Tokyo Subway Attack

In 1995, members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult attacked Tokyo's Kasumigaseki subway station in an attempt to cripple the government of Japan.

The Aum Shinrikyo cult believes that Armageddon, an ultimate battle between good an evil that will annihilate the world as it exists and bring forth a new and pure spiritual one, is imminent, and that it is their duty to hasten this battle and expunge the impure and sinful from the Earth. In light of these views, Aum began to collect and create weapons of mass destruction in the early and mid-1990s.

The cult tested its new arsenal several times during 1993 and 1994, secretly releasing botulism toxin, anthrax, and poison gas in and around Japan; one of these tests, a June 1994 release of sarin gas in the town of Matsumoto, killed seven people. Sarin, a nerve gas developed in Germany during World War II, is colorless, odorless, and tasteless. A single drop on the skin is enough to kill an adult. The first symptoms are nosebleeds and nausea; if enough sarin is inhaled, the victim will begin to convulse and eventually collapse into a coma and die.

By early 1995 continuing allegations created mounting pressure on law enforcement to move against the cult; in mid-March the cult was tipped off that a massive police raid was planned for the 21st of the month. Cult leaders decided to launch a coup against Japan's government, using sarin. They chose the Kasumigaseki subway station, in the heart of Tokyo, because it is the city's busiest subway station, and because it is the closest station to National Police Agency headquarters and hundreds of other vital government offices. The cult hoped to kill thousands of ministers and police officers on their way to work, throwing the government into disarray and allowing Aum to take over.

On the morning of March 20, 1995, at approximately 7:45, five cult members boarded five different subway lines, all heading toward Kasumigaseki station. Each man carried a package of [Page 580]liquid sarin wrapped in newspaper, and an umbrella. At 8 a.m., as the trains approached Kasumigaseki, each man punctured his package with the sharpened tip of the umbrella and left the train. The liquid immediately began to evaporate. Sarin is very dense, and if it is not lifted by strong air currents, it will remain close to the ground. The inefficient method of distribution chosen by the terrorists, evaporation, probably averted a much greater tragedy. As it was, thousands of commuters collapsed on the train and the adjacent platforms, turning Kasumigaseki and other nearby stations into bedlam. Twelve people were killed and thousands injured.

The attack and its violent aftermath gripped the nation. In the weeks after the incident, police raided Aum Shinrikyo compounds and arrested hundreds of members. These arrests provoked violent reprisals, including an assassination attempt on the chief of the National Police Agency. The incident shattered Japan's peaceful view of itself as the world's safest industrialized nation, and it sparked reforms in the criminal justice system. It also highlighted the immense vulnerabilities of a modern city to terrorism, even if the terrorists have access to only crude weapons and very simple means of distributing them.

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