich

chemical-warfare weapon. There are

entists tested the effectiveness of sarin

on inmates

in the Nazi death

camps.

Though the Nazis produced an arsenal of sarin and other nerve-gas weapons, they never used them against the Allied troops during World War II, probably out of fear that the Allies iate against

would use

their

own chemical weapons

Germany's vulnerable urban population

In addition to sarin, the Nazis produced a the late 1930s.

The

first

to retal-

centers.

number of nerve

gases in

was tabun, coded "GA," which was discovered by

Gerhard Schrader, the same chemist who accidentally codiscovered coded "GB." Tabun vapor

it

is

a colorless liquid in pure form;

gives off a faint odor. Like sarin, the tabun vapor

persistent," a chemical-warfare air

when

makes

over time. This

extremely deadly one

if

it

term that means

it

released in enclosed areas where

strain is

relatively

it

open spaces but an it

lingers longer in

does in the open

soman, or "GD," which

is

heavier,

more persistent than sarin. chemical- warfare weapon by Soviet defense scientists, was put poisonous, and

air.

more

Soman, considered an

ideal

into

mass

production by the Soviet army during the Cold War, but there it

"non-

tends to disperse into the

a short-term threat in large,

concentrated form and does not dissipate as rapidly as

Another gas in the G-agent

is

sarin,

converted to a

is

no evidence

was ever used. Chemical weapons have been employed on the

two thousand

five

hundred

years, but

it

battlefield for

was during World War

I

more than

that chemi-

modern phase. Germany was then the world's leader in chemistry and the German army turned to the nation's chemists to provide them with a weapon that would break the stalemate of trench warfare on the Western Front. The first weapon they introduced was chlorine gas, a cal

warfare entered

its

Sarin: Old

Wine

a

in

New

Battle

powerful choking agent that attacks the lungs. Under the right circumstances chlorine can be April 22,

1

fatal,

9 15,

as the Allied armies of the

dawned

when

front at Ypres, Belgium,

several miles long,

from the German

West soon

discovered.

as a beautiful spring day over the quiet battleBritish

were suddenly

and French

troops,

crowded in trenches

by a loud hissing noise coming

startled

lines just across the way.

The hissing sound they heard

came from more than six thousand chlorine-gas cylinders spraying their upwind of the Allied forces. Looking over the edge of their

lethal contents

saw

trenches, the Allied soldiers

German

the

lines,

McWilliams and terror inflicted

emerging from

An

excerpt from

book, Gas — The

Steel's

Battle for Ypres, 1915, describes the

by the choking agent when

positions: "Shrieks of fear air.

a long cloud of white mist

heading directly toward them.

it

engulfed the British and French

and uncontrolled coughing

the poisonous

filled

Terrified soldiers clutched their throats, their eyes starting out in terror

and pain. Many collapsed in the bottom of their trenches and others clambered out and staggered to the rear in attempts to escape the deadly cloud.

Those

left

in the trenches writhed with

colored, while they

coughed blood from

Caught completely unprepared Allied forces in

agony unspeakable,

plum-

their faces

their tortured lungs."

for the

one day suffered more than

German chemical

fifteen

thousand

attack, the

casualties.

But

German chlorine gas was only the opening curtain in gas warfare. Yet to come was mustard gas, the most horrific chemical agent used in the Great

the

War and

still

considered by chemical-warfare specialists as one of the most

gruesome gases In

1

in their arsenal.

9 17 the German army

fired

more than one

with mustard gas into the French

filled

wounding most which

inflicts

its

Mustard gas

residents.

city is

a

million artillery shells

of Armentieres, killing or

brown, garlic-smelling liquid

unusually painful burns on any part of the body

it

including the eyes, ears, throat, nasal passages, and lungs. There dote for mustard gas and

W. Browne of The New

War

I,

tree

casualties

40

years after

stumps in France contaminated with mustard gas

even though only

six

sat

no

anti-

extremely persistent. Science writer Malcolm

York Times reported that "even

when farmers

Americans

it is

reaches,

is

on them

to rest."

Browne goes on

still

World caused

to note that

hundred of the one hundred twenty-six thousand

killed in action died of mustard-gas poisoning, a far larger

num-

ber were permanently disfigured or disabled by the substance. In the 1930s

and 1940s, veterans whose

faces

were pitted by scars and who spoke in

I

I

I

I

12

Holy Terror: Armageddon

Tokyo

in

croaking voices through vocal cords seared by "King Mustard" were a familiar sight in

America. Nor

is

King Mustard's long march through military his-

tory over. Today chemical warfare researchers have refined the agent into a

much more toxic

"sulfur-mustard" weapon, which Iraq manufactured in the

1980s and used in

war against

its

Iran.

Though world opinion condemned and

fare

their

use was banned

the use of chemical agents in war-

Geneva Convention, today more than

at the

twenty nations continue to develop and stockpile the weapons or possess the capability to

no match

manufacture them. World opinion and diplomatic accords are

for the hatreds

engendered by nations

at

war. In the 1960s, Egypt

used poison gas against Yemen, and during the war between Iran and Iraq that lasted

from 1980

United Nations

until 1988,

documented the

officials

use of chemical weapons by both sides with casualties totaling more than forty-five

thousand. In 1988, the Iraqi regime demonstrated

when

to use chemical warfare against innocent civilians

against the villages of

it

its

willingness

unleashed sarin

rebellious Kurdish minorities, producing thou-

its

sands of victims, most of them

women and

children.

While most of the major deployments of chemical weapons have taken place during wartime in Western Europe

experienced Strangely,

its

share of

modern

and the Middle and

military chemical

one of the least-publicized

facts

War

of World

East,

Asia has also

biological horrors. II is

that Japan

was

the only nation in the conflict to employ chemical warfare against both military

and

Asian nations, the most horrific example

civilian targets in several

being China. In

fact,

Japan

is

the only nation in the

modern

history of Asia

that has resorted to this practice.

Whether the Nazis passed along any of the technology nerve gases to their Japanese tion,

but

it is

during World

allies

a matter of historical record

evidence that the Japanese Imperial

department that produced thousands of people in

its

Japanese

weapons

Self- Defense

as

it

an open ques-

backed up by considerable concrete

used

to indiscriminately kill tens of

campaigns in China.

Today the Japanese military remains

weapons of mass destruction

II is still

G -agent

Army had a very active chemical-warfare

lethal gases

military

War

for the

was

as capable of producing chemical

in the 1930s

and 1940s. Annually the

amount of chemical army chemical school in

Forces produce a limited

for "research purposes" at the Japanese

Saitama Prefecture, north of Tokyo. Japan Defense Agency

officials state that

the weapons are produced "for use in the development of protective gear and

^sS^

Shoko Asahara, the founder and "holy emperor" of Aum Shinri Kyo, giving a lecture in Yoyogi Park in February 1995.

right:

Kiyohide Hayakawa was Asahara's

second

in

command and

Minister of Construction.

pated

in

the sect's

He

partici-

the Sakamoto murders and

personally engineered

Russia and

its

Aum's

militarization

entry into

program. KYODO NEWS.

LEFT!

Hisako Ishii, Aum's Minister of Finance and a driving force behind the sect's accumulation of wealth. nal disciples,

rank

in

right:

gious University,

Waseda became

the sect's public

spokesman and,

for

a short time, a cha-

rismatic

media

star

with a following of

young female

fans.

KYODO NEWS.

of Asahara's

origi-

a high

the sect's spiritual hierarchy.

KYODO NEWS.

Fumihiro Joyu, a graduate of presti-

One

she quickly achieved

left:

Attorney Yoshinobu Aoyama, was a

vigorous defender of Aum against

Sakamoto's charges that the sect was its followers, and his

defrauding

aggressive tactics served

Aum

well in

several other cases as well.

KYODO NEWS.

f 1

\ right:

Masami Tsuchiya,

a doctoral-level re-

in organic physics and chemistry atTsukuba University, played a central role in Aum's manufacture of sarin.

searcher

KYODO NEWS.

left:

Yoshihiro Inoue

was head of Aum's Intelligence Ministry

and was

a key

figure in the

kidnapping of Kiyoshi Kariya,

which triggered the police response

against

Aum.

KYODO NEWS.

/

left:

Doctor Ikuo Hayashi was the head of Ministry and participated

Aum's Healing in

/>

the sarin attack on the subways.

KYODO NEWS.

right:

Hideo Murai, Minister of Science and Technology, was a leading figure not only in the death of the Sakamotos, but also in the production of sarin and the gassings in Matsumoto and Tokyo. KYODO NEWS.

above:

Doctor is

Tomomasa Nakagawa, who

alleged to have killed Satoko

Sakamoto and her injections of

infant son with potassium chloride.

KYODO NEWS.

right:

Tomomitsu

Niimi, Minister of

Home

murder of Sakamoto family.

Affairs, participated in the

the

KYODO NEWS.

m

above:

Attorney Tsutsumi

Sakamoto with

his

wife Satoko and son

Tatsuhiko.

All

three

were murdered by an

Aum

hit

squad.

KYODO NEWS.

left:

A

cold rain

fell

on

September n, 1995, as investigators contin-

ued their inspection of the

site in

Nagano

Prefecture where the

body of Sakamoto's infant son Tatsuhiko was found. KYODO NEWS.

The scene of the Matsumoto sarin attack. Kono's house on its

wooded

lot is in

the center.

KYODO NEWS.

Yoshiyuki Kono, at a press conference on June 19, 1995, after receiving apologies from Self-

Government Minister Nonaka. Kono, one of the victims of the Matsumoto sarin attack, was at first falsely identified

by police

as the prime suspect. KYODO NEWS.

Ifl 'i-'f.iii./--N.i.t-

O

\8

*'*'"'-'*

^L

j

Hiroo

.ijffp

j^T

7 ZcrT?

L

^^^>»^™

Marunouchi Line

O

Hibiya Line

=0=*

=B=M

1

^^fsukiji^w

X ^^F

/'Kamiyacho

Station

where gas was released

Chiyoda Line

Central Tokyo, showing the nerve-gas attack on the

^^

subway system.

132

Holy Terror: Armageddon

now by

this sarin fluid

people could die

Tokyo

in

puncturing the bag with the

And he

I

of my umbrella,

should stop. But

didn't. Despite his

I

hesitated

I

and thought

a

minor footnote

a

number

couldn't go against orders."

humanitarian impulses, on the morning of

March 20, Doctor Ikuo Hayashi obeyed the orders of his became

many

at once.'

"Tormented by pangs of conscience, of times that

tip

Sonshi and

sect's

in the history of ultraterrorism.

When

he jabbed

the two pouches of sarin at his feet with his umbrella, Hayashi was the

member

of the

Aum

tion of the

Tokyo subways. But because

sarin squad to strike the

his heart really wasn't in

it,

as

moment sapped

he

later claimed, or

and

his strength

feet.

because the intense emo-

distracted his aim, Hayashi's

thrusts with the umbrella as the train slowed to

Ochanomizu

first

make

entrance to Shin

its

Station only punctured one of the two sarin bags nestled at his

Whatever the reason

for his failure,

it

was

a small piece of luck for the

hundreds of passengers continuing on toward Kasumigaseki. But the thousands of innocents unwittingly trapped by time and the obligation of work in the other trains along the

subway

lines

heading toward Kasumigaseki were

not so fortunate.

While Hayashi led the attack by only ultraterrorists

were also in place near

a

few minutes, the four other

their various targets, busily

Aum

puncturing

the deadly plastic envelopes of sarin on the trains that were running toward

Kasumigaseki. For Toru Toyoda the hardest part was fiddling around on the station platform, waiting for time to slip by

He

left

and the

right train to

Meguro

Station so he could

buy

sports newspaper. In the car he carefully

a copy of the Hochi

slit

the outer bags

on

wrapped them inside the paper. Leaving the

wander around the platform aboard the

first

car of

an

for almost

along.

Naka

to

Shimbun, a popular

his sarin

pouches and

car at 7 a.m., he

an hour before

eight-car train that left

come

on the way

the hideout at 6:30 and had his driver stop

finally

Naka Meguro

had

to

climbing at 7:59.

Though Toyoda did not know it, by then Ikuo Hayashi's gassing was already under way on the Chiyoda Line. Soon after the train pulled out of the station at

Naka Meguro, Toyoda grabbed

a seat near the car door

the newspaper containing the sarin

began braking

to enter

on the

floor

by his

feet.

Ebisu Station and Toyoda stabbed

two sarin pouches nestled in the Hochi Shimbun.

and cautiously At

slid

8:01, the train

down hard on

the

When he walked off the car

the nerve gas was seeping from the newspaper and spreading out on the floor.

Toyoda was among the

first

out of the

car,

and he dashed up the subway

stairs

Subway: Ultraterrorism's Brave New Morning

the

—a common

sight during the

hour and no cause

rush

Marunouchi Line

HiWyaUne

chiyoda Line

for special notice.

Five minutes later he

was

in the wait-

ing car with Takahashi and they pulled casually

away from Ebisu

Station, just

another featureless vehicle merging

morning rush-hour

into the stream of traffic.

Monday was not Kenichi Hirose's day; he managed to get things done but was

there

a lot of heart-stopping angst

and confusion along the way. In the first place,

he had

to

go a

lot further

than the others in order to begin,

way

the

to

all

Ikebukuro some ten stops

from Kasumigaseki on the Marunouchi

He

Line.

left

the Shibuya hideaway at

around 6 a.m. with Koichi Kitamura

at

him off a central Tokyo hub for several lines

the wheel. Kitamura dropped at

Yotsuya station,

located across

and up

the street from the Akasaka Detached Palace, the ornate official state resi-

when in Tokyo. Toyoda's probmay have started from his own inability to keep things simple. Carrying sarin pouches in his shoulder bag, he made his way via train to

dence where foreign dignitaries often meet

lems his

Ikebukuro. tory,

On board

one of the two

removed the outer bags from

es in a sports

trains

he took, he slipped into the

his sarin,

lava-

and wrapped the inner pouch-

newspaper he had purchased on the platform. That done, he

placed the newspaper containing the sarin back in his shoulder bag. Arriving at

Ikebukuro

at

7:40 a.m., he got on the second car of a six-car train leaving

the station at 7:47. But for car

number

three.

some reason

two, and after a few stops he got off

and moved

to car

on

number

That was an error in judgment, as any early-morning commuter on the

Marunouchi Line could have into

things didn't feel right to Hirose

Tokyo were packed, and

standing

room crushed

and trying hard not

to

told all

him.

It

was rush hour,

Hirose was able to

against the door.

Crowded

all

the cars going

find was jam-packed

in by wall-to-wall people

impale anyone with his bayonet-sharp umbrella, he

struggled to ease his shoulder bag off so he could retrieve the sarin pouches.

133

134

Holy Terror: Armageddon

Tokyo

in

But in the process the newspaper in which they were folded came undone, fluttering at the top of the shoulder

bags containing the sarin to his

bag while he dropped the two

plastic

At that point, the hapless Kenichi

feet.

Hirose probably wondered where he'd placed his hypodermic syringe, a survival tool

he was surely going

dentally stepped

on the

to

need in the next few minutes

sarin bags. Panicked,

if anyone acci-

he somehow managed

move

to

the two bags with his feet under the overhang of a corner seat in the car.

When the train rolled into Ochanomizu

Station,

on

its

way to Kasumigaseki,

Hirose punctured both plastic bags. Liquid sarin poured out of the bags onto the train floor as he stepped quickly out of the car and

a pretty

smooth run. With

hideout in Shibuya the

to

buy

he

his driver Shigeo Sugimoto,

6 a.m. and headed for his

at

way they stopped

his escape.

man who volunteered to unleash three bags of sarin,

Yasuo Hayashi, the had

made

target, the

a copy of the Yomiuri

left

the

Aum

Hibiya Line.

On

Shimbun, Japan's biggest

mass-circulation daily newspaper, and a pair of scissors, which Hayashi used to slit

open the outer bags on

Yomiuri, Hayashi

his sarin pouches.

the car near

left

Ueno

Wrapping the bags

Station at about 7 a.m.

in the

and entered

the station, where he waited on the platform until 7:46 to board a Hibiya

Line train. At about 8 a.m., as the train slowed for Station, the point serving Tokyo's

stabbed

at

huge

stop at Akihabara

electronics retail district, Hayashi

the three sarin bags encased in newspaper at his feet and sarin

immediately began

pour

to

out.

He dashed

was met by Sugimoto who was waiting

off the train at Akihabara

and

outside.

Like Hayashi, Masato Yokoyama's attack to

its

was uneventful. While en route

Shinjuku Station, he had driver Kiyotaka Tonozaki stop and buy a copy

of the Nikon Keizai Shimbun, Japan's equivalent of The Wall

Removing the outer

bags, he

wrapped the nerve gas

Street

waiting for his train, finally boarded at 7:39 a.m. As the train

Yotsuya Station

at 8:01,

umbrella but managed

Journal

in the paper and, after

came

into

he punched into the folded newspapers with his

to pierce only

one of the two bags of sarin

at his feet.

The sarin in that bag spilled out of the newspaper onto the floor as Yokoyama

made

his getaway

By 8 gets

up

the stairs

a.m., the five

and was picked up by the waiting Tonozaki.

members of the Aum attack team had

and were in the process of making

their getaway.

passengers riding to work on the three major subway attack

was

just beginning.

On

struck their

tar-

But for thousands of lines, the nerve-gas

the floors of five subway cars, liquid sarin

sloshed out of punctured plastic envelopes, seeped through several layers of

Sarin

in

the

Subway:

U

newspaper, and then mixed with the heated

Brave

trate rror ism's

n*fa

New Morning

chiyoda Line

Marunouchi Line

Line

turned

air inside the trains. It

into a deadly vapor that partially filled

the cars and drifted into the open plat-

forms of the stations where the conta-

minated trains stopped.

The popular image of a nerve-gas attack

is

a sudden,

physical

rific

mass onset of hor-

symptoms, followed by

panic and hysteria as the victims strug-

Under

gle to escape the scene.

tightly

controlled circumstances, such as the

gassing of people in a sealed room, this scenario is possible.

subway

was

attack

tightly controlled.

But the Tokyo

anything

Once the gas

but (only

thirty-percent pure to begin with)

released in the cars,

its

was

effectiveness

was limited by a number of factors, not the least of which was the rather haphazard In the very early stages of the attack, those to

form in the stricken

any panic.

First

cars

way

first

in

which

it

was dispersed.

minutes when the gas began

and people were affected by

it,

there

was

little if

one person, then another became sickened. Some noticed a

strange odor, probably caused by the impurities in the sarin. Others had stinging eyes

and coughing

fits.

became nauseated and began where people were located in it

they inhaled.

Some foamed

retching.

The degree of

to

injury

able to leave the cars

forms with only mild symptoms or none

enough

the mouth, and a few

relation to the spreading gas

Some persons were

tions but felt well

at

at

all,

depended on

and how much of and

station plat-

while others had odd sensa-

proceed on to work, only to be sickened after

they were at their desks.

The worst

cases, of course,

gas, either in the cars

where

it

were those who were

directly

was unleashed by the

Aum

exposed to the attackers or

on

those station platforms where the gas reached high levels such as Kasumigaseki,

Tsukiji,

became

ill

Kamiyacho, and Kodenmacho. In some instances, people

within minutes of the sarin bags being punctured; for others

it

took longer. But as chemical-arms-control expert Kyle Olson noted earlier,

135

136

Holy Terror: Armageddon

Tokyo

in

weapons

the extreme danger of chemical

use them exactly right. The Tokyo attack

The Hibiya Line

train

is

work even

on which Yasuo Hayashi placed

later the train

made

next stop at

its

if

you don't

his three bags of

began spreading out on the

sarin left Akihabara Station as the liquid

Two minutes

that they

a perfect example of Olson's point.

is

Kodenmacho

floor.

Station.

By

then the gas was rising in the car and some people were already sickened by it.

A

male passenger kicked the nerve gas bags out of the car and onto the

platform; then, using his foot, he shoved

woman and a man, collapsed

on the platform. Unaware

that anything

the train driver closed the car doors and

The

on the

car containing the sarin

and when the train

them near

train reach

Kayabacho

floor

continued to

woman

Station, a

knees by a platform bench, unable

moved them

to the station office, and,

still

to

Behind him a

from the

car

and

unusual was happening,

moved out of the

and collapsed on the platform. Three others

to their

a post.

seriously poisoned by the gas, staggered

station. fill

with nerve gas

stepped out of the

exited the car then

dropped

go on. Platform attendants

unaware

that the

problem was in

the contaminated car, allowed the train to proceed. Before the train reached Tsukiji Station, a ill

number of people

in the poisoned car

and someone pulled the emergency buzzer

stopped

at

were already

the station and the doors opened, a rush of passengers poured

from the car onto the platform and

five

people crumpled to the concrete floor

unconscious. Large numbers complained that they were

Alarmed problem, but

station officials, still

sick.

now aware that they were confronting a serious it was, made a hasty search of the train and

uncertain what

found three other persons unconscious in the contaminated the strange odors and the sudden and visible onset of illness

passengers, there was no panicky stampede.

moned ambulances

to the station

train immediately, that tions,

its

told

all

But despite

officials quickly

thirty-six or thirty-seven

fifty

sum-

passengers to evacuate the

monitoring the reports coming in from the stricken subway all

trains

minutes

Hibiya Line cars by Hayashi and

some

and

Subway

car.

among so many

run was suspended. The chief of subway opera-

issued an urgent order to stop

about

visibly

to halt the train. After the train

on the Hibiya Line

after the first sarin

—

was unleashed on

Toyoda. Japanese police later estimated that

ounces of sarin poured from the two

Hayashi (Hayashi's third bag, which he probably ruptured by passengers

line,

at 8:41 a.m.

who

plastic

failed to pierce

stepped on

it

bags punctured by

with his umbrella, was

in the

morning

rush).

Sarin

The Hibiya

came from

who

Hibiya Line

Line's Second attack

Marunouchi Line

ChiyodaLine

the hands of Toru Toyoda

placed his two bags of sarin wrap-

ped in

which a.m.

Subway: Ultraterrorism's Brave New Morning

the

in

newspaper on a

a sports

at

8:02

was the

city's

busy Ebisu Station

left

The

train's next stop

fashionable Hiroo

train

where many

district,

of Tokyo's most prosperous foreigners reside,

and from there

it

down the line to Roppongi

proceeded

Station,

one

of the most popular entertainment

dis-

in the

tricts

Hiroo

to

As the train sped from

city.

Roppongi, the sarin sloshed

out of the two bags on the floor of the

coach and then gasified in the

first

warm

air.

When

the train reached

—only nine minutes — number of passen-

Kamiyacho Station after

it

Ebisu

left

a

gers were coughing heavily,

others

were in various stages of convulsions, and several had collapsed unconscious

on the

car floor.

of the

car.

When

Unable

the train doors opened, six passengers stumbled out

to continue, they squatted

down

next to benches on the

platform, several of them vomiting uncontrollably. Station attendants called for

emergency medical

aid and, at the

stricken car to other coaches. But by tion

were complaining that they

felt

ill.

from the sarin

had

Kasumigaseki

cars

Station,

which the

gaseki halted the train's run

station platform. plastic

point

8:20 a.m.,

it

train

The Hibiya Line was not the only

By then

forty

ounces of

bags and the nerve gas was pre-

had stopped. The

and asked the passengers

receive a double dose of sarin

later, at

where more stricken passengers tumbled

from Toyoda 's two

sent in every station at

like officials at other stations

Kamiyacho had no idea what was

schedule. Four minutes

and collapsed on the

spilled

Still,

at 8:16 a.m., the train left the station, at that

some seven minutes behind rolled into

at

moved passengers in the number of people in the sta-

time,

now a large

along the Hibiya Line, the attendants

causing the illness and

same

officials at

Kasumi-

to evacuate the coaches.

Tokyo subway

line to

— Hideo Murai, Aum's master planner

for the

heavily traveled

137

138

Holy Terror: Armageddon

Tokyo

in

three-pronged attack on Kasumigaseki Station also targeted the

Marunouchi Line attack

to receive four

on the Hibiya

viced by the

subway

main

Line, the station at

target

was the government

Kasumigaseki

Marunouchi, and Chiyoda Lines

busy

city's

bags of the deadly nerve gas. As with the

all

—the

intersected

district ser-

where the Hibiya,

station

and which was heavily used

by government employees during the early-morning rush hour. The

team member to

He

strike the

first

Marunouchi Line was the hapless Kenichi Hirose.

punctured his two bags of sarin

from Kasumigaseki, and then made

at

Ochanomizu

some

Station,

five stops

his getaway shortly before the train left

the station at 7:59 a.m.

At the next ing, emitting

stop,

an

Awajicho Station, the liquid sarin was already

irritating odor,

and people were beginning

to get

gasify-

ill.

After

departing passengers complained of the smell, station officials went into the

poisoned car and discovered a male passenger unconscious on the

Nearby a to

woman was foaming

at the

mouth, staring

move. Other passengers complained of feeling

called in

ambulances

ill,

During

to provide first aid.

floor.

straight ahead, unable

and

station attendants

a search of the train,

Nagayama came across two plastic bags on One was empty and the other contained half of amount of sarin liquid. Nagayama wrapped the dripping plastic

Assistant Stationmaster Shizuka

the floor of the third coach. the original

containers in newspaper and then took

them from

the coach to the platform.

There Assistant Stationmaster Mitsuaki Shimamura put them in a

which he then placed in the

them over

plastic bag,

station office for safe-keeping before turning

to the police later that day.

It

was estimated

that about thirty

ounces of the liquid sarin leaked from the two bags, and that

it

had

drifted

through the stations where the train had stopped. Like the attack

were intended direction.

on the Hibiya

to gas

The second

attack

Masato Yokoyama, who stops

Yokoyama

when

left

from Kasumigaseki.

liquid sarin in

it

on the Marunouchi Line was executed by

two bags of sarin

at

Yotsuya Station, only two

When the train departed Yotsuya at

one bag seeped out onto the coach

failed to

was turned over

to the police. Incredibly,

made

its

some passengers asked

8:02 a.m. the

and turned it

to gas.

remained

intact

even though the gaseous

journey to

Ikebukuro Station without serious incident.

heart of the city

floor

puncture the other bag, however, and

sarin drifted inside the car, the train at

on the Marunouchi Line

Line, both strikes

passengers traveling to Kasumigaseki from either

On the

its

turnaround point

return journey to the

train officials to

remove some

Subway: Ultraterrorism's Brave New Morning

the

"strange objects" which were emitting

Mminouehl

Hib 'y a Line

chiyoda Line

Line

a foul odor.

At the next

stop,

Hongo Sanchome

Station, Assistant Stationmaster Yoshi-

masa Suzuki used

a

broom and

dust-

scoop up the two news-paper-

pan to wrapped packages containing the bags.

sarin

Station

then

staffers

cleaned the floor of the car with newspapers, old rags, police later

When

and mops.

examined the two bags, the

unopened one contained about twenty ounces of sarin and the other about

two ounces. The train was put back in service tine

and continued

run

to

until 9:27 a.m.,

make when

its

rou-

all

pas-

sengers were asked to leave the train

and the run was suspended. Japanese police estimate that nineteen ounces

of sarin solution leaked from the punctured bag, gasified, and then

way

into the

Marunouchi Line

stations at

which the

The third major Tokyo subway artery pinpointed for

Communist

attack by

Wrapped

Four stops

later,

left

with

in the Japanese

Shin Ochanomizu Station

sarin spread out quickly as both bags

at

about 8:04

on and

The

were pierced and then stepped on off the coach.

Now widely dispersed

across the car floor, the liquid sarin rapidly turned to gas,

and

just before the

reached Hibiya station, the stop before Kasumigaseki, passengers

began coughing and complaining of being at

hit

the train reached Kasumigaseki Station at 8:12.

repeatedly by passengers getting

train

Murai was

was

Party newspaper, Akahata, Hayashi dropped his deadly pack-

ages to the floor of the train that a.m.

its

train stopped.

the Chiyoda Line. But unlike the other two lines, the Chiyoda

only two bags of sarin, delivered by Ikuo Hayashi.

made

ill.

They informed subway officials

Hibiya Station about the noxious odors and the strange seepage spreading

on the

floor of the car

from a newspaper-wrapped parcel

that looked like

one

of the small lunch boxes frequently carried by Japanese office workers.

At Kasumigaseki Station, Assistant Stationmaster Kazumasa Takahashi

had finished

his shift but

he stayed over

to help clean

up the mess. He

139

140

Holy Terror: Armageddon

entered the poisoned ried

it

car,

Tokyo

in

picked up the newspaper- wrapped object, and car-

out to the station platform.

He then wiped up the liquid remaining on

On

the coach floor with discarded newspapers.

hands were

his

white gloves, standard apparel for most Tokyo subway

staffers.

a pair of

Stepping in

to help

Takahashi was Assistant Stationmaster Tsuneo Hishinuma. Together

the two

men placed the leaking newspaper packages in a plastic bag and then

dashed with them

to the station office

telephoned a senior subway

official

that the liquid smelled like gasoline.

well

some

yards away.

fifty

He

then noted that he wasn't feeling

and requested someone replace him so he could go

few minutes

later,

another station

Hishinuma

and reported what the two had done and

A

entered the office and found both

official

Hishinuma and Takahashi collapsed

to the hospital.

heap on the

in a

office floor, the color

drained from their faces and foam oozing from their mouths. The

immediately sought help for the men, but

it

was too

late to

official

purge the nerve

gas from their lungs. Takahashi died within a few hours, and doctors pro-

nounced Hishinuma dead approximately eighteen hours that

later.

The

sarin bag

had not been pierced contained twenty ounces of liquid sarin while

the liquid in the other bag had seeped out.

punctured, the lethal gas drifted into

all

Though

all

only one bag had been

subway

the Chiyoda Line

stations at

which the contaminated car stopped.

The two hours between 8 and 10 indelibly etched in the attacks

seven

on the three

who

died in

minds of

lines.

a.m.

the

Aum's

earlier

Matsumoto

man

in

Matsumoto who watched the

—went

live-television reporting

knew

who teaches medicine

stared at the television scenes of people collapsing

vomit pouring from their mouths. He'd seen

Matsumoto, when he'd been

—

like the

to their

who or what killed them. But there was

tims being carried from the subway stations and

happened. Dr. Hiroshi Morita,

in the gas

in the attacks

"field test"

remain

will

subway passengers caught

The eleven people who died

deaths without the slightest clue as to

one

on Monday, March 20,

at

instantly

of the

vic-

what had

Shinshu University,

on sidewalks, blood and all

it

months before

in

called in to treat the victims.

Before the Tokyo police discovered that the gas used in the attack was sarin, Dr.

Morita was on the phone to medical authorities

hospitals strongly suggesting they begin treating the sarin poisoning. His early tip undoubtedly saved

no medical intervention could attack

help.

many

One European

on the Hibiya Line boarded the contaminated

at several

Tokyo

subway victims lives.

for

But for some

tourist caught in the

car at

Roppongi Station

Sarin

Subway: Ultraterrorism's Brave New Morning

the

in

and saw what appeared spot of oily water

on the

be a large

to

car floor.

people were backing away from others opened tilate

windows

to try

chiyoda Line

was

It

giving off a foul, irritating smell,

Marunouchi Line

HibiytUna

and as

it

and ven-

the coach. Eleven minutes later

the train pulled into

and in one of the panic, a large

Kamiyacho

Station,

closest instances to

number of people ran out

of the train and headed for the station

But Shunkichi Watanabe, an

exits.

elderly retired shoe repairman,

was un-

able to sprint out of the poisoned coach like the others.

to sit

down

He had

the misfortune

next to the soggy newspa-

per package, which was

now

a pool of

liquid sarin, spreading out at his feet.

When

Watanabe was

the others fled,

already too

ill

to stand;

he had breathed

the nerve gas for one or two minutes and

Kamiyacho Station was nesses

who saw

it

now he was

alone in the car, dying.

in the grip of a full-fledged sarin attack

described a scene straight from

hell.

forty to fifty people in various stages of sarin poisoning:

arms and

legs about violently as the painful

the gas wracked their bodies.

up and coughing repeatedly

Many

A number

crawled around in small

foaming

the mouth;

at

some sank

on

some thrashed

wit-

their

circles,

unable to get

their backs,

poured from

to their

and

platforms lay

muscular spasms brought on by

others lay

as blood

On the

their

unable to

mouths and noses. see,

vomiting and

knees immobilized or

against station walls and benches, extremely

ill,

sat abjectly

nearly blind, and afraid that

they were dying.

Some unable to

people tried to cry out, their faces contorted in pain, but were

make

a

sound because the gas had choked off their vocal

Those who could walk or run

fled the platform,

near their feet and charging headlong for the subway-exit air in

ter

the streets above. But for those

morning

below was

air, relief

still

was only

working

its

who

finally

stairs

emerged

a brief illusion.

way through

cords.

dodging the prostrate bodies

The

their bodies

and the fresh

into the cold win-

sarin they'd inhaled

and would eventually

141

142

Holy Terror: Armageddon

produce the

effects they

was repeated

at

Tokyo

in

had seen below. The

more than

a dozen

nouchi, and Chiyoda lines, and

stations

it all

horrific suffering at

up and down the

happened

Kamiyacho

Hibiya, Maru-

an hour

in less than

after the

gas was released.

Ambulances from Tokyo's

hospitals, along with fire trucks, rescue

squads, and police emergency vehicles descended on the stricken subway stations within

minutes

after

subway

their suspicions that the trains

had been

six million

Saint Luke's Hospital, located in central

Station,

The

city's

com-

a system that daily transports more than All three of the

down and more than twenty-six subway

shut lic.

passengers

deliberately gassed.

— —was now paralyzed.

plex and lengthy subway system

and medical personnel reported

officials

stations

major

were closed

lines

were

to the

pub-

Tokyo and near hard-hit Tsukiji

was quickly overwhelmed with hundreds of

patients.

Soon

it

was

taking only severe emergency cases and placing patients in hallways, lobbies,

and other

common

areas.

Japanese police working with firemen and Japanese military personnel trained in chemical warfare identified the gas used in the attack as sarin. But

doctors at the major hospitals had conducted medical tests at their

and were already administering atropine were hooked up

to intravenous drip bags,

to seriously

ill

which increased the need

nate and thus helped cleanse the body of the gas. Gradually, the

medical rescue effort did

its

work, and

facilities

patients. Others

late that

system was back up and running. Transport

to uri-

enormous

afternoon Tokyo's subway

officials said the trains

were

packed as usual.

Given the hurried planning and preparation that went into the gassing, the attack was a model of precise timing and execution. All five the

Aum team

managed

minutes of the 8 a.m.

to

members of

unleash their sarin pouches within three to

target. If the sarin

five

had been seventy- or eighty-percent

pure, instead of the thirty percent reckoned by analysts,

it

would have taken

Japanese rescue squads several days to decontaminate the subways before they could begin the onerous task of hauling out the thousands of dead.

The Empire Strikes Back

Within hours of the Tokyo subway gas attack, "Aum Shinri Kyo," "sarin," and "Matsumoto" suddenly became household words throughout Japan. Japanese stared at their television screens in stunned disbelief as

cameras panned past suffering victims sprawled on the sidewalks outside

the

subway entrances. Asahara's scheme

Aum

Shinri Kyo by gassing the

subway

to deflect police attention

lines serving the National Police

Agency headquarters and other major governmental had

failed miserably.

to directly tie

offices at

Even though the news media were

Kasumigaseki

initially careful

not

Aum to the gassing, by mid-afternoon practically everybody in

Japan had a good idea

Anyone with riedly

from

who

did

it.

access to a television set or one of the special "extras" hur-

rushed into print by the major newspapers could

the lines and draw the proper conclusion. Since the

the Yomiuri broke the story of sarin at Matsumoto,

easily read

first

between

of the year,

Aum

when

Shinri Kyo

had

become one of the news media's major domestic drums, and they hadn't hesitated to beat

it.

Now their worst

suspicions were confirmed.

But until the police turned up more evidence the media's suspicions

remained only

that. It

was a time

for public caution.

The top echelons of the

Japanese National Police along with leading legal authorities gathered in a

143

144

Holy Terror: Armageddon

series of urgent

meetings

next move. There was

in the

attack in

Tokyo

at their

little

what had precipitated the

where

in

doubt in their minds

attack.

subways and

headquarters in Kasumigaseki to plan the

it

who

Aum's chemical

the culprits were and

fingerprints were every-

took no particular genius to

them

tie

to the

Matsumoto and the chemical samples gathered outside the

sect's

Kamikuishiki compound. Still,

the evidence from the chemical analysis was not thought solid

make an air-tight case against a cumstantial. The missing link was physical enough

to

and the

How could they

Kamikuishiki compound.

subway

At best

evidence tying

Aum to the sarin,

fall

get in?

The cautious

con-

tactical

warrants they already had for the investigation into

Kariya search warrants were nothing facilities

cir-

back on the strategy the police had drawn up before the

attack: the search

the kidnapping of notary Takeshi Kariya. After

Aum

it

were convinced the proof they sought was located in the

police

sensus was to

was

religious sect.

more than

across the nation with the

main

all,

from the beginning the

a legal pretext for searching

objective of turning

up

evi-

dence about the sect's production of sarin.

To

give themselves

to its national

some

"most-wanted"

ver in the Kariya kidnapping

extra legal insurance, the police list

name

the

whose

agency added

of Takeshi Matsumoto, the

fingerprints

had

started

it all.

The

dri-

police

charged him with suspicion of abducting Kariya in conspiracy with three or four others. In the event the raids produced nothing incriminating tinct possibility

and other

sound

considering the time the sect had to clean up

facilities

—the

a dis-

compound

Kariya investigation provided the police with a

and public fuss

legal defense against the loud

were sure

its

—

to raise in the courts afterward.

that

Aum's

attorneys

Even with eighteen dead and

staggering six thousand injured in the sarin attacks in

a

Matsumoto and

Tokyo, the police and legal authorities pursued their investigation with the

calm and deliberation demanded by

no rush needed

to

a criminal justice

judgment, one that permitted arrests only

for conviction

was

assault,

memory

one of the

got under way.

cended on twenty-five Shinri Kyo.

Armed

when

the evidence

irrefutable.

At dawn on Wednesday, March 22,

subway

system that allowed

less

than forty-eight hours after the

largest national police raids in recent Japanese

More than two thousand

offices,

five

hundred

police des-

compounds, and complexes belonging

to

Aum

with search warrants justifying the operation as part of

the investigation of the February 28 abduction of Takeshi Kariya, the largest

Empire Strikes Back

more than one

contingent of policemen in the nationwide raiding force,

thousand

men

transported in a convoy of one hundred gray police vehicles

moved out to the Aum Kamikuishiki complex. The compound was large red lights

and mobile

spotlights, a

circling above.

camera crews and news reporters, they beamed millions of homes.

by

whapping

Manned by

television

live

coverage of the raid into

What the viewers witnessed was

a series of action vignet-

tes that collectively pointed the finger of guilt squarely

there

lit

combination that cast a surreal glow

over the sect's austere buildings. Adding to the effect was the

sound of a small armada of helicopters

well

was any lingering doubt

at

Aum Shinri Kyo.

mind who was

in the Japanese public's

responsible for the Tokyo subway sarin attack,

it all

If

disappeared as the red

sun rose on the National Police force swarming through the

Aum Shinri Kyo

compound.

The

force of police to enter

first

marched

resolutely

driveway in a column formation of three abreast, their

up the compound

riot shields

held high,

evoking the image of warriors from Japan's feudal past. In another area of the

compound,

a raid

on

a

warehouse was about to get under way. Cameras

as a

group of two hundred police halted before the building

gas

masks before receiving the order

what they might encounter inside the

subway gassing

swept past the

—but not

compound

a

and

were eleven Japanese

was needed

to provide technical advice to the police

Though

Kariya's abduction

to strap

real

on

their

reason to fear

hesitated. Supporting the police as they

in chemical warfare, along in case help cals

They had

—some of them had assisted the victims of

man

gates

to enter.

rolled

was the

Army

officers trained

in handling toxic chemi-

commanders on

legal pretext for the raid,

the scene. it

was

obvi-

ous that the police were looking for something other than evidence related to his kidnapping.

Some members

of the strike force were outfitted in heavy

protective gear complete with state-of-the-art gas

Japanese military, while others went into the

masks obtained from the

compound

carrying yellow

canaries in blue cages; the birds were to serve as sacrificial early-warning

alarms in case the investigators encountered toxic gas or chemicals. The only

arms the

Though

was

early, the police

were met with belligerent shouts and derisive noises from

Aum commune

police carried

were

pistols.

members, who gathered

in the

dressed and behaving as

if

compound

the hour

in small clusters,

all

of them fully

they were expecting the raid.

Which, of course, they were. Aum's

offices

throughout Japan

nicated with each other via phone, e-mail, and fax. In the early

commu-

morning hours

146

Holy Terror: Armageddon

of March 22, the

Tokyo

in

Aum branches in Japan received an urgent e-mail warning

of the police raid along with a cautionary order not to physically obstruct the police

—

exceptionally

good advice under the circumstances. Some Aum

bers carried video cameras that they used to record the police actions.

chief lawyer, Yoshinobu

and

Aoyama,

disdain, stood near the

his face a frowning mixture of

main entrance with

through which he blared out protests against the

mem-

Aum's

contempt

a portable loudspeaker, raid.

The

feisty

lawyer

shouted that the police were committing a number of legal violations, such as

manhandling

sect

members and

searching their personal belongings.

claimed that the police had refused to allow senior sect

when

they searched the

compound

But Aoyama was preaching

officials to

buildings.

to the choir,

and

his solitary

ignored by the police, who, shortly after they entered the ings,

began discovering precisely what they were looking

adjacent to Satyam

chemicals,

some two

Among the

Number tons in

He

be present

melodrama was

compound for.

build-

In buildings

7 they found and seized a large quantity of

all,

much of which could be used to make

sarin.

cache were thirty to forty bottles of a solvent called acetronitrile,

an organic cyanide compound that can be used portable. Acetronitrile

to dilute sarin

was one of the chemical fingerprints

and make

it

collected in the

aftermath of the Matsumoto and Tokyo sarin gassings.

Other chemicals seized by the police included isopropyl alcohol and

commonly used in manufacturing sarin, and the lethal poison sodium cyanide. The busy officers were seen removing numerous drums labeled ethyl alcohol, a common chemical solvent that can also be used to make other types of deadly poisons. Police also hauled out a large volume of documents, among them a sect publication in the early production sodium

fluoride,

both

stages declaring that deadly gas attacks

would

kill

and other unspecified

disasters

more than ninety percent of the people living in the world's major in the coming years and that the end of the world would occur

urban centers in 1997.

The publication noted

that cities like

disease, earthquakes, or poisonous gases,

and

Tokyo would be wracked by it

asked specifically whether

the capital could survive a sarin gas attack.

Along with the documents,

masks and other the

compound

away a large number of gas The chemicals were removed from

police also carted

protective equipment.

to police laboratories

where chemists were standing by

begin immediate analysis. Though the chemicals provided a link to they were

still

to

Aum,

not the conclusive evidence that would bring a conviction in a

Empire Strikes Back

The

Japanese court. The solid legal

needed was

tie-in the police

because, ironically, there was no Japanese law which

had

or stockpile the chemicals the police

make and

possess sarin

passed a law making

it

itself,

seized.

illegal to

it

Even worse,

missing

it

was

own

legal to

primarily because the government had never

illegal.

In another part of the

compound,

police specialists gained entry to

Shoko Asahara's personal safe, where they found dollars in cash

made

still

more than seven

and twenty-two pounds of unassayed gold

pound chapel they discovered some one hundred

Aum

million

com-

bars. In the

followers, fifty of

whom had been fasting for more than a week and were suffering from malnutrition. A number of them lay unconscious on the floor or were too mentally

confused to answer police questions. Police removed

people from the

commune and

sent

them

to a

all

nearby hospital. Ambulances

among them

persons to the hospital for emergency treatment,

carried six

middle-aged

man and woman who

Six other

members between

were

of the stricken

listed as critically

ill

by doctors.

the ages of twenty-five and seventy-nine

were found confined in small dark cubicles, a discovery that led police arrest four

Aum

members, three of them

arrest of the four

and other

was

to

doctors. Police later said that the

also connected with the abduction of Takeshi Kariya

Aum members. Also taken into protective custody during the raid

was a twenty-three-year-old small,

a

woman who told police

windowless isolation

taken to the

cell

Aum compound in

she had been locked in a

since mid-January. She said she

December and ordered

had been

to sever all ties

with

her family and the outside world. Her pleas to be released were ignored by sect leaders

and she remained confined

bled a freight container. police

On

she said resem-

would search the compound the next day and moved her from the

lation cell to a building

where many other people were gathered.

night, sect officials forced her pills

to the small cell that

the day before the raids, sect leaders told her

and the others

to take

iso-

On Tuesday

medicine in the form of

or by hypodermic injection. She said she pretended to take the pills

given her, but others were not so quick-thinking. Doctors at the hospital

where the

fifty

ill

of them showed

people were taken for observation and treatment said

symptoms of severe

The harvest of evidence an iceberg.

Much more

months before the

raid,

many

narcotic poisoning.

collected in the first raid proved only the tip of

awaited the methodical police searchers. In the

many

incriminating documents and

sarin-processing equipment had been

much

of the

removed from the compound by

I

47

148

Holy Terror: Armageddon

Tokyo

in

members of Aum's Science and Technology Ministry. That was not the only effort made to erase the sect's poisonous past. In mid-March, when Asahara and a

his top advisers

were tipped off by an informant of the impending

second hasty attempt was made

raid,

to sanitize the nerve-gas facilities in the

some one hundred members compound in a bus and a number of vans, carrying with them key evidence of their work on sarin and other poisonous gases. At about the same time, a large number of mid-rank to top-level Aum members also vanished from smaller, related facilities in compound. Shortly before the subway

attack,

of the Science and Technology Ministry fled the

Tokyo and other

Gone

to

parts of Japan.

ground too was

Aum

guru Shoko Asahara. The

man

left to

defend the sect in the immediate wake of the Tokyo gassing was the energetic

and

articulate

Tuesday, March

Yoshinobu Aoyama. At he assumed for the

21,

a

news conference

called

on

sect a posture of total denial of

involvement in the subway gassing and baldly accused the Japanese govern-

ment of making

the attack to frame

Aum's

leaders.

"Aum

Shinri Kyo has

absolutely nothing to do with this current sarin incident in the subways," he declared. "The

group that us,

and

I

is

involved in weird

want

"Aum

mass media describe us

to clearly

deny

activities.

and suspicious

They have created such images of

their truth.

has suffered from being under suspicion," he continued in his

who

rambling statement. "The parties

some

as a secretive, closed,

benefit

from

it.

The only

staged the incident

must be

receiving

logical conclusion is that the [Japanese gov-

ernment] authorities are the perpetrators of this incident."

Aoyama

told the

news media

that terrorist

murders were

a direct viola-

tion of Aum's primary Buddhist teachings against killing. Asahara to

was

said

be such a firm adherent of this rule that he would not even allow the

killing of

mice and insects in the group's

facilities.

On Wednesday

evening

the guru himself surfaced to address the public in a prerecorded radio broadcast transmitted to Japan

in

from Russian

which he stressed the need

stations in Vladivostok

to "face death

and Sakhalin

without regrets." The dark,

threatening nature of his remarks did nothing to allay growing public fears that another attack similar to the

On Thursday morning which he strongly

one on the subways might be in the

offing.

Asahara made a second recorded radio statement in

criticized the police searches

they had failed to find any sarin.

He

because the sect did not have any.

of Aum properties and noted

said the reason

no

sarin turned

up was

Empire Strikes Back

The

But

like the television

cameras the day before, the headlines in Thursday

morning's newspapers told the nation

needed

really

all it

to

know. Typical

that appeared across the front page of the well-informed

was the headline

SARIN RAW MATEDOZENS OF FACILITIES RUN POLICE STORM IN RAID, SEIZED RIALS BY AUM SHINRI KYO SECT. English-language daily newspaper, The Japan Times:

On

the

same day

Aoyama's press conference, the police

as

meeting with the news media

subway at

attack

which

at

officials said

was apparently produced

Matsumoto and

in the

The

hundred tons of

several

ring

as the gas

was slowly

sarin-related chemicals

remains of the sarin-production laboratory located in Satyam

more than

Police sources said they confiscated

when police raided a

sect

warehouse near the

city

and the

Number

7.

of chemicals in

thirty types

compound, most of them stored in metal drums.

the

found

closing.

Aum compound, the police

By day two of the search of the Kamikuishiki

had uncovered

the sarin used in the Tokyo

same manner

in the village of Kamikuishiki.

also called a

A major discovery came

of Kofu,

some twenty miles

from the Kamikuishiki compound, and found an estimated

five to six

hun-

dred drums of phosphorous chloride, another primary ingredient necessary for

making

Japanese newspaper reports said that

sarin.

seized by the police were used to the lethal nerve gas to

kill

make

sarin they

an estimated four

if all

the chemicals

would produce enough of

to ten million people.

reports did not cite a source for the estimate or explain

how

The press

they arrived at

the figures, which were speculative at best, since the police were not certain

of the exact amounts of chemicals they had seized during the ongoing raids.

At the same Kofu warehouse, police found drums and paper bags containing the raw materials for liquid explosive

On

Friday,

sponsored

used

making to

five or six

common

manufacture dynamite.

Shoko Asahara,

NHK

tons of nitroglycerine, a

television

still

in hiding, appeared

on the government-

network in a prerecorded video tape and again

vehemently denied any connection with the sarin attack and the disappearance of Kariya.

and

He

said

for agricultural

Aum

use and

was using the chemicals fertilizer

production.

He

to

produce pottery,

also stated that the

chemicals confiscated by the police "are not ones used for synthesizing sarin." Later that

day a similar video message was shown

Kyo's branches and

communes throughout

By day three of the massive its

investigation of

Aum

on

all

Aum

Shinri

Japan.

raids, the National Police

Shinri Kyo

at

fronts.

Agency was pressing

Though

his

whereabouts

149

150

Holy Terror: Armageddon

in

Tokyo

remained unknown, the agency made public Asahara about the

sect's

huge

intention to question

its

At the same time

stores of chemicals.

more than one

instructed police across Japan to begin actively investigating

Aum in various parts of the country and

hundred complaints lodged against to place the

movements and government

lance. Senior

it

activities

of the

officials also

sect's leaders

under close

began turning up the

surveil-

heat. Education

Minister Kaoru Yosano and Tokyo Governor Shunichi Suzuki dropped several

broad hints implying the government might take action to

Shinri Kyo of

its official

religious status

when

strip

Aum

the police concluded their

investigation.

On

Saturday, five days after the

police in full

combat gear stood

subway gas

silent

attack,

hundreds of elite

guard as trucks and

riot

began the

forklifts

hazardous job of transferring the bulk of the confiscated chemicals out of the

Aum compound company

to

government warehouses on the edge of Tokyo. Truck

logos and license plates were partially covered to protect the busi-

nesses against reprisal from

dows of a nearby also leaked

word

Aum

members, who looked on from the win-

building, several of them videotaping the event. that sarin residues taken

The

same

police

three locations

terrorist group.

to act

on the following morning. Based on the chemicals

already seized, plus the laboratory discovered in Satyam

the

all

had reached another equally profound conclusion, one they

were preparing

ingredients for

police

from the subway, Matsumoto, and

Kamikuishiki were identical and that the incidents in involved the

The

making

Aum compound were

ing they would raid the

Number

7 and the

nitroglycerine, they concluded that the facilities at

indeed used to produce sarin.

compound

On Sunday morn-

again, only this time the charge

was the

suspicion of "preparation for murder" and not the Kariya abduction. This

charge

is

normally brought in situations where there

is

possession of toxic

substances or lethal weapons with the specific intent of killing or injuring persons. Considered a lesser charge under the penal code, preparation for

murder

carries a sentence of less

Japanese police, linked

who

still

Aum to the Tokyo

than two years in prison. For the harried

had not found the smoking gun gassings, the charge

was

door and a step closer to naming the sect as the sarin

On Sunday morning, March

26,

camouflage uniforms again struck

that positively

another legal foot in the terrorists.

some one thousand policemen clad in compound, which was now

at the sect

shrouded in winter snow. Equipped with hydraulic shovels, power saws, and

Empire Strikes

sledgehammers, the raiders fanned out and began entering the compound

ered in large white

now completely covsheets put up by commune members to prevent outsiders

from looking into

their "holy building."

buildings, including

Satyam Number

7.

They found

it

The searchers found

several pieces

of advanced laboratory equipment, including an infrared spectrophotometer

designed for chemical analysis and a gas chromatography device used to separate chemical

Number

7's air

compounds.

and

fresh air intakes,

Police-lab analysts took

samples of Satyam

collected residues in the building's ventilation shafts,

and an adjoining

air purifier.

The laboratory behind the wall of the Buddha image and the huge image of Shiva was uncovered and police scientists again collected residues and

air

samples for comparison with the samples taken in the subways and

at

Matsumoto. Within

forty-eight hours, police chemists

the residues collected

was

confirmed that one of

a secondary by-product of sarin,

and had been

found in the subways and Matsumoto. The chemical compound, a tongue twister called methyl-phosphoric acid diisopropyl ester, does not exist in

nature and production. cal

usually generated as a by-product in the final stages of sarin

is

Its

discovery gave police chemists

more

insight into the chemi-

Aum to produce sarin. But as the raids continued on sect Japan, Aum retaliated with a vengeance against Japan's

process used by

facilities

across

National Police Agency.

The morning of Thursday, March falling

almost straight

down

30,

was cold and

a rainy mist

was

out of the gray clouds overhead as Takaji

Kunimatsu, chief of the Japan National Police Agency and the nation's top police officer,

came out of his residence

briskly toward his waiting car, a

man waiting

.38 caliber pistol,

striking

at 8:25 a.m.

and walked to enter the

behind an

in

electric utility pole

twenty yards away raised a

took careful aim, and rapidly fired four shots, three of them

Kunimatsu. Watching his victim

quickly climbed

Tokyo

government sedan. As he was about

on

a bicycle

fall to

and pedaled away

the pavement, the

The shooting had taken less than ten seconds and the ously well trained in using a pistol

gunman

in the rainy mist. assailant

— Kunimatsu was struck in the

was

obvi-

right leg,

stomach, and right breast. While being rushed to the hospital in an ambulance

he

told aides

tal

the fifty-seven-year-old

he heard four shots but did not see the gunman. At the hospi-

emergency surgery

to

Kunimatsu underwent more than

remove two

bullets

and

stabilize

Although his wounds were serious, attending doctors said his

six

his life

hours of

condition.

was not in

152

Holy Terror: Armageddon

Tokyo

in

danger. Police later recovered one of the spent bullets at the scene and tests indicated that the pistol used

gunman, however, would Embarrassed police sination special

was

a U.S. -made Colt .38 revolver. Finding the

was

take a lot longer.

officials

immediately assumed the attempted assas-

and

a terrorist challenge to law-enforcement authority

squad of one hundred investigators

Aum

linked to the continuing raids on

to

determine

if

set

up

a

the attack was

Shinri Kyo or to organized crime.

Since his appointment in July 1994, Kunimatsu had waged a crackdown on

organized crime, and he also was the principal officer in charge of the raids

on Aum. The

team had

special investigation

information to go on.

little

Kunimatsu's secretary, walking a half-step behind him when the police chief

was

shot, did not see the

who

described

him

gunman. There were other

witnesses, however,

as approximately forty years old, of

medium

height,

wearing a black coat and trousers, a cap, a white surgical mask, and carrying a small sports bag.

White surgical masks are quite

common

in Japan during

the winter. People with colds and sore throats frequently wear tect others

from

their ailments; they also hide

ulated that after the

gunman

Yomiuri Shimbun led ing

its

it

jolt to

posed

make any comments

less circumspect.

than ten days after the

frightening questions.

Thursday evening edition with

chief with the investigation of

good deal

the people of Japan within ten days.

number of

a

WHAT HAPPENED TO OUR

careful not to

position as director general of the

roughly equivalent to that of director of the FBI,

was the second severe criminal For the average citizen

of the face. Police spec-

train.

The shooting of Kunimatsu, whose is

to pro-

pedaled away from the scene he was either met

by an accomplice in a car or got on a

National Police Agency

much

them

first

The

a large headline ask-

SAFE SOCIETY? Although

police

were

publicly connecting the shooting of their

Aum

Shinri Kyo, the

media and others were

Many noted

the timing of the incident

police raids

on

Aum— and

—

a

less

others pointed to

Asahara's public writings and speeches in which he demonstrated an almost

paranoid hatred for the National Police Agency.

There was also growing public sentiment that the police were moving too slowly in the case against

considered police

ism

activities the less

that the police

The massive

Aum. The more the public and the mass media

raids

they found to

like.

had bungled good opportunities

on

Aum facilities

were

fine,

There was harsh

critic-

to solve the case earlier.

many

said,

but

why

weren't

they conducted earlier? More than nine months had passed since the sarin

The

Empire Strikes Back

poisoning in Matsumoto, and in that case the police concentrated their investigation

on an innocent man, even

after

it

was established he couldn't

produce sarin with the chemicals discovered in a shed in his backyard. Since the late

summer of 1994 they had known

about sarin residues near the

sect's

Kamikuishiki compound.

Then police

responded

to

to the

media and

a

them. In September 1994, an eleven-page

Matsumoto gassing It

anonymous warnings and the manner

there were the

warned

that

new

halls. In January,

in

which the

letter

was sent

number

of government offices in Tokyo describing the

in detail

and noting

Aum

Shinri Kyo's links to violence.

sarin attacks could occur in Tokyo's

subways or concert

American chemical-arms-control expert Kyle Olson accu-

rately observed that the Matsumoto gassing was a

might launch more serious

subway system. But despite uncovered in the recent

trial

run by

terrorists

Tokyo

attacks that could have as their target the all

raids,

this

no

who

and the mountain of chemical evidence

arrests

had been made.

top law-enforcement officer lay in a hospital recovering

Now the

nation's

from serious wounds

he'd received in a bold daylight shooting in which the gunman, adding insult to injury,

made

his getaway

on

a bicycle.

Even though the criticism increased in the weeks ahead, the Japanese police stuck to their tried-and-true investigative

methods by mounting

a

Aum figures and concentrating their energy on Aum Shinri Kyo and the sarin terrorism. Though

massive surveillance of key finding the link between the nation

was

visibly jittery

and

curtailing civil liberties by

might

rightfully worried that another attack

occur, neither the police nor the

government

fell

into the tempting trap of

imposing such measures

as curfews,

random

searches of citizens, and massive roundups of persons suspected of involve-

ment

in the attacks. Other,

more

logical steps

were taken, including

strip-

ping the subways of trash containers and receptacles that might be used to hide terrorist devices; increasing the

number of police and

subways; and cautioning passengers to be

attendants in the

alert for suspicious-looking pack-

ages that were unattended or abandoned. All in

the

all,

the

month of March 1995 proved

a devastating watershed in

way average Japanese regarded themselves and

their society.

No

longer

could they point to their island nation as a place free of the violence that often plagued the rest of the world. Implicit in that recognition

was the worst

some of the

country's best

of all realizations: Well-educated young Japanese,

minds had,

in the

name

of religion, of

all

things, betrayed the country,

its

I

53

154

Holy Terror: Armageddon

and the Japanese people.

culture,

zation, a to

Tokyo

in

Aum was

a

home-grown

pure product of the proud culture in which

maturation and ultimate

evil.

In sum,

Aum

it

took root and thrived

was uniquely

Shinri Kyo

Japan's problem, and correcting that problem

would require uniquely

Japanese solutions. The coming months provided a severe

and the government

terrorist organi-

test for the police

as they struggled to accumulate the evidence

needed

to

arrest those responsible.

By the end of the lic

first

week

in April, the police, both in response to pub-

own investigations, began arresting Aum number of the sect's highest officials. By the end of more than ninety Aum members had been arrested on various

pressure and as a result of their

members, including April,

a

charges ranging from suspicion of murder to abduction, trespassing, and resisting police questioning. Included in the haul

were

Seiichi Endo, chief of

the Health and Welfare Ministry; Ikuo Hayashi, head of the Medical Treat-

ment

Ministry;

Tomomitsu

Home

Niimi,

director of the sect's Defense Agency;

chemist.

The

unknown,

The from

and

several Japanese prefec-

Okinawa, suggesting that the top

scattered out across the nation 22.

and Masami Tsuchiya, Aum's top

arrests occurred in Tokyo, Osaka,

tures, including the island of

March

Affairs Minister; Tetsuya Kibe,

when

The whereabouts of

Aum leaders

they fled the police raids that began on

the sect's remaining senior officials were

police said.

rapidly growing national tension produced a rash of complaints

a population that

was now having

collective safety. April wasn't a

week

to

contend with violent threats

noxious odors coming from an apartment believed to be an

Aum

hideout.

A week

Residents in the area complained of eye irritations and sore throats. later

more

foul odors

were reported in a Yokohama

than twenty people saying they had sore throats. interview,

more killed

an

Aum member warned

devastating than the

more than

entire country

five

was put on

alert

five

train station, with

On

April

13,

more

in a television

of a impending disaster that would be

Kobe earthquake

thousand

to its

old before people in Shinjuku reported

earlier that year,

which had

hundred people. Then on April

15,

because of rumors that Shoko Asahara had

predicted something terrible was going to take place on that date.

Though

nothing happened, more than twenty thousand police were deployed in riot gear,

Aum

bulletproof vests, and gas

nerve-gas attack,

many

masks throughout Tokyo.

stores in the capital shut

bers of people stayed away from

the

work

or avoided the

full

Fearful of an

down and

large

subway system.

num-

Empire Strikes Back

The

Four days attack,

later,

more than

on April

five

19, in

what appears

have been a copy-cat

to

hundred people were sickened and taken

to hospitals

complaining of stinging eyes, nausea, sore throats, coughs, and dizziness after inhaling a

Railway's

mysterious gas released in three different places in the Japan

Yokohama

day and the police

Station.

Most were released from the

later arrested a

non-Aum member

same

hospital the

for the crime. This did

not alleviate the public grumbling about the police and their slowness to

make

arrests.

On

the political front there

ment plugged

a

major

legal

was some good news. The Japanese

parlia-

gap in the nation's law books by passing a law

The new law banned

against the possession of toxic chemicals such as sarin.

the use, production, possession, or import of sarin and other deadly chemical substances. It

imposed

a

maximum

penalty of life in prison for dispers-

ing sarin or other lethal chemicals, and

up

to

seven years in

jail

for

anyone

caught "making, importing, or distributing such substances" with intention to disperse.

The next major shock Murai was stabbed

to

to

sweep Japan came on April 23 when Hideo

death on the streets of Tokyo in

full

view of a large

number of television cameras and news reporters, who recorded the act. The assault came as Murai was heading to the sect's five-story Tokyo headquarters in Minami-Aoyama, walking in an unhurried manner in and around the assembled news reporters on the sidewalk who had been awaiting his arrival since early afternoon. The reporters were drawn to the scene by rumors that the police were about to begin

making

arrests of high

a sweater

jumped from

long knife, in

full

the crowd and slashed

includ-

man

dressed in jeans

him on

the wrist with a

ing Murai. As he neared the headquarters entrance, a

and

Aum leaders,

view of the reporters and cameras. Murai stared

at

the

wound, then kept on walking in the same unhurried manner. Before anyone could move, the attacker leaped

at

Murai again, stabbing him in the

torso.

During the brief scuffle that followed the attacker dropped his bloody knife

on the sidewalk, then waited Murai was rushed

patiently for police to arrive

to the hospital bleeding heavily

abdomen. Hospital surgeons worked later

from

loss of blood

from

to save his life,

and severe internal

his

and

arrest

him.

arm and upper

but he died

six

hours

injuries.

Police later identified the assailant as thirty-year-old Hiroyuki Jo, a South

Korean who resided in Japan. News reports that

he wanted

to

later

quoted Jo as

punish Murai for the trouble the

sect

telling police

had caused Japan.

It

I

55

156

Holy Terror: Armageddon

was

Tokyo

in

later established that Jo

was

a low-ranking

member

of an organized-

who was

affiliated

with Yamaguchi-

crime gang headed by Kenji Kamimine,

gumi, Japan's largest organized-crime syndicate. Jo

confessed to police

later

Kamimine, had ordered Murai's death. Kamimine denied the

that his boss,

accusation.

As

in the shooting of police-agency chief Takaji Kunimatsu, speculation

quickly arose that the killing was linked to

was good reason

Aum

Shinri Kyo. Certainly there

wanting Murai permanently silenced. Both as head of

for

the sect's Science and Technology Ministry and one of Asahara's closest aides,

Murai was

illegal

tion.

Aum's

nerve-gas weapons,

Matsumoto and the Tokyo subways, and

the manufacture of

a pivotal figure in the production of

the attacks in

drugs which were supplied to organized crime for sale and distribu-

Another theory held

members

as a

warning

that the

murder was ordered by Japanese gang

Aum

senior hierarchy not to divulge to police

to the

what they knew about the

sect's

the illegal-drug business. In

connection to organized-crime figures and

mid-November 1995,

a

Tokyo

district court sent

Hiroyuki Jo to prison for twelve years for killing Murai. Kenji Kamimine was arrested in connection with the killing police

were not able

and placed on

crime directly

to link the

to

Aum

trial

separately.

The

Shinri Kyo, but con-

tinued to investigate that aspect of the case. Murai died before police could question him. That was a major loss to investigators, as he took a wealth of insider information about

him

with

to the grave.

couple of plots that would

Worried that arrested,

Shoko Asahara and Aum's

terrorist operations

But before he died, Hideo Murai managed

Aum

come

leader

Murai gathered

to

hatch a

to fruition after his death.

Shoko Asahara was on the verge of being

sect Intelligence Minister Yoshihiro

Inoue and

other senior officials to a meeting in early April in which he gave orders for

two attacks nent.

to

be carried out in the event the arrest of Asahara seemed immi-

The theory behind the

gassing

—

attacks

was the same

to disrupt the police investigation

month

of arrest.

in

subway

and thereby delay any actions

planned against the sect leader. Both attacks were the

as that in the

to

which Murai believed Asahara would

be carried out in May,

face the greatest danger

He based his estimate on the fact that Ikuo Hayashi and Tomomitsu

Niimi had already been arrested and that growing public pressure would

soon force the police

to take action.

place at the Shinjuku

subway

involve a

The

first

attack

station, Japan's largest

new chemical weapon, sodium

cyanide.

he outlined was

and

busiest,

The second

to take

and would

attack ordered

The

Empire Strikes

bomb to be sent to newly elected Tokyo Governor who took office on April 9, had publicly stated Yukio Aoshima. The he would seriously considering disbanding Aum Shinri Kyo. On April 27, by Murai was a package

governor,

manhunt

of the National Police Agency ordered a nationwide

officials

for

missing sect leader Shoko Asahara. Reaching out from the grave, Murai's

answer

assault

on Shinjuku Station took place on May

The chemical device used was

ordered.

two

plastic bags,

a simple binary

5,

just as

weapon

Murai

consisting of

one containing some two quarts of powdered sodium

cyanide and the other

room

guru was not long in coming.

to this threat against his

The

more than

in the station, both bags

a quart of sulfuric acid. Planted in a

men's

were ablaze when they were discovered. Had

they broken open, a chemical reaction would have occurred producing a

huge cloud of deadly hydrogen cyanide that the to kill

amount of gas

released

Chemical experts have estimated

between ten and twenty thousand people.

As

if

things weren't bad

of four American lawyers

Aum

gas.

from the reaction would have been enough

enough

for the

weary Japanese public, a group

now descended on

Shinri Kyo, to publicly

warn

Tokyo,

that the police

all

expenses paid by

might be trampling on the

group's religious freedom. Washington Post Tokyo correspondent T. R. Reid said in a dispatch filed

talking to

from the

capital that the

chemical factories or

its

of excessive police pressure.

One

Aum was

innocent and a victim

of the lawyers, Los Angeles attorney Barry

former chairman of the American Bar Association's Subcommittee

on Religious

Liberty

and a current member of its Individual Rights and Res-

ponsibilities Section, called to

sect's

headquarters. Reid said the Americans held two

press conferences at which they suggested

Fisher, a

Americans spent three days

Aum officials and others but were not permitted to visit the

on Japanese

police to "resist the temptation

crush a religion and deny freedom." Contacted by the media,

in Washington,

D.C.

made

it

Association on his trip to Japan.

clear

.

.

.

ABA officials

Fisher was not representing the

The irony of this strange episode was

that

while the American lawyers were imploring the Japanese police to exercise restraint, the police

themselves were the target of a public ground swell of

criticism for that very reason. In the

end both

Americans, and the search for Asahara

and twenty-one top

—

last

police

and public ignored the

seen in public on March

3

sect leaders greatly intensified.

At the beginning of May, police increased their watch over the Satyam

Number 6

building at the Kamikuishiki compound, where they believed the

158

Holy Terror: Armageddon

sect leader

was hiding

Asahara could

The heightened

country. nals

out. In reality there

By now

flee.

made

Tokyo

in

his picture

police

Yeltsin ordered

government

to

which

everyone in the

at the nation's airports

and sea termi-

after the

Tokyo subway

attack, President Boris

down hard on the

investigative agencies to crack

organization there. Soon the sect's official religious status in Russia

was taken away,

it

was forbidden use of radio and

Russian courts began

be a prelude

Aum

to run,

home, the one place

Number 6 was known first floor,

and the

television facilities,

hear complaints against the

to

to closing

With no place his

to

escape via those routes highly doubtful. The one place he might

have gone was to Russia, but

Aum

watch

were few other places

was well known

and

proved

to

Shinri Kyo's operations in Russia.

was

it

logical that

in Japan

left

to

sect. All this

Asahara would seek refuge in

where he could

house the Asahara family

police believed the guru's wife

feel truly safe.

Satyam

living quarters

on the

and children had been

ing there since the gassing in March. In recent weeks

Aum

liv-

spokesman

Fumihiro Joyu, chief lawyer Yoshinobu Aoyama, and other high-ranking

Aum executives were

seen entering and leaving the building. Another indi-

cator that suggested Asahara

ons.

The

sect leader

recent weeks

melons in

had an

was hiding

cheap diet that was

Satyam Number 6 was the mel-

insatiable fondness for expensive melons,

commune members were

local fruit

in

and

in

frequently seen buying the sweet

shops near the compound. Considering the bland,

strictly

followed by the

commune,

the police surmised

the melons were intended for only one plate.

While the authorities were now convinced that Asahara was holed up in

Satyam Number

6, moving in to arrest him required a very delicate sense of Though more than one hundred fifty Aum members were now in jail, including a large number of middle-rank and senior officials, many of the top leaders remained at large. The police knew the whereabouts of some

timing.

but not

all

of them, and

it

was feared

that if they arrested

Asahara the

sect

zealots might suddenly retaliate with another attack against the public or

senior government officials. This was not a groundless concern; interrogation of those tity

now in

jail

revealed the strong possibility there was

still

a quan-

of sarin and other chemical poisons that had not been uncovered. The

problem now was Asahara and as

On May

15,

to coordinate the arrests so that police could net

many

Shoko

of the top leaders as possible.

the impasse

western Tokyo spotted

came

Aum

to a

head when police on the

outskirts of

intelligence chief Yoshihiro Inoue in a car

The

with three other sect arrested him. Inoue

Empire Strikes Back

members and had dyed

his

hair brown and shaved off his beard. Inside the car police found

more than

hundred docu-

eight

ments, notebooks, and computer disks.

One notebook contained

detailed

information about the

schedules of the subway lines in

which the nerve-gas place.

attacks took

Inoue was a central figure in

the Tokyo sarin attack in

many

of the

and a leader

sect's abductions.

With one of Aum's main operational organizers

now

in

jail,

the

confidant they could

police

felt

arrest

Asahara and the others.

They obtained

arrest warrants for

forty other sect

mem-

bers and the following day

made

Asahara and

their

move.

At 5:30 16,

a.m.,

on Tuesday, May

more than one thousand

officers entered the

police

Kamikuishiki

Map

compound and proceeded to Satyam Number 6. The raid was no

secret,

come

and

of the Kamikuishiki

(numbers

refer to the

Compound

Satyam buildings)

could hardly have

it

as a surprise to the

Aum members inside the compound. Tokyo news-

papers were so certain Asahara would be arrested they had plastered the

news across the

front pages of their early

morning

editions.

There were

other, equally visible signs that "X-Day," the tag given the day of the guru's arrest

by the press, had arrived. The

streets

than eighty thousand extra police officers

by Japanese

Army

themselves augmented

chemical-defense teams, civilian medical units and

department personnel on special attacks by the sect. Television

forth across the

of Tokyo were lined with more

who were

alert in the

event of possible revenge

camera crews in helicopters

compound, which was covered

fire-

circled

in patches of fog

back and

and

a light

I

59

160

Holy Terror: Armageddon

Tokyo

in

mist of rain. The force was part of a two-thousand- five-hundred-strong police raid

on some eighty Police used a

and by

Aum

Shinri Kyo facilities across the nation.

power saw

5:45 a.m. they

to rip

through the door of Satyam

were inside the building and beginning

Asahara. They met no resistance from building, although the interior lights resort to flashlights in order to

search of Satyam

their search for

commune members

had been turned off and

make their

Number 6

living in the

police

had

to

search. For the first few hours, the

Number 6 yielded nothing. Outside, as the gray mist turned among the hundreds of news reporters shifted back hour. Some believed the guru might not be in the building

to light rain, speculation

and

forth by the

while others suggested he might be dead, a suicide. Then, four hours after the search began, one of the policemen tapping along a wall heard a hollow

sound.

A

power saw quickly cut through the wall

some

enclosure,

to reveal a

Inside, dressed in his favorite deep-purple silk robes

lotus position,

dark coffin-like

ten feet long and three feet high.

was Shoko Asahara. With him

were a small container of pills,

hundred thousand

in the secret

The

sitting in the

compartment

and more than one

a cassette tape recorder,

dollars in cash.

and

brief exchange that followed his dis-

co very? was anticlimactic.

"Are you Shoko Asahara?" asked a police

officer,

shining a light upon

the bearded figure. "Yes,

I

"What

am," Asahara are

said.

you doing here?" the

officer asked, probably at a loss for

what

to say. "I've

been here

for

two days, meditating and recuperating," replied

Asahara.

At that point, the police decided they'd heard enough small started to enter the dark

chamber only to be warned

off by the

talk

and

guru in an

out-

burst of arrogance. "I'll

to

come out by

myself," he told the startled police.

"No one

is

allowed

touch the guru's body."

But the guru's days of giving orders and having them instantly obeyed

were

over.

When

he emerged from the secret chamber, the police not only

touched him, they unceremoniously hauled him out to a waiting van that sped back to Tokyo flanked by a small convoy of protective vehicles. En route, a senior police official told Asahara that

he was under

murdering eleven people in the Tokyo subway

arrest

on charges of

attack. Instinctively,

Asahara

The

Empire Strikes Back

reverted to the manipulative innocence he'd cultivated as a

the

Kyushu school

man

"Could a blind

for the blind.

such a thing?" he asked the

young student

like

me

at

possibly do

officers.

Asahara's parents would later appear before the press to publicly apologize for the "extraordinary trouble" their son

had caused the people of Japan.

But the day was not over.

The second

attack in the legacy of violence dictated by

only a few hours after the arrest of Asahara,

when

Hideo Murai came

a

book-shaped package

five

days earlier exploded

bomb

mailed

in the

hands of his secretary Masaaki Utsumi. The detonation occurred in the

to

Tokyo Governor Yukio Aoshima

governor's outer office and although tary's left

blew off several fingers of the secre-

it

hand, he survived the attack. The governor was in his office

at the

time of the explosion but uninjured. By early October, police had charged Intelligence Minister Inoue, Science

Toyoda

one of the

(also

and Technology Ministry member Toru

Tokyo subway

five

attackers), top

Tomomasa Nakagawa, and Masahiro Tominaga,

a

Asahara aide

former doctor in the

with the crime. Toyoda confessed to police that he and Nakagawa

package

bomb under

orders from Inoue and that

sect,

made

Tominaga mailed

it

the

to the

governor's office.

With the

arrest of Asahara

and most of his key

followers, the people of

Japan, and especially the frightened residents of Tokyo, breathed a collective

sigh of

relief.

Ahead of

the police was a serious

mopping-up operation

involving finding and arresting the remaining fanatical

were

still

at large. Also,

had been accounted might be used in

for

all

and the

Aum

threat

remained

Shinri Kyo

that

were about to get

started, there

some of the

devices

members,

especially

had substantial funds

at its dis-

billion dollars in assets

had been

still

Only a portion of its estimated one

seized or frozen by the government. ers

Aum leaders who Aum Shinri Kyo

of the chemicals produced by

attacks during the trials of the senior

Asahara. In addition posal.

not

As the

trials

was much

of the sect leaders and oth-

police

with Asahara under lock and key, the public focus

work still to be done. But

now turned to

the courts.

I

6

I

Religion at the Bar:

Aum

The End of

From

Shinri Kyo?

mid-May through the end of 1995, the mount a nationwide search for the senior

the arrest of Asahara in

Japanese police continued to

Aum executives still at large. at the sect leaders

hammered away

In interrogation cells they

they had arrested, extracting confessions and then labori-

ously comparing and confirming

them

against other confessions and the

mountain of evidence they had seized during the

raids.

Criminal confes-

sions are the key to Japan's unusually high arrest-conviction rate. Very few

major cases move

to

court without

them because prosecutors

believe

Japanese judges place more credence in confessions than other types of circumstantial evidence and testimony.

While American police agencies often chafe under the stringent laws

and procedures designed have

much more

to protect the rights

latitude.

They

three days for questioning, even for example,

were

initially

of the accused, Japan's police

up

to twenty-

Aum

members,

are allowed to hold suspects

on minor charges. Some

arrested for offenses such as riding an unregis-

tered bicycle, traffic violations,

and registering

at a hotel

At the end of the twenty- three-day period police by rearresting suspects on other charges.

163

under

a false

name.

may extend the interrogation

164

Holy Terror: Armageddon

Tokyo

in

Police interrogation can be harsh by

go on for up

to twelve

civil-liberties

hours

daily, often

American

legal standards

and can

without a lawyer present. In the past,

groups have accused Japanese police of purposely demeaning

suspects during questioning by subjecting

them

to

loud noises, taking away

their clothes, denying them food and water for several days, and using sleep-

deprivation techniques and other tactics that stop just short of physical violence. Others say that the police often step over the line, coercing confes-

sions by violence.

have been

known

A report prepared by the Tokyo

make detainees remain in one position them if they are unable to maintain the

to

ods, often striking

Japanese police

Bar Association said police

deny that such conduct takes

officials

for lengthy peri-

position. Senior

place, but in early

June, Asahara complained his police interrogators were using intimidation in their sessions, calling tial

him

blindness was caused by

"murder demon" and asserting

a

evil acts

he had committed in

that his par-

a previous

life.

Japan does not have a public defender system in which the state provides legal counsel to those detained as suspects. However, the bar associations in

Tokyo and each prefecture operate

a "duty-lawyer"

system that pro-

vides temporary legal counsel to suspects before they are indicted. Before the

duty-lawyer system was introduced, less than a third of suspects received legal help before indictment.

names placed on

name

is at

a rotating roster

the top of the

Aum suspects

in

The bar

list.

association duty lawyers have their

and take whatever cases occur when

They provided legal counsel to a

Tokyo and elsewhere

As Shoko Asahara discovered

a

their

number of

in Japan.

few days

after his arrest, finding a

good

defense lawyer would be no easy task. Attorney Makoto Endo, Japan's most

famous criminal defender and

a devout Buddhist,

met with Asahara

in National Police headquarters to discuss his case.

Endo,

known

for his defense of left-

and right-wing

The highly

in a cell

eccentric

political figures as well

as several groups of Japanese gangsters, later told a reporter that Asahara

said the

Buddha had appeared

to

him

in a

dream and

told

him

to contact

Endo. The attorney listened to the sect leader assert his innocence, and then

turned

him down

cold,

claiming he was too busy defending other

Aum sus-

pects to handle the guru's case.

After his meeting with Asahara,

Endo met the news media and made

statements about the sect leader that would have led to a disbarment proce-

dure for breach of lawyer-client privilege had he been in America. reporters that

"I,

He

told

myself, have serious suspicions" about Asahara's involve-

Religion

ment

in the sarin attacks

"one hundred that

when he

fifty

told

and

that

was

Aum

of

self-styled

He

said

Worthy

become of me?"

will

one that by

officials in Japan's

Kyo?

Shinri

he could not take the case unless he was

Asahara he could not defend him, the

a pertinent question,

worry senior

End

percent" convinced that Asahara was innocent.

Master had cried out, "But what It

Bar: The

the

at

late

summer was beginning

Federation of Bar Associations, a

to

self-

appointed monitoring group that was looking out for the rights of the sect

and trying

to assure that they

were adequately represented in

unlike the defense attorneys and prosecutors in the O.

became overnight celebrities, lawyers

in Japan

J.

But

court.

Simpson

trial,

who

do not seek fame in cases that

have aroused the public wrath, especially those involving religious

sects.

number of lawyers stepped forward to defend the more than one hundred fifty Aum members then under arrest; most attorneys shied Thus, only a small

away from the cases because of the nature of the crimes and the extremely adverse public reaction they had generated. to

The Tokyo Bar Association had

promise attorneys their names would not be made public in order

them even

to assist

with research in the

Under Japanese

Aum cases.

law, each person brought before the court

lawyer. If a defendant

is

unable to obtain an attorney by the

the court appoints one. In the

Aum

to get

Shinri Kyo cases,

must have

trial date,

a

then

most of the Japanese

made it clear they felt it was better to be drafted than to The number of lawyers required to handle the Aum cases is stag-

legal profession

volunteer.

gering. Asahara alone

defense, though

it

is

said to

need

at least

ten attorneys to provide a proper

remained doubtful he would be able

to find

more than

one or two. The matter of attorney's fees was also a problem. Even though Aum's cash and other assets were thought to run into the hundreds of millions of dollars, the

government had already frozen some of the

accounts and was planning to remove occurred,

it

would open the way

its official

for a large

sect's

number of

civil

lawsuits that

could quickly bankrupt the group and force the government to pay legal bills.

bank

status as a religion. If that

Already legal experts were predicting the

trial

all

the

of Asahara alone

could take ten years or longer, given the glacial speed of the Japanese court

system and the time-consuming appeals that would follow a conviction.

Most major

trials

in Japan take several years to complete because court

month rather than on a daily judges agreed to speed matters up

sessions are normally held one or two days each basis. In the

more complex

somewhat by having

/

Aum

cases,

a session each week. Japan does not have a jury system,

165

166

Holy Terror: Armageddon

and the

verdict

is

Tokyo

in

decided by a panel of judges

who

also determine the sen-

tence. Important cases are heard at the district court level

and convicted

defendants can appeal to one of eight higher courts, then finally to the

supreme

court. Except for a brief period before the

room, cameras are not allowed

to film the

banned. Journalists and others

may take

defendant enters the court-

proceedings and tape recorders are

notes. In

handing down sentences,

judges are often strongly influenced by confessions and contrite indications

of remorse by defendants.

punishment has broad public support

Capital

United

and

States,

Hanging

the

is

is

common

in

in Japan, as

it

does in the

murder cases involving multiple

method of execution, and again

victims.

as in America, the appeals

process can create long intervals between sentencing and execution. Nearly six

hundred prisoners have been hanged since the end of the second world

war, and the government reports seven were executed in 1993, the most recent year for which

it

has given figures. In 1994

hanged and three were put

is

is

oner

is

when

it is

finally set

taken from his

by

cell to a

given time to prepare himself. to the execution

trapdoor

On Asahara,

falls

June still

chamber next

open.

It

may

cell

all

appeals have been

and not allowed any

final

officials.

appeal

is

denied, but he

room where he

is

where the noose

blindfolded, is

and taken

put in place and the

take ten to fifteen minutes for death to occur.

6, prosecutors formally

handed down

their indictment of

without a lawyer, on murder charges, along with

Aum members

few days. Of the forty-one

not told

served his last meal and

He is then handcuffed, door,

is

When his final day arrives, the pris-

senior followers. Legal authorities said they expected to indict

dozen other

visitors

members. His execution may come any time

during a six-month period after the the date

Once

straightforward.

confined to his

other than immediate family

two people were

death in 1995.

to

The execution procedure exhausted, the prisoner

at least

on murder and

sect

members

six

of his

some two

related charges within the next

formally charged with

murder

in

the subway killings, only seven had not been arrested. In a rare move, police

members who had previously been arrested on murder charges. According to some Japanese legal analysts the decision to release the five suggests they fully cooperated with the police by giving them highly also freed five

helpful information. While the indictment did nothing to change Asahara's

immediate

legal situation,

it

was another formal

and his closest associates closer to the gallows.

step that

would move him

ion

The

the

at

End

Bar: The

of

Aum

meanwhile, were uncovering new and more

police,

in their continuing search of the

some

In early June

main

Kyo?

Shinri

grisly

evidence

Aum compound.

eighty police investigators, acting

on the confession

Tomomasa Nakagawa, searched the ground floor and basement of Satyam Number 2, where Nakagawa said the body of Kiyoshi Kariya of sect doctor

was cremated

after

he died of a

fatal injection.

During the search police

dis-

covered makeshift incinerators, gas burners, fuel containers, and other incineration devices. In the ing, indicating extensive

ples of the soot,

what appeared

basement they found soot on the walls and

burning had taken place there. Police collected sam-

and

in July

be

human

to

ceil-

announced fat in

had found

that laboratory analysis

the samples. Police officials said the sect

and

that at least

eight bodies were cremated there, including those of Kariya

and Kotaro

began burning bodies in the basement two years

Ochida, an

Aum member who was

murdered

earlier

in the

compound.

Police said

some of the bodies may have been cremated by a modified microwave-oven device located in the building that several Aum members mentioned in their confessions.

Television networks vied with each other to be

gruesome Kyo

details,

broadcast these

along with every other twist and turn in the

case. In the process they

ratings in Japan's history.

The

Shinri

from the usually

nation's print media, dailies,

were devoting

Aum

The media's preoccupation with

sect.

Aum

were racking up some of the highest television

business publications to the colorful sports

pages to the

first to

important news into the inside pages or to the

tail

cast

staid

their front

most other

end of broadcasts, pro-

voking criticism by some that more coverage was being provided than peo-

wanted

ple

to see

and

their counterparts in

O.

Simpson

J.

trial,

read.

replied they

what they wanted, and they Still

But Japanese news executives, very

were merely giving

others complained that

to extol the virtues

criticism

was

and surveys

cited polls

some

spokesmen hours of broadcast time and

true; in the first

like

and viewers

back up their claims.

were giving

Aum

defend the sect against police charges,

to

months

Much

of that

after the gas attack, television broad-

Soon some were agreeing

demands

to

of Shoko Asahara and his teachings.

sect for personal appearances of its

Aum

their readers

television networks

casters discovered their ratings leaped their shows.

much

America who received similar complaints during the

when

Aum

members appeared on

to preconditions established

by the

members. Major networks bowed

that certain well-informed

to

and tough reporters be excluded

167

168

Holy Terror: Armageddon

from programs on which tinely agreed to

in

Tokyo

sect spokespeople appeared.

Another demand rou-

by the compliant broadcasters was to place certain sensitive

areas of discussion off-limits during discussions with

Not

all

the networks went along with the

short-term ratings gains, but those later

Aum's

officials

might

result in

refused the sect's conditions would

be lauded for their principled stands. Still,

it

who

demands, however. Some

sect's

realized that the prior censorship dictated by

Aum representatives.

lasted,

the

and

media exposure given the it

sect's

spokesmen was powerful while

produced several unexpected trends. Fumihiro Joyu, Aum's

boyish-looking spokesman and the

man who would eventually take charge of

the organization after Asahara and the other senior leaders were arrested,

was a frequent guest on

Yoshinobu Aoyama. Both men, and

Aum

especially Joyu, quickly

attorney

found them-

Young teenage girls who thought Joyu was "cute" and followed them from one television station to

selves instant celebrities.

formed ad-hoc fan clubs another.

shows along with

television talk

They were frequently seen waiting with bouquets of flowers outside

Aum's Tokyo headquarters in Minami-Aoyama, screaming and waving when the two emerged. But even as Aum's popularity rose with the teenage set, its financial fortunes began to take a nose dive as the growing police evidence and leaked confessions from arrested senior

Donations were the

first to

members were made

decline, then almost disappear, followed by

a sharp drop in the sect's

numerous business

shops and computer-sales

outlets.

about "the hundreds of millions sect's

had

overhead. Further,

left

their

homes

Aum

public.

interests,

such as the noodle

Spokesman Joyu soon began to complain of yen" needed each month to pay for the

had more than one thousand members who

to live in the sect's

communes, where

they received free

housing, food, clothing, and living expenses. The freezing of some the sect's

bank accounts and other

liquid assets only

added

to the

problem. The sudden

plunge in the group's cash flow pressed the surviving leadership with

new methods of fund

afloat, if just barely.

to

come up

raising to keep the slowly sinking organization

Under the guise of

"religious training," sect

members

were ordered to seek part-time jobs and turn their salaries over to the group.

Aum

also

opened

a chain of

member- staffed "Satyam Shops"

Yokohama, Osaka, and Fukuoka Asahara' s picture

that sold

Aum

T-shirts

in Tokyo,

emblazoned with

—much in demand by younger Japanese—and other

sect

paraphernalia such as books and magazines published by the group. Those

Religion

working part-time took

common

workers, and security guards; hostesses. Despite

a sea of red ink

all this,

and

a

group, their faith badly press. In tually

jail,

his

Bar: The

the

at

End of Aum Shinri

laborer jobs as delivery

Kyo?

men, construction

some younger women found work

in bars as

Aum Shinri Kyo was slowly spiraling downward in

number of members were beginning

to leave the

shaken by each new revelation that appeared in the

communications

to his followers cut off,

powerless to assist his floundering

Asahara was

vir-

sect.

summer the guru had finally managed to hire an attorney, Shoji Yokoyama, who told the media his client would plead not guilty to all the By

late

charges being brought against him. Police sources said the wily Asahara had

made no sect's

confessions and maintained silence

Of

crimes and his role in them.

Tokyo

indicted by the

District

when

the one

questioned about the

hundred four members

Court as of early October,

had hired

fifty-five

lawyers and twenty-eight others had state-appointed attorneys. Five of the

lawyers were hired by

members

each.

An

none of the

ered, as

Aum and were assigned to defend more than ten sect

overall legal defense strategy apparently sect's

was not consid-

lawyers was conferring with the others.

In late September, the police began closing another loophole in the

when they arrested twenty-eight-year-old Mitsuo Sunaoshi, a member of the sect's Construction Ministry, in connection with the case

Aum

senior shoot-

ing of Takaji Kunimatsu, director-general of the Japan National Police

Agency. Sunaoshi, the

first

person

to

be arrested in the shooting, was

charged with suspicion of making threatening telephone nizations immediately after

sources said Sunaoshi called a Tokyo television station after the

some

shooting and said, "Stop the investigations into

Omori and Inoue Omori, who

is

will

news

calls to

Kunimatsu was shot on March

30.

orga-

Police

ninety minutes

Aum

.

.

.

otherwise,

be next." The threat was apparently aimed

at

Yoshio

chief of the Cabinet Information Research Office, a high-level

government intelligence function, and Yukihiko Inoue, head of the Metropolitan Police Department. The station

and turned over

the help of jailed the caller

was

to police,

call

who

was tape recorded by the

television

identified the voice of the caller with

Aum members. Voiceprint analysis confirmed the voice of

that of

Sunaoshi and police believe he has important informa-

tion about the shooting.

A few days after the arrest of Sunaoshi, the police investigators, reported that at a

asked his senior executives

if

Mainichi Daily News, quoting

meeting in January 1995, Shoko Asahara

any of them would volunteer

to attack the

169

170

Holy Terror: Armageddon

Tokyo

in

superintendent-general of the Metropolitan Police Department. According to

Mainichi the discussion was recorded on a tape cassette that was later con-

by police during a search of a sect

fiscated

Asahara asking

at

one

A

intendent-general on the hip?"

beyond

my imagination,

but

senior

do so

I'll

facility.

The tape

anybody who can

point, "Is there

member

MPD

super-

present replied, "That's

Sonshi orders

if the

reportedly reveals

hit the

me to do

so."

The

shooting of head cop Kunimatsu, however, was a relatively minor matter

compared

The

to the

police

murder charges

piling

up against the

were now vigorously pushing

sect's activities across a

wide

front,

On

the legal front,

ous cases were heading

to court at a fast clip.

minor

started in July,

had

and

its

leadership.

and Aum's criminal past was unraveling

before the public like a daily soap opera.

sect figures

sect

their investigations into the

and

Already the

Aum's numertrials

of three

forty-three others, including

Asahara's, were set to start in September, October, and November. Trial dates for District

some

fifty-eight others

Court would use

all

the cases. Typical of the nine

of an

Aum member

were

to

be

set successively

and the Tokyo

of its fourteen criminal case departments to hear trials that started in early

charged with harboring a sect

September was

member wanted

that

in the

abduction and murder of Tokyo notary public office manager Kiyoshi Kariya.

Kumi Nebuka,

a thirty-one-year-old

Aum

hospital worker,

was charged

with helping the wanted man, Takeshi Matsumoto, evade capture from March

through April. During the

Nebuka admitted most of the charges

first day,

Her

the prosecution's opening statement.

only abetted in the crime.

moto

in hotels

and

The indictment

alleges

Nebuka helped hide Matsu-

Tokyo and elsewhere and

rental cottages in

in

lawyer, however, contended she

that she

was

accompanied by Ikuo Hayashi, the chief of Aum's medical ministry. She was also charged with carrying

an escape fund of more than ten million yen and

medical equipment to be used for plastic surgery on Matsumoto, including the erasure of his fingerprints.

the plan and did not

know whether the

More informative was the guards, Satoshi Tamura. ling a two-way radio in District Court,

Nebuka

Tamura

trial

said she

was involved

surgery on Matsumoto was performed.

of one of Asahara's drivers and body-

The body guard was charged with

one of the called

in only part of

illegally instal-

sect cars. In testimony before the

Tokyo

Aum a "devilish group" and asked the court to

"Please put Asahara to death."

He

said that despite the strict dietary

mea-

sures Asahara imposed on his followers, the guru was something of a glut-

ton

who

often frequented restaurants

where he ordered numerous dishes

Religion

and

Bar: The

the

at

Aum

End of

full-course meals. "Asahara even ate ice cream,"

he

Shinri

Kyo?

"which he

testified,

prohibited us from eating."

Shopping, according to Tamura, was another favorite pastime for Asahara

and

his family.

At toy shops he allowed his children

wanted and when the car became too crowded with driver to get out to off,

leaving

him

sect leader's

make room

behind. In

to

toys,

buy anything they

Asahara ordered the

more. Tamura said Asahara then drove

for

December 1994,

a nail

punctured the

tire

of the

Mercedes and Asahara promptly accused Tamura of being a spy

and had him injected with truth serum. Both Tamura's and Nebuka's cases

resumed hearings

at a later date.

During the second week of October, the

was sentenced

Some

to a year in jail after

first

of Aum's senior executives

being found guilty of simple trespassing.

legal experts interpreted this as a sign that the court

unusually tough in

trials

of the

intended to be

sect's other leaders, since first-time trespass

offenders do not normally receive prison terms. All other convicted lowers,

Aum fol-

most of them junior members convicted on very minor charges, had

to that date received

Tetsuya Kibe, the

suspended sentences. The tough sentence passed on

sect's

made him

Minister of Defense,

prison sentence and was a strong hint that other

the

first to

receive a

Aum executives could look

forward to equally harsh treatment. Kibe had trespassed into a private parking lot in Tokyo in order to pass

gun

from one car

parts

to another, thus

avoiding their discovery in a police search. Although Kibe admitted he the sect

was behind the Tokyo subway gassing and other criminal

thus far had no evidence directly linking crimes. will

Some

him

knew

acts, police

to the gas attack or other

observers said that if Kibe only serves one year in prison, he

be one of the luckiest members of Aum's top hierarchy.

On stand

October 24,

trial for

Tomomasa Nakagawa became

the Tokyo

subway

attack.

Shoko Asahara, but he pleaded not

him

freely

first

Aum

leader to

admitted to the three-

made

sarin at the express orders of

guilty to

murder and attempted murder

judge panel hearing his case that he

filed against

Nakagawa

the

in connection with the

subway gassing. In addition

to the

subway-attack murder charges, Nakagawa faces a wide array of other murder

charges including the strangulation death of Aum

1994; the deaths of seven persons 1994; the kidnapping and

member

Kotaro Ochida in

who died in the Matsumoto

murder of Kiyoshi

Kariya;

sarin attack in

and the murder of the

Sakamoto family in 1989. Trials for the Matsumoto gassing, the Kariya killing, and the Sakamoto murders will be held separately.

171

172

Holy Terror: Armageddon

In the

day of a

first

Nakagawa became the

Tokyo

in

that

trial

top

first

is

expected to take two years to complete,

Aum

official to publicly testify that

Shoko

Asahara ordered the production of sarin. Asahara's lawyer, Shoji Yokoyama, told

newsmen

and actions of that defense

week

a

charges against

earlier that the

guru would plead not

him and would contend

his top aides. But

when

the guru's

that

Nakagawa's testimony would undermine got under way. "Asahara ordered the pro-

trial

He

duction of sarin in mid-March," he told the three judges. the nerve gas as ordered, "But the gas, although

I

knew

sarin

The crewcut doctor

guilty to the

he knew nothing of the plans

said he

was not aware of the conspiracy

I

was

a

made

to release

dangerous chemical."

also admitted his involvement in the

murder of

Kotaro Ochida, but declared his part was only a "minor one." Ochida's murder took place after he was caught trying to help another

mother escape from the several senior

members

Aum

member's

Asahara ordered the murder, and

sect's hospital.

of the sect bungled an attempt to strangle Ochida

with a rope. Nakagawa testified that Ochida was writhing in agony and that

he then helped

kill

asked the court

to

since he is

had not

him

Nakagawa's lawyer

in order to relieve his suffering.

change the charges against him

actually conspired with

to accessory to

Asahara in either

case.

murder

The request

not an unimportant one, since accessories to murder are not given capital

punishment. Also during the rected

downward

from the

five

the

tally

thousand

five

thousand seven hundred

trial,

chief prosecutor Tadahiko Miyazaki cor-

of persons injured during the subway gas attack

hundred

ninety-six.

initially

continued to use the higher figure, believing In the meantime, the stories.

On

summer

given by the police to three

However, the Japanese media and others it

was more

accurate.

news media continued to report more

bizarre

Aum

October 22, the Japanese news agency Kyodo reported that in the

of 1993, Shoko Asahara, along with Kiyohide Hayakawa and Fumi-

hiro Joyu, circled the Imperial Palace in a car equipped with a special spray-

ing device that was dispersing deadly botulism bacillus cultivated by the

Kyodo

said the story

Hayakawa.

at

Aum's

related to the Metropolitan Police

Department by

He told police that in the middle of the operation Asahara fled the

car fearing that his paralysis.

was

sect.

life

was

in danger

Hayakawa was quoted laboratory

and

from the

as saying

that the

bacillus,

which

kills

he cultivated the botulism

group was puzzled by

its

casualties. Kyodo said the bacillus was ineffective because

it

through bacillus

failure to inflict

loses

its toxicity

Religion

when

at

the

End of Aum Shinri

Bar: The

open spaces and mixes with the

released in large

air. It

Kyo?

was unclear

whether the alleged attempt was intended as an attack on the Japanese imperial

family or simply another

Aum

"field test"

designed to create chaos in

downtown Tokyo. It

was against

Master was

set to

this

backdrop that the

approached for Japan's

at

was ready

all

of the century. For the

trial

as the court date

first

time in Japanese

metal detectors were put in place outside a courtroom, set up

the entrance to the austere

screen the lucky

witness the

of Aum Shinri Kyo's Worthy

begin on October 26. The Japanese public was waiting for

the opening with keen anticipation and

legal history,

trial

first

fifty

Courtroom 104 of the Tokyo

persons chosen by lottery

who were

District

day's proceedings in the case of the Japanese People versus

Shoko Asahara. No cameras were allowed in the courtroom, but planned

stations

Court to

allowed inside to

to provide

commentary from the sidewalks

television

More

outside.

than eight thousand police would be on extra duty around the courthouse,

surrounding neighborhood, and the

subway

city's central

stations to

its

guard

against any actions that might be planned by the guru's followers, or by other violent elements of society that

might want

to

harm

the sect leader.

Inside the bare, gray-tiled courtroom, a four- judge panel headed by Chief Justice

Fumihiro Abe prepared

podium to hear the

to ease into the black leather chairs

case, decide its verdict,

on the

and then pass sentence. The

ever-

manipulative Asahara, however, had other ideas.

Four days before the

trial

was

set to begin, Shoji

—his only attorney—was taken

attorney

accident in Tokyo.

to a hospital following a

Aum member which made an illegal

cars.

minor auto

The accident occurred when Yokoyama was en route

police headquarters to confer with Asahara.

an

Yokoyama, Asahara's

He was

U-turn and was struck by two other

The only person hurt was passenger Yokoyama. On the evening

the accident,

Yokoyama

told court officials visiting

he would be well enough medical

officials said

to attend court as

Japan a

in the hospital that

scheduled on October 26. But

remain in the hospital

whether Yokoyama would be well enough trial

him

after

he might be suffering from whiplash and asked the

sixty-seven-year-old lawyer to

certain

to

riding in a car driven by

for

two weeks.

It

was not

to attend the trial,

and in

involving serious offenses cannot proceed without at least one

lawyer for the defense present.

Yokoyama 's doctor

court an application for postponement based

on

said she

would send the

his medical condition.

173

174

Holy Terror: Armageddon

On October 25, fired it

Yokoyama.

It

Tokyo

in

the day before his

was

had delayed the

a skillfully

trial for

Stunned court officials

told

was

trial

commence, Shoko Asahara

to

timed move; when the

months, extending

its

legal dust settled,

start until April

1996.

newsmen that Asahara gave no reason for the fir-

ing in the documents he sent to

them just before the end of the day, but legal

observers speculated that he was simply spinning out the legal process in

The

order to put off his conviction and execution. the

indefinitely

trial

and explain why he

district court

and Chief Judge Abe ordered Asahara

postponed

to report to

him

fired his lawyer.

At the meeting, the judge brushed aside Asahara's arguments that he

wanted

to hire a

new team

of private defense lawyers. The following day the

guru was formally notified that the court would appoint

a lawyer to defend

him. The court explained that while unusual, the swift appointment of a lawyer was necessary to keep the

new legal who could

trial

running smoothly. Asahara would be

allowed to hire his

team, but he would also have in

appointed lawyer,

not be

fired.

The

it

court coordinated

the courtits

action

with the bar associations, which quickly gave their approval. His delaying tactic

met and countered, Asahara now

gambit had bought him

a

court was expected to set a

end of the

day,

few months

new

trial

realized

he was boxed

to find his

sometime

date

in; still,

the

new defense team. The in early

Asahara had reinstated Yokoyama, the

1996 and by the

man

he'd fired just

two days before.

Yokoyama appeared nonplussed by

it all.

"Asahara apologized for having imprudently fired me," he told reporters after a

meeting with the guru. "He asked

me

to

defend him again."

October was also a fateful month for teen idol and acting

Aum

Shinri

Kyo leader Fumihiro Joyu. As crowds of onlookers gawked outside, police arrested Joyu in the sect's

an Aum member to give arrested in the case were Shibata.

The

Shibata to

Tokyo headquarters, charging him with inducing

false

testimony during a criminal

Yoshinobu Aoyama and

arrest warrants charged Joyu

commit

month,

all

three

in 1992. Also

and Aoyama with persuading

perjury in a court case involving an

in 1992. Persons convicted of perjury face

trial

a sect accountant, Toshiro

up

Aum land purchase

to ten years.

men had been indicted on the

By the end of the

perjury charges.

November and December, the trials set for other top Aum leaders began as scheduled, even as new murder charges and indictments for additional crimes continued to fall on Asahara and his key aides. Health and In

Religion

at

End

Bar: The

the

Welfare Minister Seiichi Endo, one of the

of

Aum

chemists, told the

sect's leading

judges hearing his case that he fully admitted

Tokyo gassings. In doing so he became the

Matsumoto and

his role in the

first

Kyo?

Shinri

senior leader to confirm in

public that Aum released the deadly gas in Matsumoto. In a separate trial, Aum member Takeshi Matsumoto pleaded guilty to the abduction and con-

finement of notary public Kiyoshi Kariya. In early December, police added a fresh they'd already

made

murder charge

The guru was charged with ordering

against Asahara.

the VX-gas murder of Osaka businessman Tadahito Hamaguchi

1994. Also charged in the crime, the

Home chiya,

Aum's

first

Tomomitsu

Affairs Minister

Tomomasa Nakagawa, head

Inoue;

to the string

use of VX gas by

in

December

terrorists,

were

Niimi; Intelligence Chief Yoshihiro

Masami Tsu-

of the Household Agency;

chief chemist; and Akira Yamagata and Satoru Hirata, both of

the Intelligence Agency.

The

police said

Hamaguchi, who he feared was a

Asahara ordered the group

produced the

police spy. Tsuchiya

to kill

VX

gas

and Yamagata along with others in the group sprayed it on Hamaguchi while he walked down an Osaka

street.

He

died ten days later from the poisoning.

As the new charges came down, Asahara decided once again attorney,

Shoji

Yokoyama. But

this

to fire his

time Yokoyama's dismissal caused

hardly a ruffle, as his lawyers appointed by the court continued to prepare his defense.

By

early

December, seven members of the Tokyo subway gassing attack

team had been arrested and large, the focus trials

indicted, while three

members remained

of a nationwide police manhunt. In the

first

at

session of the

of Toru Toyoda and Kenichi Hirose both admitted releasing sarin in

the subway. Later in December, Ikuo Hayashi entered a plea of guilty to the

same charge and apologized moto, had her spiracy to

first

for the crime. Asahara's wife,

day in court in

late

December

murder Kotaro Ochida, the young

to plead

Tomoko Matsu-

not guilty to con-

Aum member who had tried to

help his friend's ailing mother escape from a sect hospital. According to the

indictment handed

down

against her,

Matsumoto

watched as Ochida was strangled by other although she was in the

sat

sect leaders.

room when Ochida was

by her husband and

She

killed,

told the court that

she had

able shame." But she denied taking part in the conspiracy.

"I

felt

"unbear-

did not con-

spire with anybody," she said.

In addition to the

trials

of arrested

moving ahead on other legal fronts

to

Aum members, the government was

have the sect disbanded. By late October,

175

176

Holy Terror: Armageddon

Tokyo

District

Tokyo

in

Aum

Court Judge Seishi Kanetsuki ruled that

Shinri Kyo

had

conspired to commit murder by producing sarin nerve gas and ordered the

was made under the Religious Organi-

sect disbanded. Kanetsuki's order

which permits courts

zations Law,

disband any religious group that com-

to

harming the public

The

of the order was to

mits

illegal acts

strip

Aum of its official religious status and take away its lucrative tax breaks

and other

financial advantages.

executor to begin liquidating the

way

to the

supreme

The

interest.

court was expected to appoint a financial

assets.

its

effect

The

sect

can appeal the decision

court, but legal experts

were skeptical

all

would

it

receive a favorable ruling in the higher courts.

Judge Kanetsuki's order

made

Aum

Shinri Kyo the

first

religious

be disbanded under the Religious Corporations Law for criminal

to

Aum

group

activity.

lawyers immediately filed an appeal of the decision, which the High

Court was expected to rule on in a month. In mid-December, received another body blow to

its

Aum Shinri Kyo

continued existence as a religious

entity.

Japan's top security office, the Public Security Investigation Agency, recom-

mended

—

the government use the 1952 Subversive Activities Prevention Act

an unusually tough

erties

groups

—

legal statute considered

begin breaking up the terrorist

to

The law was promulgated during was never used

agitation but

draconian by Japan's

to

a period of

sect.

extreme left-wing

considered likely to repeat such

would bar the

sect

political

suppress any group. The subversives law can

be used against any organized group that engages in criminal is

civil lib-

from meeting

activities. If

applied to

as a group, issuing

its

Aum

activities

and

Shinri Kyo,

it

publications, or pur-

suing any of the normal functions of a religious organization. Under the

reli-

gious freedoms guaranteed by the constitution, however, individual

mem-

bers of the sect would remain free to follow

Some

Japanese

political parties

paring

to the

it

its

tenets in private.

have long opposed use of the subversives law, com-

prewar measures which gave police the authority

to harshly

repress anyone challenging the dictates of the military government. Even in

the violent left-wing turbulence that often

marked the 1970s and 1980s, the

government was very reluctant

it

to invoke

and did so only against

number of individual extremists, not against groups. One day after receiving the recommendation of Investigation

disband the

Agency to apply the subversives law to

sect,

the Public Security

Aum

Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, an

socialist politician

who had long opposed use

a small

Shinri Kyo

and

old-line Japanese

of the law, gave his approval to

Religion

apply

of

Aum.

against

it

Bar: The

the

at

End of Aum Shinri

In defending his decision, the prime minister said

Aum's crimes were

and

destructive

posed a risk

because there was danger that

to society

the sect

still

commit

devastating crimes in the future.

motion the

set in

opportunity to defend

itself in

way at least two weeks

after the

to

disband the

first

With Murayama's

Kyo

official notification

district court officials

facilities in

the

first

response to a lawsuit

damages from the charged that the

them

ing

move

filed

and

seize

before a ruling

Murayama was

forty-five victims

exceeded

property to keep

its

made on

is

forty-five million dollars in debts

The

legal

shoe

came

attack.

will

to

it

estimated that

Aum

and only twelve million sect

dol-

from hiding

its

mid-December when the Tokyo High Court

and when

Aum

have to vacate the

By the end of December,

They

The group was demand-

Aum

Shinri Kyo of

is officially

its official

Aum

to liq-

declared insolvent, the

commune members, now estimated to be down to

hundred persons,

in

Aum members from trans-

The decision immediately put into motion procedures

uidate the sect's assets,

ist

in

action

Shinri

their families seeking

would prevent the

district-court decision stripping

religious status.

remaining

fell

The

Aum

and they asked the court

their suit.

lars in assets.

Another

and

million dollars in damages;

court's action

peti-

delivering his

during the subway

assets,

its

had more than

assets.

an

of its intent

Agency must

launched raids against eleven

sect for injuries incurred

more than seventeen

upheld the

Aum

Commission to determine whether

to freeze the sect's assets.

by

sect's debts

insolvent

it

ferring

would

sect.

should be banned under the law. While

declare

it

said

hearings, which were expected to get under

government's

tion the Justice Ministry's Public Security

bad news,

He

approval, the

step in the process by giving

After the hearings, the Public Security Investigation

Aum

all

doctrine called for the

its political

overthrow of the government and the imposition of a dictatorship.

government

Kyo?

seven to eight

sect's facilities.

Shinri Kyo, the world's

first ultraterror-

group, was being relentlessly ground into the dust of history by the com-

bined weight of Japan's police, judiciary, and the government. The spectacle of the

trials

with their contrite apologies by senior

decisions to disband

Aum and strip

it

of its

Aum

leaders, the court

official religious status,

the government's decision to apply the dated, scary Cold

law against the

sect,

were

all

good news

War

and even

subversives

to the Japanese people,

who had

weathered their worst year in the second half of the twentieth century. But beneath the nation's

collective

schadenfreude

at

seeing

Aum

Shinri Kyo

177

178

Holy Terror: Armageddon

finally

brought

the

mind of the Japanese prevent

public:

because the answer

is

Japanese

moded

How did this

radio, these questions

the answer to the second,

nence as an

questions lurked uneasily in the back of

happen

And how

to us?

ill

at

ease

ultraterrorist

have never been answered

religion.

satisfactorily.

to the first question is intertwined

and both deal

—

directly with a subject that

Aum

II.

makes

Shinri Kyo's rise to deadly promi-

Law

that sprang

from the American-inspired

constitution drafted under the U.S. occupation of Japan that began

World War

with

group took place in the deep shadows of an out-

Religious Corporations

ately after

can

the gallons of ink spilled and the hours of air time used on

all

and

Perhaps that

many

vital

from happening again?

it

Despite television

two

to its knees,

we

Tokyo

in

immedi-

In the years that followed, successive waves of

Japanese politicians, often for self-serving motives, amended, reinforced,

and protected the law nation's bureaucrats

until

and

it

assumed the

status of holy writ

police. Politicians discovered early

means money, and money

is

the

oil

that

makes

on

among

the

that religion

Japan's political

machine

work.

Aum

Shinri Kyo, a small sect of

some

ten thousand

attached itself to the coattails of Japan's political parties; better if it had, because that could have provided the

a small share of political influence, perhaps

schemes, and a high-profile outlet for his tilted in

anyone

—not the

politicians,

had they known of Aum's

largely regarded sible;

might have fared

power-hungry Asahara

some leavening

sect's wealth.

for his wilder

But the dynamics

all

another direction. Asahara's sect was too insignificant to be taken

seriously by est

it

members, never

and

them

who might have shown some interwho

large financial holdings; not the police,

as weird religious troublemakers best left alone if pos-

certainly not the Japanese

and American

whose "radar screens" they never appeared

A number

until

it

intelligence agencies,

was too

of Japanese commentators and politicians

key to preventing the reccurrence of the

on

late.

now

believe the

Aum Shinri Kyo story lies in reform-

ing the present Religious Corporations Law, a task Japanese politicians are

now working

on. Already the political fallout has been heavy, with one cabi-

Tomoharu Tazawa, resigning in the wake of some two million dollars in loans from another

net minister, Justice Minister reports that he

new

had accepted

religion, a

reported them.

Buddhist organization called Rissho Kosei

The

press speculated that

Kai,

Tazawa had agreed

to

and not oppose

reform of the Religious Corporations Law in exchange for the loan. Tazawa

Religion

at

the

denied the accusations, but his case

law had become a Still

Bar: The

made

it

End of Aum Shinri

clear that the religious

to

reform

political football.

others in Japan argue that the problems posed by

have nothing

Kyo?

Aum

Shinri Kyo

do with the Religious Corporations Law or any other that

concerns religious organizations. They assert that religious freedoms should not be curtailed the law and is

its

—

or "reformed"

privileges.

— simply because there are those who abuse

They agree

that police

part of the issue, but disagree with the belief that the police tend to shrug

off criminal activity by religious groups in

enforcement of criminal law

which the

police have

moved

and

number of past instances new religions. The preserva-

cite a

against Japan's

tion of freedom involves risk-taking by the society at large, perhaps even the

enormous

risks

But Japan's

posed by groups such as political

Aum

Shinri Kyo.

machinery was already making an attempt

duce some reform in the nation's religious law. By the

first

week in December,

the lower house of the parliament had passed a reform law that the government to

more

from

it

give

to question

and require

religious groups in cases that could violate the group's status

under the law. But the proposed law was expected

when

would

supervisory and regulatory powers, require religions

submit annual financial reports, and enable police

reports

to pro-

goes before the upper house in 1996.

to

meet tough opposition

179

Epilogue

Japan the

Incame

first

anniversary of the world's largest ultraterrorist attack

and went with only modest observance and emotion. In the Tokyo

subway

stations,

where

Aum

Shinri Kyo's sarin killed eleven persons

and

injured five thousand five hundred others, makeshift altars with white flowers

—the Japanese color of mourning—were placed on the platforms.

Families of the deceased and transit officials held a small ceremony at Kasu-

migaseki Station, the main target of the a

memorial plaque. Later

ister,

attack, to

honor the dead and unveil

that afternoon Japan's recently elected

prime min-

Ryutaro Hashimoto, visited the station to offer prayers.

Except for remembering the dead and injured, the subway gassing was

an episode most Japanese would rather put behind them. But leader

Shoko Asahara

—and some

fifty

—dubbed by the media

of his senior aides will

years at least. Asahara' s finally got

trial,

delayed for

waist to officers

suit,

that impossible for several

months by his own legal shenanigans, district court.

who brought him

names of the

into the court

eleven dead and thousands

181

/

Handcuffed,

the guru was attached by a rope around his

room.

In a dramatic opening move, prosecutors began the

of the

of Aum

as "Japan's trial of the century"

make

under way on April 24 in the Tokyo

wearing a dark blue jogging

trial

who were

trial

with a

roll call

injured in the sub-

182

Holy Terror: Armageddon

way

attack.

Tokyo

in

During the reading, which went on

for hours,

Asahara appeared

rubbing his eyes, stretching. Although he

indifferent, fidgeting in his seat,

faces seventeen formal indictments in fifteen separate cases that include

commit mass murder, attempted first session dealt with the mass murder the murder of a rebellious young member,

multiple counts of murder, conspiracy to

murder, and kidnapping, the charges of the subway gassing,

and

drug production. Speaking publicly

illegal

Asahara showed

name."

He

plea to the

and

Asahara

law,

will

is

In the courtroom he

his

refused to

threw away that

"I

to enter a

won't speak."

not required to plead guilty or not guilty

be given another opportunity

photos depicting the

silk robes.

"I

He

when asked

charges, he told the Chief Judge Abe,

Asahara's physical appearance surprised to seeing

Shinri Kyo."

name, Chizu Matsumoto, saying

real

Under Japanese this point

Aum

claimed to have forgotten his address and

murder

Asked

inclination to be helpful in the proceedings.

little

occupation, he said he was the "leader of

acknowledge his

for the first since his arrest,

Aum leader as

at

later in the trial.

many

Japanese,

an overweight

who

man

was much slimmer. Since being

are used

in flowing

jailed in

May

1995, Asahara reportedly has lost at least forty pounds, largely due to his habit of fasting every other day. Police say he faces daily interrogation, able with his questioners, but

now

refuses to answer their questions.

still

ami-

They are

said to be concerned about his health, mainly because of the weight loss

and the

he spends most of his free time sleeping. But his stay in

fact that

has not diminished the guru's belief in his supernatural powers. ly

is

He

jail

recent-

informed police that soon he would "perform miracles." Legal experts

believe a miracle

As the

is

curtain

what he fell

last three to five years

look back on his

life

will

on the

need

first

in order to escape the gallows.

day of a complex

—and take ten years

and see the

to appeal

trial

that

is

— Shoko Asahara could

solid fulfillment of at least

one of his old

ambitions: national recognition. According to one news report, in Japan

knew

his

name than

that of either

expected to

more people

Emperor Akihito or Prime

Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto.

Though Asahara's cunning

at

legal

may have seemed him because the extra accumulate more evidence to use against him

manuevers

to delay his trial

the time, they ultimately worked against

time allowed prosecutors to in court.

The murder charges ably will increase in the

against Asahara

and some of his top

weeks ahead as police press

officials

prob-

their investigation into

Epilogue

the deaths of missing

Aum members.

Detectives said that at least thirty-three

followers have died or were killed since 1988,

and twenty others are

missing. Eighteen of the thirty-three dead were

Some were

killed in

that included total

Aum's

for

blood.

Many were young,

fifteen

brutal "religious-training" sessions

immersion

down

women and

—

men.

practices

hung upside

in scalding hot water or being

prolonged periods of time

listed as

—while others were murdered in cold

in their twenties

much woman who and was then taken to an Aum-

and

thirties,

but some were

Typical of the elderly victims was an eighty-year-old Tokyo

older.

donated a

tract

of expensive land to the sect

operated hospital where she was injected with drugs that killed her. In addition to determining the fate of the missing investigators also ers

members,

police

Aum

follow-

were concentrating on tracking down seven

who remained at large

wanted posters of the

in the

wake of the Tokyo

fugitives dotted

gassing. Large, full-color

subway and

train stations, airports,

and other public venues across the nation as the manhunt got underway with renewed vigor. Of the one hundred seventy Aum members arrested by police, more than one hundred have been brought to trial. All were found guilty

and received

either prison terms or

suspended sentences.

While the police were busy shifting into another phase of investigations, the

news media continued

to report

ties

and the thinking of its

leader. In

witnesses

who

said that

on January

grim new insights into the one

chilling instance police

30, 1995,

Aum

The nerve agent

area at Kamikuishiki.

"children's-squad" dormitory,

were

stricken.

The witnesses

where some

quoted eye-

chemical technicians dis-

posed of a quantity of sarin nerve agent by releasing

pound

sect's activi-

it

gasified,

in the

main com-

then spread to the

forty children inside

and outside

screamed for help, and when some with foamy blood bubbling from their

said the children

they ran to the scene they found

many writhing on the ground in convulsions. Also prone on the ground were a number of adults who tried to carry the children to safety. One man who tried to help told police he was knocked unconscious by the gas and woke later in the compound hospital surrounded by sick children. Medical technicians told him and the children that a U.S. military "C-130 cargo plane" had sprayed the compound with nerve gas. Though mouths, others vomiting, and

none of the children was believed injuries

was unknown.

Ironically,

killed

by the gas, the

many were

full

extent of their

the antidote.

He

saved us."

One was made us take

grateful to their guru.

quoted as saying, "Our master had predicted the gas attack and

183

184

Holy Terror: Armageddon

An team

equally macabre discovery

add the scent of flowers

to

ing. In

Tokyo

in

was Asahara's request

testimony before the Tokyo

sect's

made

the request in

December 1993

Puzzled, Tsuchiya asked

"Because people

why a

floral

to top

chemical

were produc-

Kayoko Sasaki,

district court,

Household Agency who helped produce

of the

to his

to the sarin nerve agent they

a

member

sarin, said that

Asahara

Aum chemist Masami Tsuchiya.

odor was necessary and Asahara replied,

will inhale the gas if

it

has a nice smell." Tsuchiya bought

four types of floral reagents, but the idea was dropped before they could be

added

to the sarin formula.

Though

reports like these will continue in the

Japanese society has Shinri Kyo and

from

its

is

now heard and absorbed

months and

years ahead,

news about

the worst

Aum

closing ranks to relentlessly expunge the deadly group

midst. Except for the

initial

outrage,

and the unprecedented

soul-

searching of the national media, the public's reaction to the Matsumoto and

Tokyo gassings has been deliberate and understandable, perate. Landlords

from

throughout Japan are

if

not always tem-

filing suits to evict

their buildings, telling courts that other tenants will not

Aum

tenants

remain in

their

Aum office is in the building. In some regions local merchants refuse to sell Aum food and other supplies, while local officials are scrupulously reviewing the paperwork on all Aum buildings, lookpremises or lease space

if

an

ing for technical faults which will allow safety laws are being

used

Supreme Court

closure. Fire inspection

to close others.

At higher governmental the

them order a

rejected

levels, the reaction is

an appeal by

Aum

much the

lawyers against an order by

the lower district court dissolving the sect and stripping official religious corporation.

The

same. In January

it

of its status as an

decision allows the government to seize

Aum's property, including its expensive compound at Kamikuishiki near Mount Fuji, and other financial assets. The government has moved ahead in other areas as well: Laws needed to correct

abuses by religious groups are being studied; others outlawing the

possession of sarin and dangerous chemicals have been passed; several

thousand new policemen

will

be added

to the national rolls;

medical and

other procedures for handling

mass gassings have been updated; the sub-

ways have seven hundred new

television

department units drills

now have

cameras

to

watch the

special gas-analysis equipment;

are being conducted. All of these steps,

and

stations; fire

and gas-escape

others, reinforce

an

Epilogue

excellent

emergency response system

that

was already

in place

—one

that

undoubtedly saved hundreds of lives on the morning of March 20, 1995.

The prospects

for the

formly bleak. Their sect jail,

and

officially

their property seized

adrift to face

"Aum

Aum members who still cling to the faith are uniby the government, they have been

alone the horrible societal stigma that

Shinri Kyo."

The diehard

hundred commune members

compound,

kuishiki

disbanded, their guru and top leaders in all

but cast

now attaches to the words

true believers, the estimated two to three

still

residing in sect buildings in the Kami-

Fujinomiya, and in the general head-

at facilities in

quarters in Tokyo, faced forcible eviction

by the

police.

bridges with their families, had nowhere to go, and

employment. Pariahs in their own land,

Most had burned

little

prospect for finding

they, along with the

thousands of lay

members, were innocent victims of Shoko Asahara. Misguided, manipulated, they had no part in the

sect's terrorist activities,

bear the heavy social taint of belonging to

Aum

their

sincere,

but they

and

now

Shinri Kyo for the rest of

their lives.

The Japan

probability of another ultraterrorist-religious group

extremely low, as

is

is

the possibility of anything other than low-order

domestic terrorism. There were unconfirmed reports that

an unspecified quantity of sarin

aged

to hide

tion,

which might be used

to create

left

in

on them. Also

of the leaders

and

lock

what

it

key.

Aum

an incident when Asahara's

when it became

had man-

over from earlier produc-

But as the gassing of the children indicates, the sect tried incriminating nerve agents

emerging in

trial

began.

of

to dispose

its

apparent the police were closing

militating against another sarin attack

is

the fact that

now

most

who planned and

executed the gassings are

The

an attack from any outside quarter remains

possibility of

always was: virtually

nil.

For

all its

safely

under

economic prominence on the

world stage, Japan has no history of being attacked by outside terrorist groups. Its trol,

house now back in order and

its

errant religious sect

Japan can once again lay honest claim

to

what

it

under firm con-

was before the advent

of Aum: one of the safest nations in the world. But for the rest of the world, especially the called

Aum

urban centers of the West, the Japanese cultural aberration

Shinri Kyo poses

enormous new

Coping with the new threat of ultraterrorism strong political

will,

and education.

risks

and grave challenges.

will require large resources,

I

85

186

Holy Terror: Armageddon

Tokyo

in

Given the history of terrorism, the odds are better than even that another ultraterrorist attack will

be attempted somewhere in the world within the

next decade. Terrorist groups tend to repeat operations that are successful,

whose blind hatred focuses only on hurting the most dramatic and deadly manner possible. For them,

especially the hard-core groups

enemies

in

ultraterrorism

is

their

Kyo,

dream weapon, and because of

no longer simply an untried,

it is

The

the ultimate

Shinri

abstract ideal.

target for the next attack could be

any one of a number of Western

or a densely populated site in the state of Israel. For

cities

Aum

some Middle

Eastern terrorist groups the United States ranks high as a target because of unstinting support of Israel, the American-led Gulf War against Iraq, and

its

Washington's continuing opposition

and

Iran,

Iraq are

known

to

to states

such as Libya and

Iran. Libya,

possess or be working on the development of

chemical and biological weapons. They also have strong connections to rorist

groups in the Middle

select its target,

An

attack

choosing a

In targeting America, an ultraterrorist

East.

group in the Middle East would

ter-

likely resort to

city that

"symbolic geography" to

symbolizes America to most foreigners.

on New York, Chicago, Washington, Miami, Las Vegas, Los

Angeles, or San Francisco would draw immediate international headlines.

Other urban

sites in the

United

States,

while equally promising in terms of

population and vulnerability, would probably be ignored because of their ative obscurity; only

an American

ing a federal building in biological, but the rorist attack

terrorist

Oklahoma

City.

would seriously consider bomb-

The weapon might be chemical

odds are good that whatever

is

facing vulnerable nations today

be done to prevent ultraterrorism. While the risk

and

used in the next

cannot be completely eliminated, a to survive

it

if

lot

to

The cities,

to

ultrater-

is

what can

open, democratic soci-

can be done

to prevent

an attack

one occurs. For Americans, one of the most open of the

vulnerable democracies, prevention and survival depends largely factors, all

or

probably will have a higher order of effectiveness than sarin.

The most pressing question eties

rel-

upon

three

of critical importance.

first is

education.

The

public, especially those

must be adequately informed about

respond in event their

threat of ultraterrorism to allocate the

city is attacked.

must

live in large

Educated awareness of the

also drive local

and national

political

how new

systems

force,

and

comprehensive counterterrorist intelligence

sys-

needed resources

at the national level, for a

who

the nature of the threat and

for a trained

emergency response

Epilogue

tern

which

the front

is

—and

last

—

an

line of defense in preventing

attack.

Despite the horrible evidence produced by the Tokyo attack, only a few voices

have been raised to

American public of the new danger

alert the

of the best informed has been that of Senator of the Senate

Armed

Services

it

faces.

Sam Nunn, former chairman

Committee and the Senate's leading expert on

U.S. defense policy. Shortly after the Tokyo gassing, he dispatched a investigators

concerning the

and Germany

activities

to obtain first-hand information

of Aum Shinri Kyo. Their findings resulted in an

exhaustively detailed report that constitutes one of the

most informed docu-

Aum Shinri Kyo's various criminal and terrorist activities. on Aum Shinri Kyo conducted in late 1995,

tion to Senate hearings

Nunn

continued the

grams such fare.

"I'd itself,

vital

candid in his comments.

be very surprised

if a civilian

would doubt very seriously United

Senator

education process by appearing on television pro-

population, even Washington, D.C.

were adequately protected [from a

the Senator.

In addi-

CBS's Go Minutes, where he discussed the threat of germ war-

as

He was

team of

from the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations

to Japan, Russia, Ukraine,

ments on

One

if that

Asked about the

States,

he

terrorist biological attack].

would be the case in other

possibility of

replied, "I think

we'd have

an to

And

I

cities," stated

on the

ultraterrorist attack

be very fortunate and we'd

have to do a darn good job with intelligence and every other facet of law

enforcement

going to avoid that kind of attack coming

if we're

at

some

point

in the years ahead."

As Nunn

indicates, the

terrorist intelligence is

nothing

system that

is

CIA headquarters

at

combines CIA

is

the establishment of a counter-

second to none in the world. Sadly, there

like that in existence today,

was put in place that

second step

although a Counterterrorism Center in Virginia

more than

ten years ago

analysts, military intelligence officers, the State Depart-

ment, and the FBI. This group, charged with monitoring worldwide ist activities,

missed

Matsumoto nerve-gas Japan's

own

Aum attack.

Shinri Kyo altogether, even after the

But in fairness, so did everyone

intelligence services

the end of the Cold

community and

War

at the

and

its

else,

American

intelligence

highest levels of government about what the

now

tell-tale

including

law enforcement agencies. Since

a debate has roared in the

of U.S. intelligence should be

terror-

that the Soviet

Union has

new role

collapsed.

A

range of options were suggested including economic intelligence, international

drug surveillance, environmental pollution monitoring, tracking the

187

188

Holy Terror: Armageddon

proliferation of nuclear

Tokyo

in

weapons, and enhanced intelligence support for U.S.

military interventions such as Grenada,

Panama, Somalia, the Gulf War, and

Bosnia.

Also on the

list

was counterterrorism. But

as

Aum

Shinri Kyo has clearly

shown, momentous events have a way of establishing orities for intelligence. In recent

a

acknowledged they knew

all

Aum Shinri Kyo before the Tokyo gassing. After hearing their Sam Nunn made

negative replies,

round being

whole

a telling observation: "I

set of congressional hearings after

nuclear, asking 'Where were our law enforcement

community

in

can see the next

we've had some kind

God forbid, even officials? Where was our

of chemical or biological disaster in this country,

intelligence

threat pri-

testimony before a senate subcommittee,

the CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, and FBI

nothing about

own

their

or,

of this?'"

all

Conventional terrorism and ultraterrorism have

now forged their way to

higher prominence on the American intelligence agenda. President Clinton

underscored

this

ascendancy in mid- March when he took Director of Central

Intelligence John Deutsch with

him

to a high-level

meeting in Egypt

to dis-

cuss counterterrorism with other heads of state following the campaign of suicide

bombings

in Israel by the

which nearly undermined the Deutsch's appearance

at

—

Hamas

terrorist

fragile

Palestinian- Israeli peace accords.

the meeting was

group

most unusual.

a series of attacks

It is

very rare for the

Director of Central Intelligence to travel publicly outside the United States,

and even

rarer for

him

to

accompany the

President. Clinton's

move

in bring-

ing along Deutsch was to emphasize the importance of intelligence in pre-

venting terrorism and to allow the Director of Central Intelligence to begin laying the

ground work among Middle Eastern nations

that could ultimately

lead to a joint, cooperative international intelligence effort, something

order of a counterterrorism

INTERPOL which

could share

on the

critical intelli-

gence.

The U.S. had another meeting on counterterrorism ation scheduled for late

March

in

Washington, but veteran intelligence

ers are skeptical that anything workable will evolve

They point out

that counterterrorism intelligence

on human sources

—

spies

intelligence cooper-

—and no

is

from these

insid-

initiatives.

almost entirely based

intelligence service

is

willing to

hand out

information that will reveal those sources and the methods used to control

them.

An

old intelligence principle, one that

is

believed around the world,

holds there are friendly countries but no friendly intelligence services. The

Epilogue

nature of intelligence that

is effective

vice

is

going

in the

—

especially

human-source

war against terrorism

—

is

such that no intelligence

While international intelligence cooperation be

efforts will

made

to

pursue

it,

it

fences. England,

Germany, France,

Authority, Egypt,

and Russia

worthy

goal,

and U.S.

Israel, Jordan,

Italy,

The

its

own

Palestinian

have different perceptions of their national

Where those

regards terrorism.

security as

a

is

should not become a substitute for an

intelligence system that vigilantly looks to

all

ser-

with anyone.

to share its real secrets

American counterterrorism

kind

intelligence, the only

perceptions coincide with

America's interests and cause no problems, there can be limited intelligence cooperation; but silence, as

where they

clash, as they

there has been in the

past.

The

have in the past, there

plain truth

stakes involved in ultraterrorism are far too high for any nation to

anyone other than

An

good counterterrorism intelligence

upon

trained force necessary to act

it

preemptively.

failure of national leaders to act decisively

planning to deploy them

decisively, to stop

among

all

the intelligence

on the

is

intelligence they receive.

useless if you cannot

act,

and

act swiftly

But in meeting the ultraterrorist threat they

new tactics,

—are so high team

that timing

is

already

Finally, if all fails

populated

city,

depend and

will

need

to

new equipment, react to much shorter time lines, personally come to grips with a new moral operational and the

on U.S.

and an

soil or still

entirely

on the

ultraterrorist attack

ability

is

even more true

minute

is

the

does occur in a densely first critical

is

critical factor.

Once

that goes by will produce

and increase the suffering of those already chemical and biological weapons

if the

hours

of local emergency response teams to act

Again, timing

clock begins ticking, every

death

abroad, preparing to depart.

saving lives and minimizing injuries in the

effectively.

—the

decisive application of force in pre-

emptive military operations becomes everything. This ultraterrorist

swiftly

and

acquire

philosophy. In ultraterrorist attacks the potential casualties

will

To

weapons of mass destruction and

them. America's military counterterrorism forces are

and, like intelligence,

rates

the

is

the best trained and equipped in the world for handling conventional

terrorist groups.

devise

Of

the

is

have surfaced in the past years, one of the least noticed

learn that an ultraterrorist group possesses is

depend on

itself.

essential corollary to

failures that

be

will

that the intelligence

is

stricken.

The

the casualty

more

victims

insidious nature of

such that most people would not know

they were under attack until the dead and injured start falling in the streets.

189

190

Holy Terror: Armageddon

If properly

Tokyo

In

produced, most such agents have no smell and can't be seen.

the high order

end of the

persed, produce two

biological spectrum, there are studies

one disease

gest that the spores of

—anthrax—can,

hundred thousand

to four

referred to as "the poor

and explain why anthrax

it is

critical to

system that has conducted

often

and other supplies such

fire,

now posed by

must

police response

ultraterrorism. Medicines

as decontamination units

exercises also

and

dealing with the various types

realistic exercises

of chemical and biological threats

many

is

have in place a well-trained,

properly equipped, and coordinated medical, rescue,

The

casualties

magnitude are normally

man's atomic bomb."

Thus, before an attack occurs

advance.

which sug-

efficiently dis-

hundred thousand

in the first thirty-six hours. Casualty figures of this

associated with the use of nuclear weapons,

when

On

must be

stockpiled in

take into account the high probability that

of the medics, police, and other emergency personnel will themselves

be stricken in the

first

few hours. Doctors, nurses, firemen, transport person-

policemen, and communications technicians will suffer the same casu-

nel,

alty rates as the

assumes

population

a full staff will

The

list

at large,

respond

which means

that

any exercise which

to the attack is unrealistic.

of variables involved in a chemical or biological attack on a major

reads like a nightmare. Uncontaminated hospitals and emergency shel-

city

ters will

be quickly overwhelmed;

critical

located in highly contaminated areas

of the

may

city

may have

to

—the

may be

large sections

be evacuated, perhaps for weeks or months; panic

lead to breakdowns of law

rescue operations

medical and other supplies

which cannot be entered;

list

and

hampering medical and

order, further

goes on and on.

At the moment, most U.S.

cities are

not adequately prepared to cope with

the worst-case scenarios posed by ultraterrorism. Even isolated incidents

such as subway or sports-stadium attacks might produce casualties so heavy that the best the local medical

and rescue systems can do

until help arrives. Outside assistance, both

from

local

whether the attack

ble federal agency for

The U.S. for

any

military

is

is full

scale or

more

immediate intervention

is

hold the line

communities and the

federal government, will be essential in order to save lives suffering,

is

selective.

and

alleviate the

The most

capa-

the Department of Defense.

the best trained and equipped emergency-response force

ultraterrorist attack

on an American

city.

As

always, timing

is vital.

Aircraft loaded with doctors, portable hospitals, medical supplies, chemical

and

biological warfare specialists, military police

—the whole

panoply of

Epilogue

emergency response

— must be moving

In order to achieve this, the military

coordination" in order to allow stricken areas.

America's occurs,

Any

to the site

of the attack within hours.

command bureaucracy must have

commanders

move

to

units instantly into the

delay will be at the expense of human

ability to

"prior

life.

prevent ultraterrorism, and to cope with

it

if

it

depends then on three equally important components: education of

the public and

its political

leaders about the

allocation of resources to build

an

new

threat of ultraterrorism;

effective counterterrorism intelligence

system along with a preemptive force trained to handle ultraterrorist threats;

and

a

combination of local emergency response units that are trained and

equipped

to

hold the line until federal assistance can reinforce them.

Today America

is

woefully deficient in

all

these areas.

19

1

Bibliography

Newspapers and News Services

Agence France Presse

The Japan Times

Asiaweek

Los Angeles Times

The Asian Wall

Street

The Mainichi Daily News

Journal

New

The Associated Press

The

The Daily Yomiuri

The Washington Post

The Far Eastern Economic Review

Reuters

York Times,

Television

"Germ

Warfare." Go Minutes. CBS,

New York,

February

18,

1996.

Books and Periodicals

Aera Henshubu.

Aum Maho

Toku. Aera No. 23 (May 25, 1995). Tokyo: Asahi

Shimbunsha. Bungei Shunju. "Aum Jiken"

Do Yomu

Bessatsu Takarajima Henshubu.

229 (August

Aum

ka.

to

Tokyo: Bungei Shunju, 1995.

Iu

1995). Tokyo: Takrajimasha.

192

Akumu. Bessatsu Takarajima

Bibliography

Aum

Egawa, Shoko. Kyuseishu no Yabo:

Shinri Kyo o Otte. Tokyo: Kyoiku

Shiryo Shuppansha, 1991.

Aum Shinri Kyo— Tsuiseki 2200 Hi. Tokyo: Bungei Shunju, 1995. Shoichi. Aum Shinri Kyo Jiken. Tokyo: Asahi News Shop, 1995. Nobutaka, Michio Takeda, and Kiyoyasu Kitabatake, eds. Aum Shinri .

Fujita,

Inoue,

Kyo

to

wa Nani

ka:

Gendai Shakai ni Toikakeru Mono. Tokyo: Asahi News

Shop, 1995.

The Japan Times (Special Report). "Terror in the Heart of Japan: The

Doomsday

Shinri Kyo

Aum

Cult." Tokyo, July 1995.

Mainichi Shimbun Shakaibu.

Aum Jiken

Shimbunsha, 1995. Marshall, Andrew. "Death in the

Air:

Shuzai Zenkodo. Tokyo: Mainichi

The Attack of the Nazi Nerve Gas,"

Tokyo Journal (April 1995): 24.

Aum

Masuzoe, Yoichi. Sengo Nihon no Gen'ei: Reader, Ian.

hagen:

A

Poisonous Cocktail?

NIAS

Shinrikyo's Path to Violence.

Copen-

Publications, 1996.

Shimazono, Susumu. (July 1995).

Aum

Aum

Shinri Kyo no Kiseki.

Iwanami Booklet No. 379

Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten.

"Tracing

formation of

Aum

Its

Shinri Kyo's Tracks:

The Formation and Trans-

Faith Universe." Japanese Journal of Religious Studies,

1995 22/3-4. Tokyo. Shimizu, Masato, ed. Shinshukyo Jidai. Vol.

Takarajima 30 Henshubu. Kaibunsho:

3.

Aum

Tokyo: Okura Shuppan, 1995.

Shinri Kyo / Sarin Jiken. Tokyo:

Takarajimasha, 1995.

Tokyo Shimbun Shakaibu. Aum:

Shimbun Shuppankyoku, Young, Richard

F. "Lethal

Soshiki

Hanzai no Nazo. Tokyo: Tokyo

1995.

Achievements: Fragments of a Response

Aum Shinri Kyo Affair." Japanese Religions, Volume 20

(2).

NCC

to the

Center

for the Study of Japanese Religions, Kyoto, Japan. July 1995.

U.S. Senate Permanent Subcommittee

on Investigations (Minority

Case Study on the

Aum

Staff).

Weapons of Mass Destruction: A Shinri Kyo. Washington, D.C. October 31, 1995.

Staff Statement. Global Proliferation of

193

Index

Abe, Fumihiro, 173-74 Achariya, Umabalavati, 102-3

Agon Kyo, 62 Agon Shu, 62-63,

65,

69

AK-74 machine guns, 99 Akahata, 130, 139

Akihabara Station,

134, 136

Aoshima, Yukio, 107,

Aoyama, Yoshinobu,

Armageddon,

14-18, 25, 28, 85, 102-4,

of,

in

See Japanese Self-Defense Forces

Ashara, Shoko, 56, 152, 154, 168, 178, 183-84

anti-American rhetoric, 106-7 apocalyptic obsession, 83-84, 95-96, 105

background, 59-65

books

and

by, 67, 75-76,

95

cult initiation rites, 15-17

and drug

M^,

148-49, 158, 168, 174

56, 66, 75-76, 84, 88, 95-96, 102-6, 108, 115, 117

Armentieres, gassing

Army.

157, 161

use,

98 194

Index

foreign

67-68, 92-93, 118

visits,

indictment interest in

of,

163-67, 169-74

weapons technology, 98-99

Ishigakijima message, 82-84 leadership, 65-78, 102-5

orders attack

on Tokyo subway system, 124-26,

orders death of Kariya, 121-124

Matsumoto

orders

sarin field test, 28-29, 3 2 34 >

orders Sakamoto murders, 11-12, 19-25

and

police investigation, 147-50, 156-61

ambitions, 18, 76-77, 79, 81-82

political

and production of sarin, and

sect's

114-15, 117

image, 89

and "training accident," 87 trial of, 173-75,

181-82, 185

Economic Cooperation, 105

Asia-Pacific

Association of Victims of

Aum,

Aum

Aum

Shinri Kyo, 13-14, 78

65-67

Inc.,

Shinri Kyo

America

as chief target, 106-7

anti-Semitism, 107-8 apocalyptic stance attack

of,

83-84, 95-96, 105

on Tokyo subway system, 121-42

attempts to improve image, 88-89

disbanding

of,

181-85

drug use, 97-98

end

of,

163-79

establishment of businesses, 90-91 field test

of sarin in Matsumoto, 27-43

foreign connections, 90-95 initiation rites, 15-17

interest in chemical

weapons, 114-20

"invasion" of Namino, 84-85,

menu

89

of religious aids, 72-73

organization, 102-5 police investigation of, political

campaign,

18,

5,

143-61

76-82

132, 143, 171-73

195

196

Holy Terror: Armageddon

as religious sect, 12-14,

Tokyo

in

7 ml &> 45> 49> religious tenets, 63, 66, 69-76

Sakamoto murders,

l

5 I_ 5 2 >

9-12, 20-24, 26, 78,

Sakamoto's investigation

of,

69, 105

86

12-20, 25

significance of sarin attacks, 6-7 as terrorist group, 45, 47-49, 51-57, 154

"training accident," 86-87

and weapons technology, 92-95, 98-102 Aum Shinsen no Kai, 19, 67-69

Aum

U.

S.

Company, 93

Australia, 90, 92-93, 114

Awajicho Station, 138 Bach, Richard, 20

Bardo

Initiation,

74

Basov, Nikolay, 92,

99

Baths, scalding, 86-87

Beck, Inc.,

90

Belgium, in Bento shops, 89

Blood

Initiation, 15-17,

74

Bosnia, 108, 188

Botulism bacillus, 172-173

Browne, Malcolm W., in

Buddha, 62, 68, 79, 118, 151, 164 Buddhism, 29, 49-50, 62-63, 66-69, 79, 88-89, 9^"97» l 4&> x 7^

Cambodia, 108 Center for Study of Terrorism and

Political Violence, 53

Central Intelligence Agency, 187-88 Chakras,

64

Chemical warfare, 109-20 Chiba University, 95 China, 61, 63, 75, 112

Chiyoda Line,

2, 127, 130-32,

Chlorine gas, 110-11,

113

Christianity, 49, 62, 75

138-40, 142

Index

Clinton,

Bill,

Communist

106-7, 187-88 Party, 130

Constitution, Japanese, 49, 51-52, 176 Constitution, U.

S.,

46

Culture Day, 21-22 Cyanide, 113-14, 146, 157

Dalai Lama, 68-69,

Day of Destruction

&9

(Ashara), 75

Defense Department, U.

S.,

190

Defense Intelligence Agency, 187 Defense Ministry,

5,

112

Deutsch, John, 187

Dharmsala, 68 Diet, 18-19, 52, 76-78, 179

Drug

use, 74, 97-98

Early

Buddhism, 62-63, 79, 89

Ebisu Station, 132-33, 137 Ebola virus, 102

Egawa, Shoko, 81 Egypt, 112, 188

Endo, Makoto, 164-65 Endo, Seiichi, 102-4,

115,

125-26, 154, 175

Enokida, Tetsuji, 35 Federal Bureau of Investigation, 187

Federation of Bar Associations, 165 Fisher, Barry, 157

From

Destruction to Emptiness (Ashara), 75-76

Fujinomiya, sect

compound

Fukazawa, Shingo, 35 Fukuoka, 168 Funabashi, 61

Garon, Sheldon, Gedatsu,

70

51

at, 14, 18, 71,

185

197

198

Holy Terror: Armageddon

Geneva Convention, Genovese, James

Germany,

God

in

Tokyo

112

A., 113

110-12, 187

Light Association,

62

Grenada, 188

Gulf War, 98, 102,

114, 118,

186

Guyana, 114

Hamaguchi, Tadahito,

175

Hamas, 188 Hasegawa Chemical, 90 Hashimoto, Ryutaro, 181 Hashimoto, Satoru,

11-12, 21, 33

Hayakawa, Kiyohide,

10, 14, 19-22, 25, 32, 91-93, 101-4, 117, 172

Hayashi, Ikuo, 104, 107, 123, 126-27, 129-30, 132, 139, 154, 156, 170, 175 Hayashi, Yasuo, 126-30, 134, 136-37

Hibiya Line,

1-2, 4, 127, 131, 134,

136-38, 141-42

Hibiya Station, 139

Hinduism,

63, 65-67, 79, 118

Hirata, Satoru, 175

Hirohito, emperor, 51

Hiroo Station, 137 Hirose, Kenichi, 126-27, 133-34, 138, 175

Hishinuma, Tsuneo, 140 Hochi Shimbun, 132

Hoffman, Bruce,

53, 55

Hong Kong, 90 Hongo Sanchome Igarashi, Hirozo, Iida, Eriko,

Station, 139

5

103-4

Ikebukuro Station, Ikeda, Daisaku, 29, India,

133,

139

106

67-68

Initiation of Christ,

74

Initiation rites, 15-17, 72-74

Inoue, Yoshihiro, 93, 107, 121-23, 125-28, 156, 159, 161, 175 Inoue, Yukihiko, 169

Index

Iran, 112,

186

Iraq, 112,

186

Ishigakijima Seminar, 82-83 Ishii,

Hisako, 65, 69,

Ishii,

Tomoko.

90-91, 102-4

71,

Matsumoto, Tomoko

See

Ishikura, Shunji, 41-42

Islam, 46-47, Israel,

66

48, 186, 188

Japan Railway,

12, 23, 155

Japan Times, 149 Japanese Imperial Army, 112 Japanese National Police. See National Police Agency Japanese Self-Defense Forces,

2, 4, 112

Jews, 107-8 Jo,

Hiroyuki, 156

Johnson, Sheila, 72 Jones, Jim, 114 Joyu, Fumihiro, 17, 25, 102-4,

J 5^' x 68, x

72

>

J

74

Justice Ministry, 177

Kamei, Shizuka, 4-5 Kamikuishiki, sect

compound

at, 11,

116-17, 122, 124, 128, 144-47,

Kamimine,

Kenji, 156

Kamiyacho

Station,

1, 3,

I

20-21, 24, 29-30, 42, 87, 99-100, 114,

49"5 1

'

I 53»

158-60, 183-84

135, 137, 141

Kanetsuki, Seishi, 176 Kariya, Kiyoshi, 121-124, 167, 170-171 Kariya, Takeshi, 121-124, 144-145, 147, 149-150

Karma,

63,

66

Kasumigaseki

Kayabacho Kerr,

Station, 2, 127, 130, 132-135, 137-140, 143-144, 181

Station,

3,

136

Duncan, 93

Khasbulatov, Rusian, 92 Kibe, Tetsuya, 95, 104, 154, 171

Kingdom of Shambhala, 66, Kiriyama, Seiyu, 62-63

Kitamura, Koichi, 127, 133

70,

96

199

200

Holy Terror: Armageddon

in

Tokyo

Kobe earthquake, 154

Kodenmacho

Station, 4, 135-136

Kofu, 149

Kono, Yoshiyuki, Koran,

33, 35-43

46

Kristof,

Nicholas D., 10

Kumamoto, 59-61 Kume, Miyuki, 4 Kundalini yoga,

63-65,

15,

Kunimatsu, Takaji,

69

151-152, 156, 169,

170

Kurds, 112

Kyodo news agency, 172-173 Kyoto University, 95 Kyoto University Medical School, 15-16

Laser weapons, 99-100 Libya,

186

Lobov, Oleg, 92

Lod Airport massacre, 48 Lotus Villages, 70-71,

96

Maha

mudra, 69 Mahaposha/Maha

Posya,

90

Mainichi Daily News, 24, 169-70

Manual of Fear, 107

Mao

Tse-tung, 61

Marunouchi

Line, 1-2, 127, 131, 133, 138-39, 142

Masutani, Fumio, 62

Matsumoto, Chizuo. See Ashara, Shoko

Matsumoto

Reika, 105

Matsumoto, sarin

field test in, 27-43,

49' 53"57' io 5>

143-44, 149-51, 153, 156, 171, 175, 187

Matsumoto, Takeshi, 123-24, 144, 170, Matsumoto, Tomoko, Meguro, Kayoko, Meiji,

175

61, 102-4, 175

35

emperor, 21

Metropolitan Police Department, 127, 169-70, 172

u 7>

I2 4' I2 9>

I

4°'

Index

Minami-Aoyama,

sect headquarters in, 155,

168

Miyakozawa, Kazuko, 103-4 Miyazaki, Tadahiko, 172

Miracle Pond,

15,

74

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Research Center, 100 Monastics, 74-75, yy, 87, 103 Morita, Hiroshi, 140

Murai, Hideo, 19-20, 30-34, 36, 38, 87-88, 102-4,

115-17,

124-29, 137,

155-57, 161

Murayama, Tomiichi,

176-77

5,

Muslim fundamentalists, 46-47 Mustard

Nadis,

gas, 111-12, 118

64

Nagano, Winter Olympics

30

in,

Nagayama, Shizuka, 138 Nagoya, 90

Nakagawa, Tomomasa, 9-10, 20-22, 24,

34, 104, 123, 125-26, 161, 167,

171-72, 175

Naka Meguro

Station, 132

Nakamura, Hajime, 62

Nakano Sakaue

Station, 1-2

Namino, "invasion"

of,

84-85,

Narita Airport, protests over,

National Police Agency, 143-61, 163-64,

Nazis,

no,

89

48

2, 4-6, 13, 22-23,

4°' 4 2 "43> 47'

53' 5^, 116-18, 123-25,

169

112

Nebuka, Kumi, 170-71 Nepal, 63

Nerve gas. See Sarin

New Frontier Party, 106 New York City, 46, 107 New

York Times, 10-11

Nikon Keizai Shimbun, 134 Niimi, Tomomitsu, 10, 14, 20-21, 102-4, 12 7>

Ningyocho

Nippon

Station,

Electronics,

4 100

: 3°' I 54' I 57' x

75

201

202

Holy Terror: Armageddon

in

Tokyo

Nirvana, 63-64, 68, 83

Noda, Naruhito, 103-104

Nunn, Sam, 187-88

Ochanomizu

Station, 134, 138

Ochida, Kotaro, 167, 171-72, 175 Okazaki, Kazuaki, 19-20, 22, 24

Oklahoma

City

bombing, 186

Olson, Kyle, 54-55,

57, 114, 136, 153

Omori, Yoshio, 169

Omoto

Kyo, 51

Osaka, 19, 90, 106, 108, 154, 168, 175

Osaka University, 95 Ouchi, Sanae, 104

Ozawa,

Ichiro,

Ozawa,

Seiji,

106

30

Palestine, 48, 186

Panama, 186 Paris,

bombings

in,

46

People's Liberation Front of Palestine,

48

Perfect Salvation Initiation, 74

Philippines, 47

Phowa, 97 Police.

See Metropolitan Police Department; National Police

Agency

Public Security Commission, 177 Public Security Investigation Agency, 176-77

Purusha, 24-25, 74

Red Army, 48 Reid, T. R., 157

Religious Corporation Law, 52, 176, 178, 179 Religious sects, 12-13,

r

7 -I 8, 45, 49-52, 176, 178-179

Religious terrorism, 45-47, 56 Revelation,

Book

of,

75

Rissho Kosei Kai, 178

Roppongi

Station, 137, 141

Russia, 20, 91-92, 99-101, 103, 148, 158, 187; see also Soviet

Union

Index

Rutskoy, Alexsandr, 92

Rwanda, 108

Saint Luke's Hospital, 142

Saishu gedatsu,

15

Sakai, Katsuisa,

66

Sakamoto, Satoko, 9-12, 20-24, 26, 78, 86, 124, 171 Sakamoto, 9-12, 20-24, 2 ^> 78, 86, 124, 171 Sakamoto, Tsutsumi, 9-26, 78, 86, 124, 171 Sarin attack

on Tokyo subway system,

171-72, 175, 181-83,

1-7, 38, 53-57,

121-42, 149-51, 153, 156,

186-87

attempted attack on Soka Gakkai, 29 effect of, 119

experiments on sheep, 92-93, 114 field test in

Matsumoto, 27-43,

153, 156, 171, 175,

53"57'

io 5>

I2 4> I2 9>

x 4°» I

187

found during police investigation, 146, historical

u 7>

148-51, 153, 159, 183

background, 109-10, 112-13

laws against, 155

Satyam Number 7 lab, 29, 42, planned attacks in United States, 107

made

at

115-18

Sasaki, Kayoko, 184

Satyam Number 2

lab, 123,

Satyam Number 6

lab, 125,

Satyam Number 7 lab, 29, "Satyam Shops," 168 Savitsky, Vitaliy, Secret

167 158-60 115-18, 126, 128, 146, 149-51

100

Method for Developing Supernatural Powers (Ashara), 67

Secret Prophecy of Nostradamus (Ashara),

95

Seigoshi, 102-3

Seismic weapons, 102 Seitaishi, 102-3

Senate, U.

S.,

investigation by, 54-55, 57, 92, 105, 107, 187-88

Sendagi Station, 130 Shaktipat, 66-67, 7 2

Shamana, 103 Shambhala, 66-67, 7°> 95

49

_

51

'

203

204

Holy Terror: Armageddon

in

Tokyo

Shi, 102-103

Shibata, Toshiro, 174

Shicho, 102

Shin Ochanomizu Station, 130,

132, 139

Shinamura, Mitsuaki, 138 Shinjuku, 154

Shinjuku Station,

134, 157

Shinko shukyo, 12 Shinrito, 76, 79, 81

Shinshu University, 95 Shinto, 49-50, 52 Shiva, 66, 70, 74, 96, 118

Simpson, O. Slaughtered

J.,

165, 167

Lambs

Soka Gakkai,

video,

25, 29,

106

106

Somalia, 186

Soman, no, "Song of

118

Sarin, the Magician," 119-20

Soviet Union, 75, 98, 100,

no,

187; see also Russia

Sri Lanka, 90, 118

SRV, 100-101 State

Department, U.

S.,

46, 187

Subversive Activities Prevention Act, 176

Sugimoto, Shigeo, 127, 134 Sugiura, Shigeru, 104

Sunaoshi, Mitsuo, 169

Sunday Mainichi, 77 Supreme Court of Japan, 184 Suzuki, Shunichi, 150 Suzuki, Yoshimasa, 139

Swami, 102-3 Tabun, no, 118 Taishi, 102-3

Taiwan, 90 Takahashi, Katsuya, 127, 133 Takahashi, Kazumasa, 140

Index

Takahashi, Shinji, 62

Tamura,

Satoshi, 170-71

Tanimura,

Keiji, 95 Tantra Vajrayana, 96-97

Tantric Buddhism, 63

Taoism, 63 Tazawa, Tomoharu, 178-79 Terrorism, 45-57, 153-54, 1 7^ 185-90 >

>

Tesla, Nikola, 101-2 Tibet, 63, 67-68, 81,

96-97

Tibetan Book of the Dead, 74

Tokyo, 61, 63, 65, 67-68, jj, 90, 107-8, 146, 154-55, 160-61, 168

Tokyo Bar Association, 164-65

Tokyo Broadcasting System,

11,

17

Tokyo College of Engineering, 95 Tokyo District Court, 169-70, 173, 176,

181,

184

Tokyo High Court, 177 Tokyo Press Club, 25 Tokyo subway system, sarin attack on,

1-7, 38,

48, 53-57, 121-42, 149-51,

156, 171-72, 175, 181-83, 187-88

Tokyo University, 95 Tominaga, Masahiro, 161 Tomizawa-cho, 86 Tonozaki, Kiyotaka, 127, 134

Toyoda, Toru, 126-27,

I

3

2_ 33>

: 36-37,

161, 175

Transport and Transportation Ministry, 4-5 Truth of Humanity's Destruction (Ashara), 95 Tsuchiya, Masami, 30, 38, 114-18, 125-26, 154, 175, 184 Tsukiji Station, 4, 135-36, 142

Tsuneishi, Keiichi, 41 Twilight

Ueno

Zone magazine, 65

Station, 134

Ukraine, 187

Ultimate Donation to the Sonshi, 74 Ultraterrorism, 45, 52-57, 185-90

Unification Church, 12

153,

205

206

Holy Terror: Armageddon

in

Tokyo

United Nations, 112 United

States, 46,

51-57, 63, 70, 75,

49,

90-91, 93-95, 99, 105-7,

178, 186-191

Utsumi, Masaaki, 161

Vajrayana Sacca, 106, 108 "Vajrayana Vow," 96-97

Vietnam, 47 Vietnam War, 99

VX

gas, 113-14, 118, 175

Waaku, 75 Watanabe, Kazumi, 115-116 Watanabe, Shunkichi, 141

World Trade Center bombing, 46 World War I, 110-111 World War

II, 7,

49,

53,

no,

112,

178

Yamagata, Akira, 175

Yamaguchi-gumi crime

syndicate, 156

Yamamoto, Mayumi, 103-104 Yeltsin, Boris, 158

Yemen,

112

Yoga, 63-69

Yoga

Sutra, 65

Yokohama,

Yokohama

9, 12, 17-18, 21, 23, 154-155,

Yokoyama, Masato, 126-127, Yokoyama,

168

National University, 95 : 34» J

3^

Shoji, 169, 172-175

Yomiuri Shimbun, 16,

35,

42, 134, 143, 152

Yosano, Kaoru, 150

Yotsuya Station, 133-134, 138 Ypres, battle

at,

in

Yugoslavia, 101

Zaire, 102

Zen Buddhism, 62

115, 157-58,

1

M

WtBW

The "weathermark"

identifies this

book

as a production of

Weatherhill, Inc., publishers of fine books on Asia and the

Pacific. Editorial supervision: Jeffrey

Hunter. Book and jacket design:

Mariana Canelo. Printing and binding: Quebecor, Kingsport. The faces used are Scala

and

Gill Sans.

type-