On March 20, 1995, members of Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo ("supreme truth") unleashed sarin gas on Tokyo's metro commuters, killing 13 people and injuring as many as 6,000 more. Overnight, the international media took up the lurid story of Japan's death cult. Yet the group, a mixture of outcasts, weirdos, sad sacks, and self-professed messiahs, had been causing problems in Japan for almost a decade by the time they carried out the Tokyo attack. Read on for scary, bizarre, insane information about Aum Shinrikyo.
Scary Facts On Aum Shinrikyo, Japan's Subway-Gassing Cult, videos, creepy, other, True crime,
Founder Shoko Asahara Declared Himself Christ
It's hard to say whether Aum Shinrikyo founder Shoko Asahara, who was born Chizuo Matsumoto, was completely insane or just really good at manipulating people. He claimed to be a Christ figure, the first enlightened one since the historical Buddha. By his own estimation, Asahara could save members of his cult from the impending apocalypse by radiating his own supreme powers into his followers. His extremely confused belief system incorporates elements of Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, and yoga.
Massacre of 29 Sheep in Australia
In 1993, Aum Shinrikyo purchased Banjawarn, a sheep ranch in the Australian outback. In preparation for the Tokyo subway attack, the cult tested sarin gas on the sheep, killing 29 animals. When Australian police raided the ranch in the wake of the Tokyo attack, they discovered a makeshift chemical weapons lab, evidence of explosions in the area, and found that Aum Shinrikyo was mining uranium, a component in nuclear weapons.
Source: Slate
Asahara Kept Female Followers' Pubic Hair in Jars
Reports of Shoko Asahara's bizarre sexual practices exist in Japanese throughout the internet and printed media, but prove hard to track down in verifiable form in English. According to these reports, Asahara had sex with various female members of the cult, sometimes as part of their initiation ritual. He would then take a single public hair from each woman and place it in a jar, on which he would write the woman's holy name, as given by the cult. When Asahara was arrested following the Tokyo attacks, he was sitting in a small room surrounded by these jars.
Aum Shinrikyo is a Doomsday Cult
Aum Shinrikyo, now called Aleph, was founded on a doomsday doctrine—according to founder Shoko Asahara, the world would end either in 1996 or between 1999 and 2003. The apocalypse would be initiated by the US starting World War Three with Japan. Despite this relatively unspecific time prediction and a complete lack of hostility between the US and Japan, thousands—as many as 40,000, according to some estimates—joined the group, seeking a more meaningful existence.
The Matsumoto Incident
In June of 1994, ten months before the Tokyo subway attack, Aum Shinkrikyo members sprayed sarin gas from a modified truck in a residential neighbor of Mastumoto, a small city northwest of Tokyo. Eight people died, including a woman who was comatose for 14 years before passing. Another 600 were injured. Police at first suspected an innocent local man of the crime.
The Cult is Responsible for the Only Verified Death-by-VX Gas
VX gas is a nerve agent classified as a weapon of mass destruction by the UN. In December 1994, Aum disciples attacked fellow cult member Tadahiro Yamaguchi with VX on the streets of Osaka. He died as a result, and is the only verified, fully documented death-by-VX gas ever. The cult also attacked Hiroyuki Nagaoka, who ran an organization that helped Aum Shinrikyo members escape the cult. He survived.
They Manufactured Their Own Weapons
All the gas used by Aum Shinrikyo in their various attacks was manufactured by the cult itself. According to reports, they weren't particularly good at what they did, and their biological weapons program was a complete failure. They also attempted to manufacture 1,000 assault rifles, but only ended up successfully making one. Despite the relatively unsuccessful weapons manufacturing capabilities of Aum, it's still terrifying that a cult founded by an insane person managed to manufacture sarin and VX gas.
The Assassination List
In the late 80's, Aum Shinrikyo published manga, or Japanese comics, about the cult and its beliefs in order to attract new members. In the 90s, manga artist Yoshinori Kobayashi illustrated a satire of the Aum by mimicking the style of the cult's own manga. This landed him at the top of Aum's assassination list. They never got to him, and neither did they manage to kill several other people on this list, including the heads of two Buddhist sects, Soka Gakkai and The Institute for Research in Human Happiness.
The Disappearance of Tsutsumi Sakamoto and his Family
Tsutsumi Sakamoto, a young, high-profile lawyer, decided to organize action against Aum Shinrikyo in the late 80s, believing them to be socially dangerous. In 1989, he gave an interview with Tokyo Broadcasting System. The television station then broke source confidentiality protocol by showing the interview to Aum before it was broadcast. On November 3 of that year, cult members broke into Sakamoto's home, murdered him, his wife, and his 14-month-old son, and took the bodies. Police declared the family missing but didn't resolve the case until after the Tokyo attacks, when a cult member admitted to the crime.
Source: New York Times
They Wanted to Kill a Lot More People than They Did
Despite the many people murdered by Aum Shinrikyo, their death toll is far smaller than the cult had hoped. According to a lengthy report on the cult's activities, in 1990 a member tried to coat the Diet building—the Japanese equivalent of Capitol Hill—in a nerve toxin. The toxin and device used to spray it were ill conceived, and nothing came of it. Shoko Asahara also at one point announced intentions to drop toxins throughout Japan using balloons. All told, the cult also attempted nine biological attacks they hoped would cause mass causalities – nothing came of any of them, again due to technical ineptitude in manufacturing weapons.