Shoko Asahara

  • Born: May 2, 1955
  • Birthplace: Yatsushiro City, Kumamoto Prefecture, Kyushu, Japan
  • Died: July 6, 2018
  • Place of death: Tokyo, Japan

Japanese founder and leader of the Aum Shinrikyo religious sect

Also known as: Chizuo Matsumoto (birth name)

Early Life

Shoko Asahara was born as Chizuo Matsumoto and came from a family of modest means. His eyesight was so poor that he was classified as legally blind, and from the time that he was six, he lived in a boarding school for the blind, at public expense, where he was trained in acupuncture. Matsumoto graduated in March 1973 but lived at the boarding school for two more years. After failing the entrance exams for nearby Kumamoto University, he moved to a preparatory school in Tokyo in April 1977. He hoped to get into Tokyo University but never passed the entrance exams. He supported himself in Tokyo as an acupuncturist and herbal medicine seller.

Criminal Career

Matsumoto’s early acupuncture training involved some acquaintance with traditional medicine, which contained elements from Sino-Japanese esoteric religions. Thus, Matsumoto had enough knowledge to develop a career as a faith healer. He was active in religious groups focused on healing but planned to create his own group. In 1978, he married a student whom he had met at preparatory school and started his own acupuncture clinic in Funabashi, northeast of Tokyo. Matsumoto had a setback in 1982, when he was arrested and fined for selling medicine without a license. However, by 1984, he had gained a large enough following to establish the Om Spiritual Academy in downtown Tokyo.

Matsumoto focused on yoga and spiritual training, adopting the traditional Indian sound Om (thought to have spiritual power when chanted) as the name for his religious system but spelling it “um,” following archaic religious usage. In 1987, he expanded the name to Aum Shinrikyo (Om Supreme Truth Religion) and changed his name to Shoko Asahara. In 1989, Aum Shinrikyo was recognized legally as a religion, claiming to have more than ten thousand members in Japan and overseas. In 1990, Asahara set up a new center at Kamikuishikimura on the slopes of Mount Fuji, where his followers practiced austerities under his direction. Asahara managed to persuade them that he had enormous spiritual powers and sold them vials of his bodily fluids at high prices, which they could consume to gain these powers themselves.

People outside the sect began to hear about these bizarre austerities and practices. A Yokohama lawyer, Sakamoto Tsutsumi, received complaints from concerned parents of Aum members and spearheaded an investigation in mid-1989. In November 1989, Sakamoto disappeared, along with his wife and baby son. Though evidence implicating Asahara was found, the police did not follow up on these leads. It was later discovered that the Sakamotos were indeed murdered, but their bodies were never found. Asahara had others killed from time to time, but there was often no physical evidence left behind. It is known that at least one victim, public employee Kariya Kiyoshi, was killed by a barbiturate overdose and then cremated in an industrial-size microwave oven in Kamikuishikimura in February 1995.

Asahara established a political party and planned to become a national political leader. In 1990, he fielded twenty-five Upper House candidates, including himself, but every one lost; Asahara received only 1,785 votes. Asahara was pessimistic about the future, predicting natural disasters that would bring destruction to Japan. He began to think about unleashing disasters himself, and in 1993, his inner circle began making sarin gas at Kamikuishikimura. People nearby complained about discharges of noxious gas, but police did not pursue the complaints.

On the night of June 27, 1994, Aum carried out an experimental sarin release in the Kita-Fukashi district of Matsumoto. Hundreds of people suffered disabilities, some long-term, and seven died. Police initially accused a local farmer, Kono Yoshiyuki, of mixing chemical fertilizer incorrectly. Kono remained under investigation until July 1995, when Aum members confessed that they caused the Matsumoto disaster.

National newspapers began to link Aum-related disappearances and disasters, and by January 1995, evidence pointed toward Asahara. Asahara sued one of the papers, the Asahi Shimbun, for libel, but it was becoming clear to him that the authorities might close in soon. Then, on March 20, 1995, the group coordinated five simultaneous attacks during the morning rush hour on the Tokyo subway system. Sarin gas was released into the subway, especially on routes serving government headquarters; twelve were killed and several thousand more were injured. This act of domestic terrorism served as a final curtain to Asahara’s career.

The police carried out raids, finding enough sarin to kill one million or more people. Aum leaders were arrested, but Asahara was not apprehended until May 16, 1995, almost two months later. Proceedings against Asahara began on April 24, 1996, when prosecutors read out the names of more than three thousand victims of the sarin attack. Trial proceedings continued until February 27, 2004, when Asahara was sentenced to death by the Tokyo District Court. Asahara lawyers appealed the sentence, but on March 27, 2006, the Tokyo High Court ruled that the time limit for appeals had expired.

The last appeal of one of the convicted Aum Shinrikyo members was finished in January 2018, and by July of that year, Japanese authorities had announced that all thirteen on death row had been executed. Asahara, age sixty-three, and six other members were reportedly hanged on July 6, 2018. The six remaining cult members sentenced to death were executed on July 26. In the days after Asahara's execution, it was reported that there were disputes among his family, including his wife and children, over who should take possession of his cremated remains.

Impact

Shoko Asahara attracted highly educated followers, including computer programmers, scientists, government officials, and police officers. By the 1990s, the radical politics and social idealism that were prevalent among young intellectuals in Japan during the 1960s and 1970s had declined as a result of attractive career opportunities and societal pressures to conform. Some successful people sought to recapture youthful idealism through cults. Asahara promised them a higher level of spiritual existence, and many were ready to believe and follow him.

The Aum-related murders and disasters, however, caused many Japanese to distrust spiritualist religions. People also wondered why authorities had not intervened much earlier. Asahara’s actions created among Japanese citizens a lack of confidence in the ability of the authorities to provide protection.

Bibliography

Daly, Sara A. Aum Shinrikyo, al Qaeda, and the Kinshasa Reactor: Implications of Three Case Studies for Combating Nuclear Terrorism. Rand, 2005. Discusses three terrorist situations and their implications for the future.

Griffiths, James, and Yoko Wakatsuki. "Japanese Cult Leader Shoko Asahara Executed for Tokyo Sarin Attack." CNN, www.cnn.com/2018/07/05/asia/japan-aum-shinriyko-leader-executed-intl/index.html. Accessed 16 Nov. 2018.

Lifton, Robert Jay. Destroying the World to Save It: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global Terrorism. Henry Holt, 1999. Analysis of the psychology of terrorism.

Murakami, Haruki. Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche. Vintage International, 2001. Subjective analysis by a leading Japanese writer.

Reader, Ian. Religious Violence in Contemporary Japan: The Case of Aum Shinrikyo. U of Hawaii P, 2000. A well-researched and well-documented case study of the sarin attacks.

Tu, Anthony T. Chemical Terrorism: Horrors in the Tokyo Subway and Matsumoto City. Alaken, 2002. Focuses on the technical aspects of the attacks.