by B.A. Robinson
Ontario Consultants on Religious
Tolerance
1997
Last updated on 2003-May-22
from
ReligiousTolerance Website
The Aum Shinri Kyo is a destructive,
doomsday cult centered in Japan. Their name is a combination of Aum
which is a sacred Hindu syllable, and Shinri Kyo which means
"supreme truth". It appears to be a syncretistic religion, founded
in 1987, and combining elements of Buddhism with Christianity. It
has been rejected as a legitimate Buddhist faith group by Buddhist
leaders in Japan.
Its leader, Shoko Asahara was born in 1955 as Chizuo Matsumoto, the
son of a tatami straw mat maker. He was partially blind at birth,
and attended a school for the blind. As an adult, he was an
acupuncturist. In the early 1980's, he opened a folk
medicine shop.
Later, he established a school for yoga. Then he traveled to the
Himalayas to study Buddhism and Hinduism. This led him to organize
the Aum Shinri Kyo in 1987.
Asahara is regarded as Christ by his followers. Using the
book of
Revelation from the Christian Scriptures, and the writings of a 16th
Century Christian astrologer, Nostradamus, he has predicted major
disasters to occur in the final years of this millennium. His group
reached a peak membership of about 20,000 worldwide. Many of them
were drawn to the group because of a promise that they would develop
supernatural powers; others were attracted by the group's rejection
of the corruption and materialism which they saw throughout modern
Japan. Many arbitrary, strict rules of behavior were enforced on the
membership. They were explained as being part of an ancient
tradition. Supreme Truth emphasized a siege mentality: that outside
groups, including the national governments, were intent on
destroying their organization.
Asahara claims that he has traveled forward to the year 2006 and has
talked to people who have survived World War III. Asahara called for
the group to fight in a final world revolution against the enemies
of Japan, including the US. The group established a number of
chemical factories and stockpiled various chemicals, as preparation
for this Armageddon. There have been allegations that Asahara had
ordered the assassination of at least one of his followers.
A study by the New York Times revealed that the cult had also
mounted at least nine biological attacks on different installations
in Japan. Targets included the Legislature, the Imperial Palace, the
U.S. base at Yokosuka. Cult members sprayed microbes and germ toxins
from rooftops and convoys of trucks. The attacks failed; they
resulted in no known deaths. It appears that the the germs that they
were able to obtain lacked sufficient virulence.
(4)
In the late 1980's, counter-cult lawyer Tsutsumi Sakamoto was
campaigning on behalf of the families of some of the cult's members.
He was interviewed in 1989 by the Tokyo Broadcasting System where he
revealed details of the cult's illegal activities. The interview was
never broadcast. One source stated that he, his wife and child were
kidnapped and murdered a week later by Aum members who have since
confessed to the killings. At the trial, prosecution witnesses said
that members of the cult entered the Sakamoto home while the family
was sleeping, injected them with lethal doses of potassium chloride
and strangled them. (5)
Asahara was placed on trial for the spreading of a nerve gas,
Sarin,
in a Tokyo subway station on 1995-MAR-20. The gas killed 12
passengers and injured over 5000. US Senate testimony revealed that
if those responsible had not made errors in preparation and
dispersion of the gas, that many thousands of innocent subway
patrons would have been killed, and untold thousands injured. Over
100 Aum members have been charged. Trials are expected to last up to
10 years. The government is attempting to outlaw the cult under
their Anti-Subversive Activities Law. Membership had dropped to
about 7,000.
In 1996, Eriko Lida was found guilty of illegal confinement of
notary public Kiyoshi Kariya. While there, AUM members injected an
anesthetic into Kariya. This produced side effects which killed the
man. Lida was given a 6½ year sentence,
which she completed in
2002-AUG. (7)
Ikuo Hayashi, "Dr. Death, " is a formal medical specialist of the Aum group. He was found guilty of spreading deadly gas in the Tokyo
subway system. He has been sentenced to life imprisonment. His,
"apparent remorse and his
co-operation in the investigation were believed to have
influenced the decision to punish him with life imprisonment
instead of the death penalty." (5)
(Japan is one of only two
democracies in the world that still retain the death penalty;
the other country is the U.S.)
The government failed in 1997-JAN to
have the group disbanded. A legal panel ruled that there were
insufficient grounds to believe that it remained a threat to the
public with only 1,000 full and part time members.(6)
Estimates of the number of
members in the group vary widely from
1,000 to 5,000. During 1997-AUG, the Japanese Public Security
Investigation Agency announced that the AUM has has established 10
new "departments" and reopened five regional chapters and one
training center. They now have 26 facilities in Japan,
In 1998-OCT, Kazuaki Okazaki, a founding member of the Supreme Truth
group was found guilty of conspiring with five other group members
in the murder of lawyer Tsutsumi Sakamoto, his wife Satoko and their
baby son Tatsuhiko in 1989-NOV. He was also found guilty of killing
Shuji Taguchi, a member of the cult, in 1999-FEB. Okazaki was
scheduled to be executed.
Rika Matsumoto, third daughter of group leader Shoko Asahara has now
taken charge of the cult. The group apparently believes that she has
great spiritual abilities because she was born after her father was
"enlightened" in 1982.
On 2000-JAN-18, Aum Shinri Kyo changed its name to
Aleph.
In mid 2000-FEB, Kiyotaka Tonozaki was given a life sentence for his
involvement in the 1995 subway gas attack. He was the driver, and
played an "essential role" in the premeditated attack. On
2000-JUL-17, Toru Toyoda and Kenichi Hirose were given the death
penalty for spraying the nerve gas in the subway. Shigeo Sugimoto,
another driver, was given life imprisonment.
Masato Yokoyama, 48, was given a death sentence for his involvement
in the release of sarin gas on the Tokyo subway system. Japan is one
of the few democracies in the world which still executes people for
serious crimes. On 2003-MAY-19, Yokoyama's appeal was denied.
Presiding Judge Kunio Harada said at the Tokyo High Court that his,
"...was an inhumane crime of an
unprecedented scale ... the defendant must bear a grave
responsibility." (8)
A Christian-Buddhist group. Total body
count: 12 killed, 5000 injured (1995)
References:
-
Timoth3y (with a 3) Romero has
an on-line essay "Aum
Shinri Kyo and the Japanese Police".
-
David E. Kaplan, Andrew Marshall
"The
Cult at the End of the World: The Terrifying Story of the
Aum Doomsday Cult, from the Subways of Tokyo to the Nuclear
Arsenals of Russia", Crown Publ., (1996)
-
Timoth3y has a series of notes
on apparent errors in the above book. See: "Lies
at the End of the World"
-
"Cult Unleashed Germ Attacks,"
New York times Service, 1998-MAY-25
-
"Doomsday
cultist sentenced to death," BBC Online Network,
1998-OCT-23
-
Miwa Suzuki & David Williams,
"Teenage girl takes over Japan's subway gas attack cult,"
AFP news service, 1998-NOV-1
-
"Death
cult leader freed," Mainichi Daily News
-
"Court
upholds death for Japan subway terrorist,"
Mainichi Daily News
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