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Fox News
20-03-2025
- Fox News
30 years after deadly Tokyo subway gassing, survivors and victims' families still seeking closure
Thirty years on from the fatal sarin nerve gas attack in Tokyo's subway network, survivors and families who lost loved ones are still seeking justice. Thirteen people were killed and thousands were sickened when cult members released sarin nerve gas in the capital's subway trains on March 20, 1995. The attack remains one of the most shocking atrocities in Japan, a country known for its low crime rates. The cult, Aum Shinrikyo or Supreme Truth, has since disbanded. Its founder, Shoko Asahara, and 12 of his disciples were executed in 2018. But 1,600 former members still operate under renamed groups and have ignored an order to pay damages to survivors and bereaved families. Shizue Takahashi lost her husband, a deputy station master, in the attack. The couple was just starting to enjoy time to themselves after raising three children when tragedy struck. "My life is still being ruined by Aum and its successor groups," said Takahashi, 78. "We need to carry on and not let the memories fade." People gasped for air and collapsed At 8 a.m. during the morning rush, five cult members got on separate train cars on three subway lines converging at Kasumigaseki, Japan's government center, each dropping bags of sarin on the train floors. They punctured the bags with umbrellas, releasing the gas inside the train cars. Within minutes, commuters poured out of the trains onto the platforms, rubbing their eyes and gasping for air. Some collapsed. Others fled onto the streets where ambulances and rescue workers in hazmat suits gave first-aid. Kazumasa Takahashi didn't know the puddle he was cleaning on the subway car floor was sarin. He collapsed as he removed a bag — a sacrifice some survivors say saved lives — and never woke up. The attack sickened more than 6,000. A 14th victim died in 2020 after battling severe after-effects. The subway gassing happened after a botched police investigation failed to link the cult to earlier crimes, says Yuji Nakamura, a lawyer for the survivors and the bereaved families. "It could have been prevented," he said. Two days after the gassing, Tokyo police, carrying a caged canary to detect poison, raided Aum's headquarters near Mount Fuji, where the cultists lived together, trained and produced sarin. Asahara was found in a hidden compartment. Apocalyptic cult Born Chizuo Matsumoto in 1955, Asahara founded Aum Shinrikyo in 1984. The cult combined Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and yoga, and attracted young people disillusioned with materialism. He taught that death could elevate their spirits and justified killing as a virtue. Followers paid to drink Asahara's bathwater and wore electrical head gear they believed synchronized their brain waves with the guru's. He prophesized an imminent apocalypse, which only true believers would survive. Asahara gathered doctors, lawyers and scientists from Japan's top universities as his closest aides. Using donations from followers and earnings from yoga classes and health food businesses, they bought land and equipment. Asahara's scientists developed and manufactured sarin, VX and other chemical and biological weapons. In 1989, its members killed Tsutsumi Sakamoto, a lawyer who opposed the cult, his wife and baby boy. Their criminal activities escalated after their defeat in the 1990 parliamentary elections. A 1994 sarin attack in the central Japanese city of Matsumoto killed eight and injured more than 140 others. In all, Aum killed 27 people in more than a dozen attacks that culminated in the subway gassing. It was part of a plot by Asahara to hasten Armageddon, envisioning overthrowing the government. Still seeking redress Shizue Takahashi attended most of the Aum criminal trials. She has lobbied for government support, winning the enactment of a law to support crime victims and government benefits of 3 billion yen ($20 million) for more than 6,000 survivors and bereaved families of the Aum crimes. The government has also enacted laws banning sarin production and possession, and restricted the activities of groups linked to mass killings. Police have since established nuclear, biological and chemical weapons units and beefed up training. Aum's main successor, Aleph, has ignored a court order to pay 1 billion yen ($6.7 million) in compensation to survivors and bereaved families. The group has allegedly hidden billions of yen of income from yoga and spiritual seminars. Many of the subway gassing survivors still suffer health problems and trauma, according to support groups. Takahashi and others last week called on Justice Minister Keisuke Suzuki to do more to accelerate compensation by Aleph and keep them under close watch. Survivors and their supporters say lessons have not been sufficiently shared with the public. Shoko Egawa, a journalist and expert on Aum crimes, says attention on the group has largely focused on its crimes rather than teaching people to stay away from dangerous cults. "There is still a lot to learn from (the Aum problems), including how they attracted followers, so that we can prevent people from getting their lives ruined by cults," Egawa said. Takahashi recently launched a website that compiles articles and comments by survivors, lawyers and writers, including Haruki Murakami's 2007 article about his 1997 book "Underground." Aum's remnants At its peak, the cult boasted more than 10,000 followers in Japan and 30,000 in Russia and elsewhere. Aum has disbanded, but about 1,600 people belonging to Aleph and two smaller groups in Japan still practice Asahara's teachings, said the Public Security Intelligence Agency, which monitors the groups. Minoru Kariya, whose father was killed by Aum members in early 1995 while he was trying to get his sister to quit the cult, said authorities need to do much more to tackle the threat. "It's scary that they still exist and are operating as organizations and recruiting new followers," he said.
Yahoo
20-03-2025
- Yahoo
The chilling relevance of Tokyo's Cult of Aum terror attacks today
For the thousands of passengers piling into Tokyo's subway network on Monday, March 20, 1995, it should have been a commute like any other. The air was cool, the skies outside were clear, and the looming Spring Equinox – a national holiday in Japan –promised respite from the country's high-pressure work culture the next day. But unbeknown to the rush-hour crowds, among them were extremist followers of a doomsday cult about to enact Japan's deadliest domestic terror attack. At around 08:00 that morning, five disguised men punctured plastic bags with sharpened umbrellas as their separate trains hurtled towards Kasumigaseki station. The act would release a manufactured nerve agent originally developed by the Nazis in World War II, considered 26 times as deadly as cyanide. As the terrorists fled, the fumes left commuters choking, vomiting, and temporarily blinded. Thirteen were killed and over 6,000 were injured. Thirty years on and a new feature documentary Aum: The Cult at the End of the World, explores the cultural context that led up to the attack and carries a chilling relevance for a Western world rife with radicalist thinking today. Directors Chiaki Yanagimoto and Ben Braun see it as a 'cautionary tale'. 'This was a terrorism by Japanese people against Japanese people, and as a young kid, it was hard to grasp what the motives were,' says Yanagimoto, who was an elementary school student in rural Yamanashi province, home to the largest headquarters of Aum Shinrikyo ('Supreme Truth'). Concerns had been raised against the suspicious doomsday cult later convicted of the attacks – she says she still remembers 'my friends' parents warning the kids to be careful of people roaming around in white robes'. Aum Shinrikyo was founded as a yoga society in 1987 under the tutelage of Shoko Asahara (born Chizuo Matsumoto), a long-haired, partially sighted man who became a self-styled guru sometime after being reprimanded for selling tangerine peel to the elderly as a quack medical cure. In Japan's booming Bubble economy years, young people disillusioned with materialism may have thought they'd found the path to greater fulfilment when they stumbled across adverts depicting the purple-robed yogi seemingly hovering above the ground, promising to teach believers the powers of telepathy and levitation. The cult gained official status as a religious organisation in 1989; its following grew to 3,000 members. Asahara's teachings blended Hinduism and Buddhism (he'd brokered several photo opportunities with the Dalai Lama during his visits to Tibet), and later incorporated elements of apocalyptic Christian prophecies. But behind the walls of its communes, more sinister practices were taking place. Cult members were encouraged to sever contact with families, reject the material world, and forfeit their earnings – as bizarre 'energy transfer' practices involving wearing electrode caps and drinking Asahara's bathwater took place. 'Recommended sleep was as little as three hours,' one former cultist recalls in the documentary. 'The first time I saw him [on TV] was during his election campaign in 1990,' says Yanagimoto, referring to a failed, multi-million yen bid by Asahara and 24 other members of the group to gain seats in the House of Representatives that year. Having already widely published their own books and even anime, Asahara became a regular fixture on television. Yanagimoto feels that the media exposure played a prominent role in his influence: 'No one really saw him as a dangerous cult leader.' Braun adds: 'People were too willing to accept Aum as a spiritual pop culture sensation. There were numerous cases where the group could have been stopped.' By the time Aum's membership peaked at an estimated 11,400 in Japan in 1995, and 40,000 in Russia following a successful expansion following the fall of the Soviet Union, the cult had secretly murdered the family of anti-Aum lawyer Tsutsumi Sakamoto. When they released deadly sarin gas in a residential area in Matsumoto in 1994 – in response to local opposition to the group's expansion into the area, which also served as a test run for the efficacy of sarin as a weapon– they killed seven and injured 500. Asahara claimed to his followers that, in the coming Armageddon, non-believers would be doomed to eternal hell unless they were killed by cultists (a manipulation of the concept of 'phowa' in Tibetan Buddhism) and so the group set about manufacturing Kalashnikovs and chemical weapons. In a ploy to prevent an anticipated police raid on Aum headquarters in Yamanashi, Asahara ordered the attacks on the Tokyo subway. Yanagimoto feels that the cursory annual revisiting of the events in Japanese media fails to adequately scrutinise why such a tragedy was able to take place. 'There's a cultural aspect of not talking about what we're ashamed of,' she says. 'They say in Japan: 'If it stinks, put a lid on it'.' In 1997, celebrated author Haruki Murakami published an anthology, Underground, comprising the testimonies of 60 victims, responders, and eyewitnesses. The concept was a response to the author's feeling that the Japanese media of the day had been 'bombarding us with so many in-depth profiles of the Aum cult perpetrators [that] the 'victim' was almost an afterthought.' (He'd later respond to claims of one-sidedness by publishing The Place That Was Promised, a collection of interviews with former cult members, in 1997. Both parts feature in the Penguin Random House edition published in the UK). Though the book sold 270,000 copies within two months in Japan, Yanagimoto feels that 'the younger generation don't even know' about the cult and the people behind the attacks today. Aum: The Cult at the End of the World attempts to address this, with its talking heads including prosecutors; the bereaved families of children who left to become their followers; and Yoshiyuki Kono, who was wrongly suspected by both the police and the media of committing the Matsumoto sarin attack in 1994. The presence of Fumihiro Joyu – once one of Asahara's highest-ranking Aum affiliates; stationed in Russia at the time of the attacks – meanwhile highlights the lingering influence of the group in some corners of society: Joyu today leads successor group Hikari no Wa. His willingness to discuss his time with Aum, partnered with what feels like a side-stepping of responsibility for the group's actions, is the source of a thought-provoking denouement in the documentary: 'Rather than regret or remorse, I have to look forward,' he claims. Indeed, although Asahara and 12 other Aum Shinrikyo members convicted of the 1995 Tokyo sarin attacks were executed in 2018, the organisation still exists in some forms despite being designated a terrorist organisation in the US. As recently as June 2024, authorities believe Aleph, the most popular of the three Aum Shinrikyo successor groups (which collectively amass 1,650 followers), 'may conduct mass murders', with an official of the PSIA quoted as saying 'Basically, nothing has changed.' Yanagimoto and Braun hope that by revisiting the Tokyo sarin attacks and the cult of Aum behind it, important lessons can be learned. In today's landscape of populist politicians, social media echo chambers and conspiracy theories, the dangers of radicalisation and extreme action are widely pronounced – a 2025 report by the Edelman Trust Institute concluded that 53 per cent of people aged 18-34 (from a survey of over 33,000 people across 28 countries) currently 'approve of hostile activism' as 'viable' means to drive change. 'In America, it felt like we were entering this culture of multiple realities and narratives, and that kind of culminated in the Capitol riot of 2021,' says Braun. 'There were lines that Asahara said in the archival material that exactly matched what Trump was saying at the time. The radicalisation of these yoga students seemed to be like what was happening in American politics.' Braun hopes that Aum: The Cult at the End of the World will encourage younger viewers to 'question the narrative.' Aum: The Cult at the End of the World is in cinemas now Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
20-03-2025
- Telegraph
The chilling relevance of Tokyo's Cult of Aum terror attacks today
For the thousands of passengers piling into Tokyo's subway network on Monday, March 20, 1995, it should have been a commute like any other. The air was cool, the skies outside were clear, and the looming Spring Equinox – a national holiday in Japan –promised respite from the country's high-pressure work culture the next day. But unbeknown to the rush-hour crowds, among them were extremist followers of a doomsday cult about to enact Japan's deadliest domestic terror attack. At around 08:00 that morning, five disguised men punctured plastic bags with sharpened umbrellas as their separate trains hurtled towards Kasumigaseki station. The act would release a manufactured nerve agent originally developed by the Nazis in World War II, considered 26 times as deadly as cyanide. As the terrorists fled, the fumes left commuters choking, vomiting, and temporarily blinded. Thirteen were killed and over 6,000 were injured. Thirty years on and a new feature documentary Aum: The Cult at the End of the World, explores the cultural context that led up to the attack and carries a chilling relevance for a Western world rife with radicalist thinking today. Directors Chiaki Yanagimoto and Ben Braun see it as a 'cautionary tale'. 'This was a terrorism by Japanese people against Japanese people, and as a young kid, it was hard to grasp what the motives were,' says Yanagimoto, who was an elementary school student in rural Yamanashi province, home to the largest headquarters of Aum Shinrikyo ('Supreme Truth'). Concerns had been raised against the suspicious doomsday cult later convicted of the attacks – she says she still remembers 'my friends' parents warning the kids to be careful of people roaming around in white robes'. Aum Shinrikyo was founded as a yoga society in 1987 under the tutelage of Shoko Asahara (born Chizuo Matsumoto), a long-haired, partially sighted man who became a self-styled guru sometime after being reprimanded for selling tangerine peel to the elderly as a quack medical cure.
The Independent
20-03-2025
- The Independent
30 years after deadly Tokyo subway gassing, survivors and victims' families still seeking closure
Thirty years on from the fatal sarin nerve gas attack in Tokyo 's subway network, survivors and families who lost loved ones are still seeking justice. Thirteen people were killed and thousands were sickened when cult members released sarin nerve gas in the capital's subway trains on March 20, 1995. The attack remains one of the most shocking atrocities in Japan, a country known for its low crime rates. The cult, Aum Shinrikyo or Supreme Truth, has since disbanded. Its founder, Shoko Asahara, and 12 of his disciples were executed in 2018. But 1,600 former members still operate under renamed groups and have ignored an order to pay damages to survivors and bereaved families. Shizue Takahashi lost her husband, a deputy station master, in the attack. The couple was just starting to enjoy time to themselves after raising three children when tragedy struck. 'My life is still being ruined by Aum and its successor groups,' said Takahashi, 78. 'We need to carry on and not let the memories fade.' People gasped for air and collapsed At 8 a.m. during the morning rush, five cult members got on separate train cars on three subway lines converging at Kasumigaseki, Japan's government center, each dropping bags of sarin on the train floors. They punctured the bags with umbrellas, releasing the gas inside the train cars. Within minutes, commuters poured out of the trains onto the platforms, rubbing their eyes and gasping for air. Some collapsed. Others fled onto the streets where ambulances and rescue workers in hazmat suits gave first-aid. Kazumasa Takahashi didn't know the puddle he was cleaning on the subway car floor was sarin. He collapsed as he removed a bag — a sacrifice some survivors say saved lives — and never woke up. The attack sickened more than 6,000. A 14th victim died in 2020 after battling severe after-effects. The subway gassing happened after a botched police investigation failed to link the cult to earlier crimes, says Yuji Nakamura, a lawyer for the survivors and the bereaved families. 'It could have been prevented," he said. Two days after the gassing, Tokyo police, carrying a caged canary to detect poison, raided Aum's headquarters near Mount Fuji, where the cultists lived together, trained and produced sarin. Asahara was found in a hidden compartment. Apocalyptic cult Born Chizuo Matsumoto in 1955, Asahara founded Aum Shinrikyo in 1984. The cult combined Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity and yoga, and attracted young people disillusioned with materialism. He taught that death could elevate their spirits and justified killing as a virtue. Followers paid to drink Asahara's bathwater and wore electrical head gear they believed synchronized their brain waves with the guru's. He prophesized an imminent apocalypse, which only true believers would survive. Asahara gathered doctors, lawyers and scientists from Japan's top universities as his closest aides. Using donations from followers and earnings from yoga classes and health food businesses, they bought land and equipment. Asahara's scientists developed and manufactured sarin, VX and other chemical and biological weapons. In 1989, its members killed Tsutsumi Sakamoto, a lawyer who opposed the cult, his wife and baby boy. Their criminal activities escalated after their defeat in the 1990 parliamentary elections. A 1994 sarin attack in the central Japanese city of Matsumoto killed eight and injured more than 140 others. In all, Aum killed 27 people in more than a dozen attacks that culminated in the subway gassing. It was part of a plot by Asahara to hasten Armageddon, envisioning overthrowing the government. Still seeking redress Shizue Takahashi attended most of the Aum criminal trials. She has lobbied for government support, winning the enactment of a law to support crime victims and government benefits of 3 billion yen ($20 million) for more than 6,000 survivors and bereaved families of the Aum crimes. The government has also enacted laws banning sarin production and possession, and restricted the activities of groups linked to mass killings. Police have since established nuclear, biological and chemical weapons units and beefed up training. Aum's main successor, Aleph, has ignored a court order to pay 1 billion yen ($6.7 million) in compensation to survivors and bereaved families. The group has allegedly hidden billions of yen of income from yoga and spiritual seminars. Many of the subway gassing survivors still suffer health problems and trauma, according to support groups. Takahashi and others last week called on Justice Minister Keisuke Suzuki to do more to accelerate compensation by Aleph and keep them under close watch. Survivors and their supporters say lessons have not been sufficiently shared with the public. Shoko Egawa, a journalist and expert on Aum crimes, says attention on the group has largely focused on its crimes rather than teaching people to stay away from dangerous cults. 'There is still a lot to learn from (the Aum problems), including how they attracted followers, so that we can prevent people from getting their lives ruined by cults,' Egawa said. Takahashi recently launched a website that compiles articles and comments by survivors, lawyers and writers, including Haruki Murakami's 2007 article about his 1997 book 'Underground.' Aum's remnants At its peak, the cult boasted more than 10,000 followers in Japan and 30,000 in Russia and elsewhere. Aum has disbanded, but about 1,600 people belonging to Aleph and two smaller groups in Japan still practice Asahara's teachings, said the Public Security Intelligence Agency, which monitors the groups. Minoru Kariya, whose father was killed by Aum members in early 1995 while he was trying to get his sister to quit the cult, said authorities need to do much more to tackle the threat. 'It's scary that they still exist and are operating as organizations and recruiting new followers,' he said.
