The Aum Affair: Asahara Shoko’s Aum Shinrikyo

Stephen Ehlers
Japanese Civilization
December 3, 2001

    The subway gas attacks of March 20, 1995 rocked Japan and the world. Although Aum Shinrikyo, a religious group founded and based in Japan, carried out the attacks, the events are not the sole result of any of the unique forces of Japanese society. The “Aum Affair,” as it came to be called by the Japanese press, can mostly be attributed to the psychological problems of Asahara Shoko, the cult leader.

    The history and psychology of the guru Asahara Shoko had great effect on the nature of Aum Shinrikyo. In 1955, he was born mostly blind to a large, poor, burakumin family. (Lifton p.15) His father supported seven children by making tatami mats and did not have the means to cater to Asahara Shoko’s special needs. When Asahara was sent off to a state boarding school for the blind, when he was six, the rejection and abandonment he felt had a deep psychological impact. (Reader 41 – 44)

     Teachers and classmates described him as an above-average student, though somewhat of a short-tempered bully towards the younger children. After graduation, he moved to the Tokyo area to work and study for college entrance exams. Despite repeated efforts, he failed to gain admittance to Kumamoto University and then Tokyo University when he first arrived. While he wasn’t studying, Asahara began to learn methods of herbal medicine and acupuncture, traditional arts for the blind. In 1978, he met and married Iishi Tomoko and they had their first child soon after. Asahara’s priority then changed from education to supporting his new family, which spurred him to open his own acupuncture and herbal medicine shop in Funabashi. (Reader 44-45)

     Asahara’s interest in religion, also, began when he was studying in Tokyo. He claimed to have studied Buddhism and gotten involved in ascetic practices because he felt that he was not sufficiently able to help his patients with the other medicinal methods known to him. Although he was raised as part of the Jodo Shin Buddhist sect, it was not until this later study that Asahara felt any religious inspiration. (Reader p. 46)

     There was a religious movement that took place in Japan that, according to Ian Reader, was, “probably the greatest influence on Asahara’s emergent religious world view…” During the 1970s and 1980s, many Japanese, especially the younger, urban, educated group, sought spiritual fulfillment in a society that they felt was increasingly permeated by scientific rationalism and materialism. Believing the traditional religious institutions to be obsolete, there was an explosion of interest in yoga, psychic powers, meditation, and alternative religions. Among the trends was the notion that Buddhism could be rid of its “meaningless” rituals and revived. (Reader 46 – 47)

     In the early 1980s, Asahara became a part of the Agonshu religious movement, which focused on the impending apocalypse and the reform of Buddhism. When he was fined for selling illegally manufactured herbal medicines and his establishment closed, a difficult period for his family, he became more deeply involved in Agonshu ascetic practices. (Lifton p. 17) In 1984, he left the movement with a few followers to pursue yoga and meditation with greater intensity than was advocated by Agonshu. (Reader p. 53)

     He established his own group later that year, when he was in his late twenties. He later changed his name from Matsumoto Chizuo to Asahara Shoko, his religious name. Asahara became the supreme figure and one of the central focuses of Aum religious belief, comparing himself to Jesus and the Hindu deity Shiva. After a series of visions and revelations, he claimed that he had fantastic past lives, in which he built the pyramids and lived as Buddha. He thought of himself as a warrior of truth and bestowed upon himself titles including “savior” and “guru”. He claimed that his level of enlightenment, the highest level, allowed him to levitate while meditating. From the beginning, belief in Aum Shinrikyo was the belief in the vast “power” of Asahara Shoko. (Reader p. 52, 55)
Many sect rituals were devoted to the guru, who often acted outside the rules of behavior he outlined to his followers. His first rituals involved absorption bad karma from disciples in order to grant them a higher level of consciousness. He had frequent sexual encounters, called “transfers of energy,” with several female members. Initiation to Aum involved paying large sums of money to drink Asahara’s blood. Disciples were encouraged to let themselves “merge” with the guru, which involved thinking and acting like him so that they too could achieve his level of enlightenment. To better achieve this, Asahara employed his scientists and built the PSI, or “perfect salvation initiation” headset, which reportedly contained the guru’s brainwaves. Aum Shinrikyo quickly became the near worship of Shoko Asahara. (Lifton p. 22 - 23)

    Aum beliefs drew most prominently from Buddhism, like many other new Japanese religions. The belief in the law of karma was important but Asahara taught that bad karma was incurred simply by existing in this evil world. He believed that this energy could be released by meditation or other austerities, an important part of group activity. Followers indicate that the guru often pushed members to the physical limit. A member was once hung by the feet until he died because he tried to escape the group. (Reader p. 13)

     The theology of Aum Shinrikyo also drew from religious ideas circulating during the 1970s and 1980s but included a sense of “apocalyptic urgency” (Reader p.48). The nuclear attacks of 1945 and the ideas of the French writer Nostradamus, introduced to Japan through the writings of Goto Ben, contributed to the ideas of impending upheaval, especially at the millennium. Also in accordance with the ideas of Nostradamus, Asahara’s role turned into that of the eastern messiah who would lead the world to a new spiritual age (Reader p.51).
 Jay Lifton states that, “…Aum then [became] part of a loosely-connected, still-developing global culture of apocalyptic violence- of violence conceived in sweeping terms as a purification and renewal of humankind through the total or near-total destruction of the planet.” (Lifton p. 4) After proselytization attempts and a political campaign were not as successful as hoped, and Asahara was becoming increasingly paranoid, the group began to plan ways to remove people from this decadent world by poa, or the Buddhist notion of death to save a person in the next life. (Reader p. 44, Lifton p. 43)

     In the mid 1990s, Aum Shinrikyo began to search for weapons of mass destruction. These weapons were needed as a defense against the US government and the Japanese government, which he thought were involved in a conspiracy to poison his followers, and as a means to dispatch large groups of people. Though his attempts to obtain nuclear weapons in Russia were unsuccessful, he was able to procure biological agents such as anthrax and manufacture sarin gas, a nerve agent many more times powerful than cyanide. With these tools, he planned to bring about the disasters that would engulf the world and begin the new spiritual age. (Reader p. 20)

     Following a series of small tests and mishaps that went mostly unnoticed, Aum armed a number of followers with bags of sarin gas hidden in newspapers. The bags were then punctured with umbrellas during the rush hour in a Tokyo subway. The attack killed eleven and maimed and injured thousands more. Though most directly involved, including Asahara, were jailed soon after the event, Aum Shinrikyo did not disband. Aum continues today under the new name Aleph and has never renounced the ideas of Shoko Asahara. The group owns several compounds throughout Japan and claims to have hundred of devotees in several countries, including America. (Metraux p. 1)

     Some scholars and journalists assert that it was Japanese society that made Aum violent. This is true, but not to the extent that Japan can be blamed before the individuals involved. One force that helped to shape Aum was the atomic bomb and the strikes on Japan. That legacy made the notion of doomsday more alarming and believable to Japanese, therefore contributing to the growth of Aum Shinrikyo. (Lifton p. 232)

     Another uniquely Japanese factor is the religious environment in the nation. Historically, Japan has embraced Buddhism and Shinto faiths in a sort of fusion and unison. Japanese youth, especially during the 1970s and 1980s, felt that this wasn’t true to either faith. This “defunct” religious tradition added to the momentum and popularity of new religions, including Aum Shinrikyo. (Lifton p. 254)

    When one regards the entire body of facts on the sect and its guru, it becomes clear that the formation of Aum Shinrikyo and the attacks on the subway were most affected by problems and realities in many or all societies, not something exclusive to Japan. Groups with similar motives, religious militants, and groups such as the Branch Davidians, among others, are very similar. (Lifton p. 268)

    It is certain that Asahara Shoko is central to every Aum Shinrikyo accomplished. He was always the supreme leader of the group and was the architect of the plans for attack. Asahara’s personal predicament can be attributed to forces such as poverty, the struggles of visual impairment, neglect by family, failure to achieve certain goals, some mental instability, and his volatile personality. The majority of the blame should be laid upon this deranged individual, not Japanese society.

Reader,  Ian. Religious Violence in Contemporary Japan: The Case of Aum Shinrikyo. Honolulu: The University of Hawaii Press, 2000.

Lifton, Robert Jay. Destroying the World to Save It. Henry Hold & Co., 1999

Metraux, Daniel A. Aum Shinrikyo and Japanese Youth. University Press of America, 1999
 

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