Extremist Groups: Information for Students. Volume 1. Gale, 2006.
Overview
Aum Shinrikyo (now known as Aleph) is an apocalyptic Japanese religious cult. Their belief that world salvation could only come through the destruction of most of the planet’s population reached its horrifying denouement in 1995 when its members carried out a deadly nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway system, killing 12 and injuring thousands more. Despite being on the U.S. Department of State’s list of terrorist organizations, it continues to operate under the name “Aleph.”
History
Aum Shinrikyo’s path from obscure religious cult to brutal terrorist group occurred over a decade, but its journey is telling of the dangers that can be posed by powerful and devout religious sects.
It was founded in 1987 by Asahara Shoko (born Chizuo Matsumoto; Asahara is his “holy” name), a blind herbalist and acupuncturist. Asahara had become devoutly religious when, as a 22-year-old a decade earlier, he had moved to Tokyo to study. He began to follow Agonshu, a new religion only created in 1969, which taught that people should strive to realize enlightenment in this life and that “bad karma” could be relieved by meditation.
Later, as a yoga instructor, he began to attract a following as a spiritualist and meditation guru. Yet, it was only in 1987 that he completed his “spiritual journey” and formed his own cult, which occurred following a trip to India when Asahara claimed to have received enlightenment. On his return to Japan, he changed his name and created Aum Shinrikyo. Aum is Sanskrit for “the powers of destruction and creation of the universe” and Shinrikyo means the “teaching of the supreme truth.” The group’s aim—as its name suggested—was to teach the truth about the creation and destruction of the universe.
Asahara Shoko’s new cult soon acquired a following that numbered a couple of thousand. It attracted followers from across the spectrum of Japanese society, particularly, it seemed, those who felt alienated from the increasing materialism in a nation that was then approaching the peak of its economic power. Devotees were expected to live an ascetic life, eschewing material goods, giving their possessions to the cult and living in communes. In August 1989, following a legal dispute with the Tokyo authorities, Aum was finally granted legal status allowing members benefits such as tax privileges, the right to own property as an organization, and, perhaps crucially, a degree of protection from state or external interference in its workings.
Nevertheless, unfavorable accusations began to play out in the Japanese press during the summer of 1989 when the prominent newspaper, the Sunday Mainichi, published a seven-part series on the group. This included claims that members were involuntarily separated from their families and that children received no schooling, as well as accusations of mind control techniques, including sleep and food deprivation and “blood initiations.” The newspaper also suggested sizable “donations” were, essentially, extorted from members. Aum responded by threatening to sue the editors of the Sunday Mainichi, but the newspaper received more than 200 letters of support from former members who also expressed similar grievances.
The Sunday Mainchi stories also cast light on an ongoing legal case initiated by the Yokohomo-based lawyer, Sakamoto Tsutsumi. Tsutsumi was taking forward an action against Aum on behalf of parents separated from their children. As part of his investigations, Sakamoto had discovered that a bizarre claim made by Asahara—that tests conducted at Kyoto University showed that his blood contained unique DNA, thus proving some special spiritual powers—was a complete fabrication and that no such tests had taken place.
Tsutsumi’s investigation would, however, come to an abrupt end in November 1989 when he disappeared from his home with his wife and 14-month-old son. Blood at the scene pointed to a violent ending, possibly at the hands of Aum. However, no bodies were found until September 1995 when police were finally able to pin the disappearance on several of the cult members. Tsutsumi and his wife had been beaten and strangled to death, their baby drugged and smothered, teeth smashed out to obfuscate any investigation, and the bodies buried in three separate mountain locations.
In the midst of Aum’s rising notoriety in 1989, Asahara decided that political action was necessary to save the world and so launched Shinrito (Supreme Truth Party) as a way of publicizing his teachings and offering salvation to a larger audience. Asahara was apparently convinced that each of the 25 candidates he put forward would win—but they lost miserably and became something of a national joke.
This further ostracized Aum from Japanese society and marked the onset of a major ideological shift. From seeking to prevent an apocalypse, Aum saw it as inevitable (even if it would have to be at their instigation) and began to prepare and protect its members—who would be chosen to survive and lead the post-Armageddon world to salvation—from the forthcoming “judgment day.” Aum’s leadership began to intensify the austerity of its members’ existences, also beginning the construction of nuclear bunkers and communes. This increased introversion strengthened Aum’s hierarchical structure, and the power of its leaders.
Secretly, on Asahara’s orders, a team of members was set up to develop chemical weapons. Tsuchiya Masami, who possessed a Master’s degree in Organic Chemistry, was placed in charge of chemical weapons research in March 1993, and by the end of the year had succeeded in producing the deadly nerve gas, sarin.
On June 27, 1994, a sarin attack took place in a residential area of the central city of Matsumoto. Seven people died and hundreds were injured. It was revealed in a subsequent court case that Asahara had ordered the attack—carried out by refrigerated trucks equipped with spraying mechanisms—to be conducted in the vicinity of three judges set to hear a case against Aum members. The attack succeeded in injuring the men.
Asahara’s delusions of grandeur increased following the attacks. He established his own “government” in opposition to the Japanese government to promote his so called “imperial aspirations.”
Not until January 1995, however, would police make the link between the Matsumoto attack and Aum. This was in spite of a major gas leak at the Aum commune just two weeks after the attack, in which Aum numbers were reportedly seen running from a building on the site wearing gas masks.
Police were, nevertheless, slow to make arrests. On March 19, 1995, they raided the Aum headquarters in Osaka and arrested three members for the alleged abduction of a member.
A day later, and seemingly fearing that the noose was tightening on the organization, ten Aum members in the midst of Tokyo’s rush hour released packets containing liquid sarin onto trains in its underground system. The packages containing the poison were wrapped in newspaper and punctured by umbrella tips. Each contained around one liter of sarin: less than 1 milliliter can kill a person if administered through the skin. As a liquid, it is less potent, but the vapor caused by the leaked sarin was still devastating: twelve people died, and 5,500 more were seriously injured by the attacks.
Further violence followed as police cracked down on Aum, arresting two hundred of its members. On March 30, 1995, there was an attempt to assassinate the chief of the national police agency, and further gas attacks followed on trains in the Tokyo-Yokohama area. Plans were uncovered that Aum planned and intended to disperse seventy tons of sarin throughout Japan—enough to kill 36 million people—and that a former Russian military helicopter had been acquired.
Police took several weeks of searching Kamikuishiki, the village where Aum is located, to uncover Asahara, who was found meditating in the company of several comatose followers (who had been drugged), and a haul of cash and gold bars. He was eventually indicted for murder in relation to the Tokyo and Matsumoto attacks, as well as for the kidnapping and murder of Tsutsumi and his family and several other deaths and assaults. The lengthy police investigation also revealed that thirty-three Aum followers were believed to have been killed in the seven years leading to March 1995.
Asahara was sentenced to death by hanging by a Tokyo court in February 2004 after a trial process lasting eight years. He appealed the verdict before the Japanese Supreme Court, but the case has stalled because of Asahara’s refusal—or inability—to communicate with the authorities. Eleven other Aum members have been sentenced to death pending appeal.
Aum’s membership base was decimated following the attacks, and although it was declared a terrorist organization by the U.S. Department of State, it was, conversely, never declared illegal in Japan. In 2000, the organization regrouped under the leadership of Fumihiro Joyu and changed its name to Aleph (aleph being the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, meaning to start anew). Despite apologizing for the sarin attacks and setting up a compensation fund for its victims, the group has never revoked its ties to Asahara.
Philosophy and Tactics
The aims of Aum Shinrikyo and the reasons they carried out such horrific attacks in 1994 and 1995 remain muddied by the contradictory statements and subsequent silence of its leader Asahara Shoko. If one takes the sarin attacks to their most far-fetched potential, they may have triggered off the doomsday scenario to which he seemed to aspire. Destroying The World To Save It, one of many books on Aum, contains the essence of Asahara’s apocalyptic beliefs.
Aum Shinrikyo’s more benign teachings were based on strands of Hinduism and Buddhism, but it seemed to have no theological basis, nor manifesto, and its core beliefs have evolved substantially over the organization’s relatively short life. Activities include yoga, meditation, and breathing exercises, and Aum’s members lead Spartan lives far removed from the hustle and bustle of Japanese society. It has been argued that this austerity—by marginalizing members from the outside world—increases Aum’s leaders’ control over its followers and that this dominance has been one of the keys to Aum’s relative success in attracting and retaining followers.
Other Perspectives
Robert Jay Lifton, a Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at The City University of New York, has termed the control of Aum’s leaders over its members as “ideological totalism.” This essentially means, he writes, that “everything had to be experienced on an all-or-nothing basis. A number of psychological patterns characterize such an environment. Most basic is milieu control, in which all communication, including even an individual’s inner communication, is monopolized and orchestrated, so that reality becomes the group’s exclusive possession. Aum’s closed subculture of guru and renunciants lent itself to an all-encompassing form of milieu control, though no such control can ever be complete or foolproof.”
Professor Catherine Wessinger of Loyola University in New Orleans agrees that Aum members were cowed by its leaders and possibly coerced into carrying out acts of violence. Yet, she ultimately believes that the assaults came about because of the failings of Japan’s law enforcement agencies. “The Japanese new religion known as Aum Shinrikyo stands in contrast to Jonestown and the Branch Davidians,” she wrote in her history of religious cults, How the Millennium Comes Violently: From Jonestown to Heaven’s Gate, “because Aum devotees detained, coerced, tortured, and killed people, and pursued the development of weapons of mass destruction in a national context in which the activities of religious organizations were not scrutinized by law enforcement agents. Aum’s guru, Shoko Asahara, and his devotees saw themselves as belonging to a persecuted religious organization, but the activities of their cultural opponents were miniscule compared to the violence perpetrated by Aum devotees. Aum leaders were anxious to block investigation of Aum Shinrikyo because of crimes that members had committed before serious cultural opposition had developed. In terms of financial resources and violence against members and outsiders, Aum Shinrikyo makes Jim Jones’s Jonestown and David Koresh’s Mount Carmel Center appear small-scale.”
Summary
Because of the scandal and outrage created by the sarin attacks and possibly because of the passing of the millennium (and the deadline for Asahara’s apocalyptic prophesies), Aum Shinrikyo has regrouped under the name Aleph and apologized for its past violence. However, it has not denounced Asahara, whom it still regards as its spiritual leader.
Despite being regarded as a terrorist organization elsewhere in the world, its main area of operation—Japan—refuses to outlaw Aum, because its government “cannot prove” that it is an imminent threat to security. It has nevertheless placed Aleph under extended surveillance.
Its membership now numbers a couple of thousand members and it adopts more the characteristics of a conventional religious cult. Nevertheless, it maintains relatively extensive business interests, including a publishing group, record company, yoga training center, computer manufacturers, and software developers.