Aum Shinrikyo

Aum Shinrikyo, a cult founded in 1985 by Shoko Asahara, perpetrated the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway that killed 12 people.

Aum Shinrikyo translates roughly as “Supreme Truth.” The cult's major tenets are drawn from a wide spectrum of religions. Adherents believe that by withdrawing from worldly pleasures and dedicating their thoughts to the contemplation of the “Supreme Truths” as revealed by their guru, Shoko Asahara, they can become enlightened. Some commentators characterize the cult as a type of “fundamentalist” Buddhism. However, Asahara has at times described himself as an incarnation of Shiva, the Hindu god responsible for both destruction and rebirth. Aum Shinrikyo also incorporates a fervent belief in the coming of Armageddon, a term from Christian theology describing an ultimate battle between good and evil in which the known world will be destroyed and replaced by a spiritually pure world.

The organization began in 1984 with a single Tokyo storefront offering yoga classes and religious seminars. Claims that believers could attain miraculous psychic powers brought many curious people to the seminars, and the cult soon began to [Page 77]attract a following. In addition to the personal magnetism of Shoko Asahara, the cult's message—that only by purifying themselves could believers avert the destruction of humanity—appealed to many alienated by the industrialized, secular, and conformist society of Japan. At its peak in the mid-1990s, the cult was estimated to have 9,000 Japanese members and an unknown number of followers worldwide, with approximately 1,000 hardcore adherents living at various cult properties and compounds. Teenagers and students made up a considerable portion of the cult's membership, some of them brilliant graduates of Japan's top universities, with advanced degrees in medicine, law, and science.

The cult was a very profitable enterprise, charging high fees for initiation and for relics such as snippets of Asahara's beard and vials of his bathwater. Some initiation rituals involved ingesting Asahara's blood and taking massive doses of hallucinogenic drugs. Members were encouraged to cut off all ties to their families and donate their life savings to the cult. Dissenters were treated harshly, sometimes subjected to sleep deprivation and other torture techniques. Some runaways were kidnapped and beaten in order to return them to the fold. In 1989 cultists murdered the human rights lawyer Tsutsumi Sakamoto, along with his wife and infant son. Sakamoto had been suing the cult on behalf of members’ families. An Aum member, Kazuaki Okazaki, was sentenced to death by hanging after confessing to their murders—as well as that of a potential Aum escapee—in October 1998.

As membership grew into the thousands, Aum established operations in other countries, including Australia, Sri Lanka, and the United States. Its most successful expansion was to Russia in 1992, where it attracted thousands of followers. In Japan, Aum had ventures in dozens of industries, including noodle shops and low-budget computer stores. These operations earned millions for the cult—one leader estimated that its assets were worth $1.5 billion at the time of the subway attacks.

In 1990 Asahara and several other prominent members ran, all unsuccessfully, for seats in Japan's parliament. Despite years of negative media coverage, numerous lawsuits (which the cult had fiercely contested), and public speculation about Aum's involvement in the Sakamoto family's disappearance, the crushing defeat of all of Aum's candidates was an unexpected blow to Asahara. He began to preach that it was the duty of Aum members to hasten the coming of Armageddon, which would destroy the sinful and elevate Aum's true believers onto a higher spiritual plane.

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