LONG READ: The sect that wanted to "save" Japan

This March marks the 30th anniversary of the sarin attack on the Tokyo subway. It was not the end of doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo. Below is a feature story I wrote for Café magazine in 2007.

Café-Tokyo: They each have a folding chair and sit on the street overlooking the four-story brick building. An elderly lady and a young woman. They meticulously record the time and the people who enter and leave the building. A thermos of tea and a bag of rice cakes stick out of a bag.

"We who live in the neighborhood take turns sitting here, two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon,”says the elderly woman.

It's not unlike a picnic, except for the fact that the two women are guarding what were once, and perhaps still are, Japan's most dangerous terrorists.

The young woman looks anxiously at the secret service agent - the kouan - standing a few meters away, wearing a baseball cap. He tries to look in our direction without being noticed.

This is the third time I visit Karasuyama, the neighborhood in western Tokyo that is home to the remnants of Aum Shinrikyo - the sect that tried to murder tens of thousands of people with the nerve agent sarin in the morning rush hour on the subway twelve years ago.

The policemen recognize me; ‘Ahh, the Café newspaper from Sueeden. Do you happen to have a business card with you today? Oh, not that. Well, maybe next time.’ It's polite and civilized on the surface, but anyone who thinks Japan has forgotten, or even forgiven, Aum Shinrikyo is sorely mistaken.

It's not a case of having a thumb in the eye, but rather both fists. Outside the sect headquarters, five meters from the entrance, the police have set up a koban - a small police station. Next door, the secret-service has set up a small guard shack with a chair, a table, and a small radiator.

- ‘We are here 24 hours a day, 365 days a year,’ says the police officer on duty, not without pride. He doesn't want to be photographed, but he is so excited by our presence that he calls the district's central police station to arrange for us to speak to Inspector Nakamura, who is in charge of coordinating the surveillance. However, the inspector turns out to be in a meeting.

A few weeks earlier, I had begun the journey that follows in the wake of Aum Shinrikyo. Twelve years after the attack on the subway in the eventful year of 1995 - when the port city of Kobe was hit by an earthquake and Japan's economy was in free fall. It is a journey where many of the tracks have gone cold, where memories begin to fade and several of the main characters are gone. Some are on death row, others are dead or have gone underground, still others have put their years in Aum Shinrikyo behind them and don't want to talk about what once was.

Out of 10,000 members in Japan, just under 1,000 remain. The Russian branch, which had 30,000 members and a headquarters in Moscow in 1995, has been decimated to just under 300 members. Branches in the US, Germany, and Australia have been closed.

Twelve sect members, including founder Shoko Asahara, have been sentenced to death and will be executed in the next few years (note: Asahara and 12 other sect leaders were executed in 2018)

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Asahara's legacy became complicated to manage. It didn't help that the remaining members changed the name of the sect, from Aum Shinrikyo to Aleph in the spring of 2000. Internal strife caused the sect to formally split in March this year (note: 2007) when one group broke away to form Hikari no Wa, Harmony of Light.

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- I'm like Göbbels,’ says Akitoshi Hirosue, laughing a little resignedly. He is the spokesman for Hikari no Wa.

- I wrote the propaganda for the evil one, just like Göbbels did for Hitler, he adds.

Hirosue gives a tour of the Hikari no Wa headquarters. After weeks of persuasion, bordering on harassment, Café is one of very few media outlets granted access to the inner sanctum.

- ‘We normally say no when journalists want to come here,’ says Mr Hirosue, who from now on will be kindness itself. It was just a matter of breaking the first ice.

The walls inside the headquarters are white. It is clean and tidy, Buddha posters on the walls, two large flat-screen TVs beside the altar in the main assembly room. A video of a peaceful creek streams in HD resolution and is accompanied by soft flute music. Boxes of soya milk, instant noodles, and bananas are lined up along one wall of cards. Neither meals nor meditation sessions are communal these days.

Gone is the mass hysteria, the collective prayer sessions, the large meetings, the communal eating that characterized life in the cult headquarters in Kamikuishiki. It was there, in the small village at the foot of Mount Fuji, that a thousand or so sect members, including Hirosue, lived for years in total isolation from the outside world, convinced that the end was near. All the while, the leadership, led by Shoko Asahara, did its utmost to fulfill expectations and give Armageddon a helping hand.

The sect's barbed-wire enclosure housed advanced chemical laboratories, an armory, a drug depot stocked with LSD and amphetamines, a medical clinic to cure ailments, or induce them in misbehaving sect members and those deemed security risks. There was also a prison and a brutal security service that murdered members labeled as spies.

But in Karasuyama, you do what you want, when you want. Hirosue looks at me almost apologetically as he shows me around. He can see that I find it hard to believe what he says. That Hikari no Wa in 2007 is so different from Aum Shinrikyo in 1995. It's basically the same people, albeit older and more experienced.

Everything reminiscent of Shoko Asahara has been removed. The break is zettai - absolute, says Hirosue, making a cross with his fingers to emphasize what he just said. But, and this is a splendid example of the Japanese' superb ability to see the world around them in a number of well-defined sections, Hirosue still has the greatest respect and admiration for Asahara the man.

- Warm, happy, loving, and inspiring, he says when I ask him to describe his former leader.

This description does not fit well with the picture painted by the police and authorities of a despotic, paranoid leader who did not hesitate to order mass murder. But to be clear, there was a bizarre belief within the sect that Japan was in danger and needed to be saved.

- ‘I joined Aum Shinrikyo because I love Japan,’ says Hirosue.

As a university student, he shopped around the available sects and settled on Aum because it claimed to protect traditional Buddhist values. Becoming a soldier or a policeman, as he had initially thought, seemed paltry compared to Aum.

- ‘I wanted to do something that was majime - strict, ascetic, and genuine,’ says Hirosue.

According to sect members I meet in Tokyo, it was the attitude towards Asahara that caused the sect to split. One faction, the largest with about 600 members, led by Naruhito Noda, still professes Asahara, although it has outwardly distanced itself from his criminal deeds.

The other, with just under 200 members, is led by Fumihiro Joyu, a 44-year-old with the charisma of a rock star and, one mass murder earlier, the obvious crown prince of AUM Shinrikyo. Now, after almost three years in prison (for perjury), he's much more reclusive and has a more pious doctrine.

- Natural yoga and meditation, says Hirosue, inner peace on an individual level.

Asahara's grandiose plans belong to another time, if Hirosue is to be believed. But is he really gone? Are Aleph and Hikari no Wa really as toothless and harmless as they try to appear? Are the police and the kouan on the wrong track when, year after year, they apply for (and are granted!) new funds to target the cult members? Are these just a few misguided sheep who are now clinging to each other because the outside world wants nothing to do with them, or is the blood thirst and madness still there somewhere? Is there a risk that they will go back to the lab and start producing sarin, VX, anthrax, and LSD again, in order to take power in Japan?

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In the Nishi-Ogikubo neighborhood, again in the western part of Tokyo, I find one of Aleph's meditation rooms after much searching. I've called and tried to book an appointment, but have been met with tired excuses and mumbled nervousness. ‘We can't accept visitors, we're so busy, there's nothing to see here.’

A sleepy man in his 30s opens the door after many signals. He looks along the street to see if anyone is lurking in the bushes. If this is a trick of the neighborhood association, if at any moment a bunch of angry shopkeepers and housewives will appear and demand that the sect take its Buddha images, its strange music, and disappear. Because that's how it has been in recent years. Wherever Aleph has tried to settle, they have been met with protests.

- ‘We would prefer to find a place in the countryside, out in nature, but no one wants to let us lease land,’ says one sect member.

In the city, in the urban jungle of Tokyo, things are obviously easier. Houses are sold, rented out, mortgaged at a furious pace and, since money is no object, it is always possible to find a property owner willing to rent out. Faced with a fait accompli, there is little the neighbors can do. There is no legal way to drive the sect away. In Nishi-Ogikubo, there is currently a truce. But Keisuke Uenoyama, chairman of the local chamber of commerce, would like to see Aleph move out.

- ‘Their presence is bad for business. I think maybe they are not so dangerous anymore and in recent years they have not made much noise, but it is unpleasant to have them so close. 5-6 years ago there was more activity. We used to go there and demonstrate every day,’ he says.

Uenoyama is in his 70s and in many ways typical of the generation that grew up in poor circumstances after the war. They worked hard for a living, saved up to buy a basic apartment, got married, had two children, bought a washing machine, TV and car, and believed in the future. The children were chastised and admonished and did their homework to get into the fancy universities. Once there, things took a new and, for Uenoyama and his generation, unexpected turn. Some of the well-behaved children did not want to follow the path they had been set. They certainly took their exams and made sure they got their degrees, but it wasn´t work in Japan Inc that attracted them. Instead, it was a small mysterious sect with doom on the programme that caught their interest.

Both Aleph and Hikari no Wa say that violence and doomsday worship are history, they were dropped as the old leadership got their death sentences passed. But there is still a lot of mistrust among the Japanese public, as well as among the relatives of the cult's victims.

- ‘I've met Fumihiro Joyu (leader of Hikari no Wa) three times and my impression is that he is serious when he says he has broken with Asahara, but it could of course be a pose on his part,’ says Yogo Isogai, a journalist with the Asahi TV network and a member of the Recovery Support Centre (RSC).

The organization receives money from the sect every year, but these are symbolic sums compared to the enormous damage caused by the attack. Twelve people died and more than five thousand were injured in the 1995 subway attack. Several suffered life-threatening injuries. In an attack the year before in the city of Matsumoto, seven people were killed and over 200 injured when Aum Shinrikyo tried to pre-empt a court ruling by gassing the judges in a trial over land access.

- The most important thing for us is that the compensation issue is resolved, so that the victims - our members - receive the compensation they are entitled to. We believe that Aleph is engaged in money laundering and is hiding money,’ said Mr Isogai.

The legal aftermath of Aum Shinrikyo's rampage is far from over. The sect was declared bankrupt and its properties confiscated and sold off in 1996, but the RSC believes the Japanese government should step in and pay the difference between the victims' claims and what the forced sale brought in. So far, however, the claims have fallen on deaf ears.

- Japan is a strange country. Those who have suffered from earthquakes and natural disasters have always been quickly supported, but after 12 years we still have not received a single yen in compensation. Despite the fact that we have several doctors who have testified to the suffering of the victims. If this had happened in the US, it would have been different. There is a different culture around lawsuits, but in Japan, there is a kind of warrior mentality that tells you to grit your teeth and fight through difficulties,’ says Isogai.

The RSC conducts annual health surveys among its 1,600 members. The most common symptoms are fatigue, visual impairment, and reduced lung function. Many of those on the affected trains also suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which manifests itself in anxiety, panic attacks, and sleep problems. Many have been forced to quit their jobs or have been fired because they are unable to travel by public transport.

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- It was an ordinary morning. But when we arrived at Kokkai-gijidomae, the train stopped on the platform for several minutes. Then we slowly moved on and just before Kasumigaseki there was a loudspeaker announcement that we would not stop at that station. Instead, we drove slowly past and I could see people lying on the platform writhing in agony.

Swedish Stefan Mori was in a suit, tie, and winter coat on his way to work as usual that March morning. Little did he realize that it was the last time he would wear his newly purchased coat.

We're back on the platform in Kasumigaseki. This is where the elite of the elite go every morning. Those who work in the ministries, men and women of the state, those who were targeted by Aum Shinrikyo. By murdering them, the sect wanted to bring chaos to Japan.

- Nobody understood anything. When I arrived at work, they told me I had to go to the doctor for a check-up because there had been a gas leak in the subway. But the doctors turned me back because I had no symptoms of sarin poisoning. What I remember most is that they told me to burn my Kenzo coat that I had just bought for 200,000 yen (about 12,000 kroner).

Stefan was fine, but when he developed psoriasis shortly afterward, the doctors wanted to bring him in for further tests. It was found that the disease ran in his family, but that the sarin could have been the trigger that set it off in him.

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- You have rabbit eyes, what happened?

Atsushi Sakahara could have been victim number 13, but fortunate circumstances allowed him to escape the sarin attack on the subway with his life.

Badly shaken and at times heavily medicated for PTSD, he is still full of energy when we meet for lunch in Kamiyacho, the station where he decided to get off the train that strange March morning twelve years ago.

- It was all very confusing. The train stopped and there was an announcement that there had been an explosion in Tsukiji. Since my office was there, I thought it would be better to get off and take a taxi the rest of the way. When I arrived, I met a colleague in the lift. He said my eyes looked like an albino rabbit's, all red,’ says Sakahara.

Even though it's been so long since the attack, he doesn't stumble over words or hesitate over details. His testimony is crystal clear. How he saw the package of leaking gas on the floor and decided at the last minute not to sit there, even though there was an empty seat. How, ‘for some reason’, he decided to change carriages and could see through the window how the elderly man sitting in the vacant seat suddenly collapsed in convulsions with foam in his mouth.

As there was a hospital next door to the advertising agency where he worked, Mr Sakahara was one of the first to seek medical attention. Half an hour after the attack, he went to the emergency room and was greeted by a doctor who was stumped. And why not? Nerve gas is hardly the first thing you think of in a country like Japan. Sakahara was prescribed some aspirin and rest.

A few months later, he resigned from his job at Dentsu even though he had just been offered a promotion.

- Looking back, it's clear that the sarin attack changed my life. Whether it was for the better is too early to say, but I have not regretted my decision.

Sakahara says the sarin attack was a turning point for Japan. Not that the country ‘lost its innocence’ as the cliché goes when something violent and unexpected happens, but rather that the erosion of social norms that had been going on for a long time finally became visible. And it came as a shock to many Japanese. Accustomed to looking the other way or, in the name of harmony, glossing over problems, Japanese people realized that their country was not that much better or different from other countries.

In retrospect, the police have been heavily criticized for not intervening earlier against Aum Shinrikyo. As early as 1989, there were warning signs that the sect might be something other than what it claimed to be.

A lawyer who had been helping people who wanted to leave the sect disappeared without a trace along with his wife and one-year-old son. A coat button with the Aum symbol was found in their apartment in Yokohama, and suspicions were leveled directly at the cult. But the police could not find any other links. It was not until a raid after the sarin attack six years later that the disappearance was solved when one of Aum's hitmen confessed to the murders and showed police where the bodies were buried.

Taro Takemoto, a colleague of the murdered lawyer, was highly critical of police inaction when I met him a few years ago.

- Had the police acted more forcefully in 1989, they would probably have been able to solve the murders and perhaps even prevent the gas attacks, Takemoto argued.

The police also acted strangely in the first sarin attack, in the city of Matsumoto in June 1994. Early on, suspicion centered on one of the people who was himself poisoned by the gas and whose wife is still in a coma (note: she died in 2008).

For more than six months, the police focused their investigation on the homeowner Yoshiyuki Kono and even leaked investigative material to friendly journalists who were quick to pick up the story. Kono was vilified in the media. On the one hand, he had some chemistry training and on the other, he had a stock of chemicals at home in the garage. The fact that these were for Kono's private photo lab and could not be used to mix sarin was of no concern to either police or journalists. Nor did the fact that there was no evidence of a motive. It was only a year after the attack when it became clear that the perpetrators were from Aum, that Kono received an apology from the national police chief.

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- We were happy, it was the best time of my life, says Naruhito Noda, the 40-year-old leader of Aleph. We meet at a simple family restaurant in a Tokyo suburb. Little do the bouncing children and their exhausted mothers realize that the man in the corner, sipping grapefruit juice, is considered Japan's most dangerous man. That he has a reputation on par with Osama bin Laden and leads an organization that, like Hamas, the Kurdish PKK and, of course, al-Qaeda, is designated a terrorist organization by both the US and the EU. What would have happened if they had known?

- ‘It would probably have been pretty empty here in a short time,’ says Mr Noda, smiling shyly.

After a total of 1.5 years in prison, Noda has atoned for his crimes, which were small and petty in comparison. ‘Selling homemade miracle ointment for eczema is not quite the same as puncturing plastic bags with liquid sarin in a crowded metro train.

- I joined AUM Shinrikyo when I was 19. I was studying physics at Todai (Japan's most prestigious university) and looking for something,’ says Noda. I am still loyal to Asahara. He is a charismatic, outgoing person. I condemn his actions, but not his person.

He gets some more juice, avoiding some toddlers running between the tables. When he returns, he has been given a few seconds to think. Enough, it turns out, to get more personal.

- I come from the Kansai region (Osaka). When I was little, I dreamed of becoming Prime Minister. I still have some contact with my family, but I cannot leave Aleph. It is my destiny and I have come to terms with it. I can understand those who want to have kids and a family, but for me, religion is more important,’ he says.

It's hard to make sense of Noda. It's hard to reconcile the authorities' image of the cold-hearted cult leader with the frail forty-year-old with thick glasses and bad teeth who sits in front of me and tells me that he has abandoned the idols of his youth, ABBA (!), and now prefers to listen to Ayumi Hamasaki - the pop diva of all Asia. But that's not the only thing that baffles me about Noda. Equally puzzling is the capacity for tunnel vision that the man must possess.

How is it possible for an organization like Aum Shinrikyo, where people literally lived on top of each other in giant collectives, to outwardly engage in yoga and meditation while simultaneously preparing mass-murder? How did the management hide advanced chemical laboratories and depots of weapons and ammunition from the members? Did you not notice anything, I ask Noda. Without waiting for the answer, I follow up with how can you still, after the truth has come out, be loyal to the man who was ultimately responsible for the plans of destruction?

- You should know that we were brought up like in North Korea. We were taught not to ask questions. Asahara surrounded himself with a small group of 20 to 30 people who were completely in the loop. ‘I had access to some information, but most of the members knew nothing at all,’ says Noda.

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What the sect members I meet during a few intense weeks have in common is that they are extremely well educated. Narihito Noda has a degree in physics, Akitoshi Hirosue is a religious studies graduate, Nobuyuki Matsuo, spokesman for Aleph, has a degree from one of the prestigous universities on the US West Coast. The list could be even longer. Among the cult members now awaiting hanging for their involvement in the subway attack are two doctors, two physicists, a molecular biologist, and a chemist (note: all those sentenced to death were executed in 2018).

They were neither murderous hooligans, misguided hippies, nor hateful right-wingers, but just well-mannered, talented students, possibly somewhat introverted and nerdy who, in the hands of a psychopathic leader, decided that the best way to change society was to destroy it first. Miles of columns have been written and months on TV sofas have been spent trying to understand the sect's murderous agenda. Yet no one has been able to explain how it could have come to this.

If you listen to Noda, Hirosue, and other cult members, much of the explanation can be found in the cult leader Shoko Asahara as a person. Severely visually impaired since birth, though not completely blind, he possessed a remarkable ability to deceive his surroundings. Perhaps he laid the groundwork for this when, as a child, he was sent to a school for children who were completely blind. As the saying goes, ‘In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king’, Asahara became the obvious leader.

Asahara came from humble beginnings, but his parents managed to raise enough money to send him to Tokyo for further studies. Once there, he immediately set about building his brand.

He opened a school of yoga and quickly attracted anxious and searching souls who felt lost in the Japanese success story. In Asahara, they found a father figure who took the time to listen to their concerns, a ‘dad’ who was present at a time when other dads were working overtime. Word spread and more and more young people came to the yoga sessions.

But Asahara wanted more than to teach yoga, he wanted power and he wanted to get rich. Borrowing liberally from the world's religions, Asahara concocted his own doctrine and, for the avoidance of doubt, named it The Supreme Truth.

The spice that gave the dish a sense of urgency was Asahara's prophecies about the imminent end of the world. Only those people who had undergone Aum's training would survive the nuclear war that would break out in the late 1990s. By 2003, the world would be destroyed and a new world led by superhumans from Aum Shinrikyo would emerge.

Things didn't quite work out the way Asahara had planned. In the summer of 2007, the superhumans are a group of 40-50-year-olds on the fringes of society. Hated, feared, and closely monitored.

Regrowth is poor and Aleph leader Noda says outright that he discourages people from joining the sect. Because sect members are not allowed to have sex or marry, no children are born to take over.

- In forty years we may not exist anymore, but shoganei, there is nothing to be done about it.

JON THUNQVIST

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