Murder on the Tokyo Subway: Nerve Centres, Religion and Violence

Abstract

The 1995 Tokyo subway attack by the Japanese religious movement Aum Shinrikyō represents one of the most dramatic examples of violence by a religious movement in modern times. Initially urban-based but with a rural communal presence, Aum believed that it had a mission to transform the world and fight in an imminent apocalyptic war between good and evil, and it engaged in numerous conflicts with the secular world it despised. While emphasising the significance of religious visions in Aum's activities this article examines the degree to which Aum's associations with the city of Tokyo also featured as an element in its violence.

Notes

1. See Reader (2012) for a discussion of the impact of the Aum Affair on political and strategic studies communities concerned with the study of terrorism, and especially pp. 181-186 for a discussion of how it was viewed by many experts in these fields as a landmark and watershed event, and how the US Senate's Committee on Governmental Affairs held an inquiry into Aum's activities in October-November and portrayed it as opening up a new era in the use of weapons of mass destruction.

2. Toyoda's comments and their implications reflect a fairly widespread feeling in Japan that such a shelter exists underneath Kasumigaseki station for the benefit of a government elite that has paid little heed to the safety of the general populace

3. Although many Aum leaders were arrested after the March 20 attack, some briefly evaded capture and carried out the attacks mentioned here before being caught. Friends in Tokyo told me of their worries when commuting to work afterwards, and even three months later, in June 1995, the first time I was able to go to Tokyo after the attack, there was still a palpable sense of public panic around.

4. Aum ran a computer company in Tokyo and other cities that provided it with income (Reader, 2007, p. 62).

5. Groups can, once they have been formally constituted and in existence for a period of time, apply to the Ministry of Cultural Affairs for registration as a legally affiliated religious corporation in Japan under the Shūkyō hōjinhō or Religious Corporations Law of 1952. They are required to show that their focus is on propounding religious teachings, cultivating believers and performing religious rites, and to show that they have legally responsible officials who are publicly accountable for the group's activities. Being granted such registration provides religious groups with protection against state interference and allows them tax breaks that are financially highly beneficial. As a result of the Aum Affair, the law was revised to make registration more difficult, while Aum itself was stripped of this favorable status

6. Such dramatic visions of hells are commonplace in Buddhism, and can be found in Japanese Buddhist popular tales (e.g. Nakamura 1996, p. 50).

7. Aum was accused of various violations of planning laws, and eventually agreed to give the land it had acquired to the local community in return for financial compensation (see Kumamoto Nichinichi Shinbun, 1995).

8. In Reader (2007) I discuss in detail the processes whereby Aum financed, acquired and made these weapons; see also Takahashi (1996) for an account by an ex-disciple of what went on in Aum's laboratories.

9. Aum's interactions and conflicts with the communities and regional administrative agencies around its Namino commune are dealt with in a volume produced by a regional newspaper (Kumamoto Nichinichi Shinbun, 1995) that strikes a reasonable balance between the conflicting parties, while the account (Takeuchi, 1995) by a local resident involved in opposing Aum's activities at Kamikuishiki, is useful for detailing Aum activities there but is much more overtly hostile to the movement.

10. The Rajneesh movement offers an earlier example in that it produced salmonella bacteria and spread these in salad bars at local restaurants in the area around its commune in rural Oregon in 1984. The intention appears to have been to kill or at least harm local opponents of the movement. However, although some people became sick as a result, no-one died. The Rajneesh movement's millennial visions and its notions of conspiracy were somewhat similar to Aum and it also engaged in trying to make weapons to aid its purposes (see Gordon, 1987, pp. 182–183 and Reader, 1996, pp. 101–107) but never on the scale of Aum.

11. These issues and terms are themselves contentious and the focus of much debate in political and academic arenas. For a recent study of how the concepts of religion and of religious freedom were developed in Japan during the period of its development as a modern nation see Josephson (2012), who shows how such concepts were developed in nineteenth century Japan as a way of regulating religions and restricting many activities. On the underlying premise underpinning the Religious Corporations Law (that religion, although a private affair, is also a force for public good) see Mullins (1997).

12. Josephson's (2012) study, cited above in endnote 11, in many respects upholds aspects of Cavanaugh's argument about the creation of a category of religion in the nineteenth century, but it shows that this was not simply a hegemonic act of Western powers and academics alone, but that the Japanese were actively involved- and skilfully so- in formulating the concept and category in ways that enhanced Japanese political power and control.

13. The Adachi Ward website www.city.adachi.tokyo.jp contains numerous references to the 'Aum problem', such as www.city.adachi.tokyo.jp/kikikanri/bosai/bohan/oumutaisaku.html (accessed April 17th 2013). I would like to thank Erica Baffelli for the information about Aleph's presence and the conflicts surrounding it in Adachi in Tokyo.

14. All Japanese names are given in Japanese order (family name first followed by given name). Japanese terms and book titles are given using the modified Hepburn romanisation system.