Aum Shinrikyo

Not to be confused with Shinreikyo.

Aleph
(formerly Aum Shinrikyo)

(オウム真理教) (Oumu Shinrikyō)
File:Jp aunshinrikyo logo flag.gif
Formation	1984
Type	Japanese new religious movement former terrorist organization political party
Membership	Approximately 1,950 members
Key people	Shoko Asahara (founder)
Website	www.aleph.to

Aum Shinrikyo (jap. オウム真理教), which split into Aleph and Hikari no Wa in 2007, is a Japanese doomsday cult founded by Shoko Asahara in 1984. It gained international notoriety when it carried out the deadly Tokyo subway sarin attack in 1995 and was found to have been responsible for another smaller sarin attack the previous year.

The group never confessed. Those who carried out attacks did so secretly, without being known to ordinary believers. Asahara broadcast his singing, insisting on his guiltlessness through a radio broadcast on a signal they purchased in Russia and directed toward Japan.

Aum Shinrikyo has been formally designated a terrorist organization by several countries, including Canada, Kazakhstan, and the United States. Japan's Public Security Examination Commission considers Aleph and Hikari no Wa to be branches of a "dangerous religion" and announced in January 2015 that they would remain under surveillance for three more years.

Doctrine

Aum Shinrikyo/Aleph is a syncretic belief system that drew upon Asahara's idiosyncratic interpretations of elements of early Indian Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism along with Hinduism, taking Shiva as main image of worship and incorporating millennialist ideas from the Christian Book of Revelation, Yoga and the writings of Nostradamus. Its founder, Chizuo Matsumoto, claimed that he sought to restore "original Buddhism". In 1992 Matsumoto, who changed his name to Shoko Asahara, published a foundational book, and declared himself "Christ", Japan's only fully enlightened master and identified with the "Lamb of God". His purported mission was to take upon himself the sins of the world, and he claimed he could transfer to his followers spiritual power and ultimately take away their sins and bad deeds. While many discount Aum Shinrikyo's Buddhist characteristics and affiliation to Buddhism, scholars often refer to it as an offshoot of Japanese Buddhism, and this was how the movement generally defined and saw itself.

Asahara outlined a doomsday prophecy, which included a World War III instigated by the United States. Robert Jay Lifton, an American psychiatrist and author, says that Asahara "described a final conflict culminating in a nuclear "Armageddon", borrowing the term from the Book of Revelation 16:16". Humanity would end, except for the elite few who joined Aum. Aum's mission was not only to spread the word of "salvation", but also to survive these "End Times". Asahara predicted Armageddon would occur in 1997. Kaplan also notes that in Shoko Asahara's lectures he referred to the United States as "The Beast" from the Book of Revelation, predicting that it would eventually attack Japan. Arthur Goldwag, author of a book on conspiracies and secret societies, characterizes Asahara as one who "saw dark conspiracies everywhere promulgated by Jews, Freemasons, the Dutch, the British Royal Family, and rival Japanese religions".

In the opinion of Daniel A. Metraux, Aum Shinrikyo justified its violence through its own unique interpretation of Buddhist ideas and doctrines, such as the Buddhist concepts of Mappō and Shōhō - Aum claimed that by bringing about the end of the world, they would restore Shōhō. Furthermore, Lifton believes, Asahara "interpreted the Tibetan Buddhist concept of poa in order to claim that by killing someone contrary to the group's aims, they were preventing them from accumulating bad karma and thus saving them".

The name "Aum Shinrikyo" (オウム真理教, Oumu Shinrikyō), usually rendered in English as "Supreme Truth", derives from the Sanskrit syllable Aum, used to represent the universe, followed by the Japanese Shinrikyo (meaning, roughly, "Teaching of Truth") written in kanji (in Japanese, kanji are used to write originally Japanese as well as Sino-xenic words, and not usually to transcribe those borrowed directly from exotic foreign languages). In 2000, the organization changed its name to "Aleph" – a reference to the first letter of the Phoenician, Hebrew and Arabic alphabets – and replaced its logo.

History

The movement was founded by Shoko Asahara in his one-bedroom apartment in Tokyo's Shibuya ward in 1984, starting off as a yoga and meditation class known as Oumu Shinsen no Kai (オウム神仙の会, "Aum club of gods and hermits") and steadily grew in the following years. It gained the official status as a religious organization in 1989 and attracted a considerable number of graduates from Japan's elite universities, thus being dubbed a "religion for the elite".

Activities

Although Aum was considered controversial in Japan, it had yet to be associated with serious crimes. It was during this period that Asahara became obsessed with Biblical prophecies. Aum's public relations activities included publishing comics and animated cartoons that attempted to tie its religious ideas to popular anime and manga themes, including space missions, powerful weapons, world conspiracies, and quest for ultimate truth. Aum published several magazines including Vajrayana Sacca and Enjoy Happiness, adopting a somewhat missionary attitude.

Isaac Asimov's science fiction Foundation Trilogy was referenced "depicting as it does an elite group of spiritually evolved scientists forced to go underground during an age of barbarism so as to prepare themselves for the moment...when they will emerge to rebuild civilization". Lifton believes that Aum's publications used Christian and Buddhist ideas to impress what he considered to be the more shrewd and educated Japanese who were not attracted to boring, purely traditional sermons.

In private, both Asahara and his top disciples reportedly continued their humble lifestyles, the only exception being the armored Mercedes-Benz gifted by a wealthy follower. In rather rare footage, Asahara is seen on the street in front of a large clown doll resembling himself, smiling happily.

Advertising and recruitment activities, dubbed the "Aum Salvation plan", included claims of curing physical illnesses with health improvement techniques, realizing life goals by improving intelligence and positive thinking, and concentrating on what was important at the expense of leisure. This was to be accomplished by practicing ancient teachings, accurately translated from original Pali sutras (these three were referred to as "threefold salvation"). These efforts resulted in Aum becoming one of the fastest-growing religious groups in Japan's history.

Kaplan, David E., and Andrew Marshall, in their 1996 book 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, claims that its practices remained secret. Initiation rituals, assert the authors of the book, often involved the use of hallucinogens, such as LSD. And religious practices often involved extremely ascetic practices claimed to be "yoga". These included everything from renunciants being hung upside down to being given shock therapy.

Incidents before 1995

The cult started attracting controversy in the late 1980s with accusations of deception of recruits, and of holding cult members against their will and forcing members to donate money; it murdered a cult member who tried to leave in February 1989.

In October 1989, the group's negotiations with Tsutsumi Sakamoto, an anti-cult lawyer threatening a lawsuit against them which could potentially bankrupt the group, failed. In the same month, Sakamoto recorded an interview for a talk show on the Japanese TV station TBS. The network then had the interview secretly shown to the group without notifying Sakamoto, intentionally breaking protection of sources. The group then pressured TBS to cancel the broadcast. The following month Sakamoto, his wife and his child went missing from their home in Yokohama. The police were unable to resolve the case at the time, although some of his colleagues publicly voiced their suspicions of the group. It was not until after the 1995 Tokyo attack that they were known to have been murdered and their bodies dumped by cult members.

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 also alleges that Aum was also connected with such activities as extortion. The group, authors report, "commonly took patients into its hospitals and then forced them to pay exorbitant medical bills".

The cult is known to have considered assassinations of several individuals critical of the cult, such as the heads of Buddhist sects Soka Gakkai and The Institute for Research in Human Happiness. After cartoonist Yoshinori Kobayashi and TV commentator Dave Spector began satirizing the cult, they were included on Aum’s assassination list. It attempted to assassinate Kobayashi in 1993.

At the end of 1993, the cult started secretly manufacturing the nerve agent sarin and later VX gas. They also attempted to manufacture 1,000 automatic rifles but only managed to make one. Aum tested its sarin on sheep at Banjawarn Station, a remote pastoral property in Western Australia, killing 29 sheep. Both sarin and VX were then used in several assassinations (and attempts) over 1994–95. In December 1994 and January 1995, Masami Tsuchiya of Aum Shinrikyo synthesized 100 to 200 grams of VX which was used to attack three persons. Two persons were injured and a 28-year-old man died, who is believed to be the only fully documented victim of VX ever in the world. The VX victim, whom Shoko Asahara had suspected was a spy, was attacked at 7 a.m. on 12 December 1994, on the street in Osaka by Tomomitsu Niimi and another Aum member, who sprinkled the nerve agent on his neck. He chased them for about 100 yards (90 metres) before collapsing, dying 10 days later without coming out of a deep coma. Doctors in the hospital suspected at the time he had been poisoned with an organophosphate pesticide. But the cause of death was pinned down only after cult members arrested for the subway attack in Tokyo confessed to the killing. Ethyl methylphosphonate, methylphosphonic acid, and diisopropyl-2-(methylthio) ethylamine were later found in the body of the victim. Unlike the cases for sarin (Matsumoto incident and Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway), VX was not used for mass murder. Most notably, on the night of 27 June 1994, the cult carried out a chemical weapons attack against civilians when they released sarin in the central Japanese city of Matsumoto, Nagano. This Matsumoto incident killed eight and harmed 200 more. However, police investigations focused only on an innocent local resident, Yoshiyuki Kouno, and failed to implicate the cult at the time. It was only after the Tokyo subway attack that Aum Shinrikyo was discovered to be behind the Matsumoto sarin attack.

Aum Shinrikyo first began their attacks on 27 June 1994 in Matsumoto, Japan. With the help of a converted refrigerator truck, members of the cult released a cloud of sarin which floated near the homes of judges who were overseeing a lawsuit concerning a real-estate dispute which was predicted to go against the cult. From this one event, 500 people were injured and seven people died.

In February 1995, several cult members kidnapped Kiyoshi Kariya, a 69-year-old brother of a member who had escaped, from a Tokyo street and took him to a compound in Kamikuishiki near Mount Fuji, where he was killed. Destroyed in a microwave-powered incinerator, his body was disposed of in Lake Kawaguchi. Before Kariya was abducted, he had been receiving threatening phone calls demanding to know the whereabouts of his sister, and he had left a note saying, "If I disappear, I was abducted by Aum Shinrikyo".

Police made plans to simultaneously raid cult facilities across Japan in March 1995. Prosecutors alleged Asahara was tipped off about this and that he ordered the Tokyo subway attack to divert police.

Tokyo subway sarin attack and related incidents

Main article: Tokyo subway sarin attack

On the morning of 20 March 1995, Aum members released sarin in a coordinated attack on five trains in the Tokyo subway system, killing 13 commuters, seriously injuring 54 and affecting 980 more. Some estimates claim as many as 6,000 people were injured by the sarin. It is difficult to obtain exact numbers since many victims are reluctant to come forward. Prosecutors allege that Asahara was tipped off about planned police raids on cult facilities by an insider, and ordered an attack in central Tokyo to divert police attention away from the group. The attack evidently backfired, and police conducted huge simultaneous raids on cult compounds across the country.

Over the next week, the full scale of Aum's activities was revealed for the first time. At the cult's headquarters in Kamikuishiki on the foot of Mount Fuji, police found explosives, chemical weapons, and a Russian Mil Mi-17 military helicopter. While the finding of biological warfare agents such as anthrax and Ebola cultures was reported, those claims now appear to have been widely exaggerated. There were stockpiles of chemicals that could be used for producing enough sarin to kill four million people. Police also found laboratories to manufacture drugs such as LSD, methamphetamine, and a crude form of truth serum, a safe containing millions of U.S. dollars in cash and gold, and cells, many still containing prisoners. During the raids, Aum issued statements claiming that the chemicals were for fertilizers. Over the next six weeks, over 150 cult members were arrested for a variety of offenses. The media was stationed outside Aum's Tokyo headquarters on Komazawa Dori in Aoyama for months after the attack and arrests waiting for action and to get images of the cult's other members.

On 30 March 1995, Takaji Kunimatsu, chief of the National Police Agency, was shot four times near his house in Tokyo and was seriously wounded. While many suspected Aum involvement in the shooting, the Sankei Shimbun reported that Hiroshi Nakamura is suspected of the crime, but nobody has been charged.

On 23 April 1995, Hideo Murai, the head of Aum's Ministry of Science, was stabbed to death outside the cult's Tokyo headquarters amidst a crowd of about 100 reporters, in front of cameras. The man responsible, a Korean member of Yamaguchi-gumi, was arrested and eventually convicted of the murder. His motive remains unknown.

On the evening of 5 May, a burning paper bag was discovered in a toilet in Tokyo's busy Shinjuku station. Upon examination it was revealed that it was a hydrogen cyanide device which, had it not been extinguished in time, would have released enough gas into the ventilation system to potentially kill 10,000 commuters. Several undetonated cyanide devices were found at other locations in the Tokyo subway.

During this time, numerous cult members were arrested for various offenses, but arrests of the most senior members on the charge of the subway gassing had not yet taken place.

Shoko Asahara was finally found hiding within a wall of a cult building known as "The 6th Satian" in the Kamikuishiki complex on 16 May and was arrested. On the same day, the cult mailed a parcel bomb to the office of Yukio Aoshima, the governor of Tokyo, blowing off the fingers of his secretary's hand. Asahara was initially charged with 23 counts of murder and 16 other offenses. The trial, dubbed "the trial of the century" by the press, ruled Asahara guilty of masterminding the attack and sentenced him to death. The indictment was appealed unsuccessfully. A number of senior members accused of participation, such as Masami Tsuchiya, also received death sentences.

The reasons why a small circle of mostly senior Aum members committed atrocities and the extent of personal involvement by Asahara remain unclear, although several theories have attempted to explain these events. In response to the prosecution's charge that Asahara ordered the subway attacks to distract authorities, the defense maintained that Asahara was not aware of events, pointing to his deteriorating health. Shortly after his arrest, Asahara abandoned his post as the organization's leader, and since then has maintained silence, refusing to communicate even with lawyers and family members.

After 1995

File:Anti-Aum Shinrikyo protest.JPG

Anti-Aum Shinrikyo protest in Japan.

On 21 June 1995 Asahara acknowledged that in January 1994 he ordered the killing of a sect member, Kotaro Ochida, a pharmacist at an Aum hospital. Ochida, who tried to escape from a sect compound, was held down and strangled by another Aum member who was allegedly told that he too would be killed if he did not strangle Ochida.

On 10 October 1995, Aum Shinrikyo was ordered to be stripped of its official status as a "religious legal entity" and was declared bankrupt in early 1996. However the group continues to operate under the constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion, funded by a successful computer business and donations, and under strict surveillance. Attempts to ban the group altogether under the 1952 Subversive Activities Prevention Law were rejected by the Public Security Examination Commission in January 1997.

The group underwent a number of transformations in the aftermath of Asahara's arrest and trial. For a brief time, Asahara's two preteen sons officially replaced him as guru. It re-grouped under the new name "Aleph" in February 2000. It announced a change in doctrine: religious texts related to controversial Vajrayana Buddhist doctrines and Bible were removed. The group apologized to the victims of the sarin gas attack and established a special compensation fund. Provocative publications and activities that alarmed society are no longer published.

Fumihiro Joyu, one of the few senior leaders of the group under Asahara who did not face serious charges, became official head of the organization in 1999. Kōki Ishii, a legislator who formed an anti-Aum committee in the National Diet in 1999, was murdered in 2002.

In August 2003, a woman believed to be an ex-Aum Shinrikyo member took refuge in North Korea via China.

For over 15 years, only three fugitives were being actively sought. At 11:50 p.m. 31 December 2011, Makoto Hirata surrendered himself to the police and was arrested on suspicion of being involved in the 1995 abduction of Kiyoshi Kariya, a non-member who had died during an Aum kidnapping and interrogation. On 3 June 2012, police captured Naoko Kikuchi, the second fugitive, acting on a tip from local residents. Acting on information from the capture of Kikuchi, including recent photographs showing a modified appearance, the last remaining fugitive, Katsuya Takahashi, was captured on 15 June 2012. He is said to have been the driver in the Tokyo gas attack and was caught in Tokyo, having been on the run for 17 years.

Current activities

According to a June 2005 report by the National Police Agency, Aleph had approximately 1,650 members, of whom 650 lived communally in compounds. The group operated 26 facilities in 17 prefectures, and about 120 residential facilities. An article in the Mainichi Shimbun newspaper on 11 September 2002 showed that the Japanese public still distrusts Aleph, and compounds are usually surrounded by protest banners from local residents.

There have been numerous cases where local authorities have refused to accept resident registration for cult members when it is discovered that Aleph has set up a facility within their jurisdiction. This effectively denies cult members social benefits such as health insurance; five cases have been taken to court by cult members, who won every time. Local communities also try to drive the cult away by preventing cultists from finding jobs, or keeping cult children out of schools. Right-wing groups frequently conduct protest marches near apartments rented by Aum followers by blaring extremely loud music through loudspeakers installed on minivans.

Monitoring

In January 2000, the group was placed under surveillance for a period of three years under an anti-Aum law, in which the group is required to submit a list of members and details of assets to the authorities. In January 2003 Japan's Public Security Intelligence Agency received permission to extend the surveillance for another three years, as they found evidence which suggested that the group still revered Asahara. According to the Religious News Blog report issued in April 2004, the authorities still considered the group "a threat to society".

In January 2006, the Public Security Intelligence Agency (PSIA) was able to extend the surveillance for another three years. Despite the doctrinal changes and banning of Vajrayana texts, the PSIA advocates increased surveillance; it periodically expresses concerns that the Vajrayana texts remain in use and that danger remains while Asahara remains leader. Aleph leaders carefully insert passages rejecting the Vajrayana texts into almost everything they say or write, including karaoke songs, to publicly distance Aleph from Vajrayana.

On 15 September 2006, Shoko Asahara lost his final appeal against the death penalty. The following day Japanese police raided the offices of Aleph in order to "prevent any illegal activities by cult members in response to the confirmation of Asahara's death sentence". Thirteen cult members were eventually sentenced to death.

Split

On 8 March 2007, Fumihiro Joyu, former Aum Shinrikyo spokesman and head of Aum's Moscow operation, formally announced a long-expected split. Joyu's group, called Hikari no Wa ("The Circle of Light"), claims to be committed to uniting science and religion and creating "the new science of the human mind", having previously aimed to move the group away from its criminal history and toward its spiritual roots.

In April 2011, the Public Security Intelligence Agency stated that Aum had about 1,500 members. In July 2011 the cult reported its membership as 1,030. The group was reportedly active in trying to recruit new members via social media and proselytizing on college campuses.

Japan's Public Security Examination Commission announced in January 2015 that Aum Shinrikyo's two spinoffs would remain under surveillance for three more years starting 1 February 2015.

Admirers

The Japan Times reports that "good looks and commitment to a cause", demonstrated by Aleph, "inspire a new generation of admirers". Dissatisfaction with the society and humble degrees of life successes make them "identify with the cult" and "adore the cultists as if they were pop idols".

2016 Russian crackdown

On 5 April 2016, the Investigative Committee of Russia announced it opened a criminal case against Aum Shinrikyo followers and that its investigators, along with Federal Security Service (FSB) forces, were conducting raids in Moscow and Saint Petersburg to find them and confiscate literature, religious items and electronic information.

See also

• Cult
• List of dates predicted for apocalyptic events
• List of people claimed to be Jesus
• Yoshihiro Yasuda, a lawyer who represented Shoko Asahara
• Masaki Kito, a lawyer who represents Aum victims
• New religious movement
• Religion in Japan

Further reading

• Shoko Asahara, Supreme Initiation: An Empirical Spiritual Science for the Supreme Truth, 1988, AUM USA Inc, ISBN 0-945638-00-0. Highlights the main stages of Yogic and Buddhist practice, comparing Yoga-sutra system by Patanjali and the Eightfold Noble Path from Buddhist tradition.
• Shoko Asahara, Life and Death, (Shizuoka: Aum, 1993). Focuses on the process of Kundalini-Yoga, one of the stages in Aum's practice.
• Shoko Asahara, Disaster Approaches the Land of the Rising Sun: Shoko Asahara's Apocalyptic Predictions, (Shizuoka: Aum, 1995). A controversial book, later removed by Aum leadership, speaks about possible destruction of Japan.
• Stefano Bonino, Il Caso Aum Shinrikyo: Società, Religione e Terrorismo nel Giappone Contemporaneo, 2010, Edizioni Solfanelli, ISBN 978-88-89756-88-1. Preface by Erica Baffelli.
• Ikuo Hayashi, Aum to Watakushi (Aum and I), Tokyo: Bungei Shunju, 1998. Book about personal experiences by former Aum member.
• Robert Jay Lifton, Destroying the World to Save It: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global Terrorism, Henry Holt, ISBN 0-8050-6511-3, LoC BP605.088.L54 1999
• Haruki Murakami, Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche, Vintage, ISBN 0-375-72580-6, LoC BP605.O88.M8613 2001 Interviews with victims.
• Global Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction: A Case Study on the Aum Shinrikyo, [USA] Senate Government Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, 31 October 1995. online
• David E. Kaplan, and 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, 1996, Random House, ISBN 0-517-70543-5. An account of the cult from its beginnings to the aftermaths of the Tokyo subway attack, including details of facilities, weapons and other information regarding Aum's followers, activities and property.
• Ian Reader, Religious Violence in Contemporary Japan: The Case of Aum Shinrikyo, 2000, Curzon Press

External links

• Aleph, the organization's official website. Includes an English section.
• Aum Shinrikyo in India Oct.1991-Shoko Asahara
• Shoko Asahara’s Trial
• Aum Shinrikyo News Tracker/Archive, Aum Shinrikyo news tracker/news archive. Up-to-the-minute.
• (English) Japan Times article on two documentary films about Aleph.
• Shoko Asahara and the Aum Gas Attack
• (English) The 'De-nationalization' of AUM Followers: Its Hidden Political Purpose' (Tsukuru, November 1999 – in English)
• David Kaplan explains his theory of the connection between Al Qaeda, Aum Shinrikyo and Isacc Asimov's Foundation series (sci-fi novels).
• (English) PSIA (Public Security Investigative Agency) report
• Midnight Eye: A, a review of Tatsuya Mori's first documentary film about Aleph.
• IMDB: A (1998) and A2 (2001) by Tatsuya Mori
• 1999 Guardian article (UK) by Andrew Marshall.