Aum Shinrikyo and the Tokyo Subway Sarin Attack
The Japanese new religious movement founded by Shoko Asahara that evolved from a yoga group into an armed apocalyptic organization, culminating in the 1995 sarin attack on the Tokyo subway — the first large-scale chemical weapons attack by a non-state actor.
Events
Shoko Asahara Founds Aum
Shoko Asahara, a partially blind yoga instructor, founded a yoga and meditation group in Tokyo in 1984, which he reorganized as the religious movement Aum Shinrikyo in 1987. The group blended Buddhist and Hindu teachings with claims of Asahara's supernatural powers and an apocalyptic vision of an approaching end-time conflict.
Location: Tokyo, Japan
The Murder of Tsutsumi Sakamoto
Aum members murdered Tsutsumi Sakamoto, an anti-Aum lawyer, along with his wife and infant son at their home, after Sakamoto had organized families of cult members into a legal campaign against the group. The case went unsolved for years, and the failure of police to pursue early leads against Aum was later cited as a missed warning.
Location: Yokohama, Japan
The Matsumoto Sarin Attack
Aum members released sarin nerve gas near a courthouse in Matsumoto at night, killing eight people and injuring hundreds among nearby residents. The attack targeted judges handling a civil suit against the cult, and was attributed to Aum only after the Tokyo attack the following year.
Location: Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, Japan
Sarin Released on the Tokyo Subway
On the morning of 20 March 1995, five Aum members punctured bags of liquid sarin on three Tokyo subway lines, targeting trains passing through the Kasumigaseki and Nagatacho stations serving the government district. Thirteen people were killed on the day — a fourteenth died later of after-effects — and thousands were injured. The attack was intended to disrupt a police raid on the cult scheduled for 22 March, according to investigators.
Location: Tokyo, Japan
Police Raids and the Arrest of Asahara
Police raided Aum compounds across Japan within days of the attack, uncovering a chemical weapons production facility at the cult's compound near Mount Fuji. Over 200 members were arrested through the spring and summer; Asahara was captured at the compound on 16 May 1995. The group's representatives later said the attacks were carried out secretly by a small circle without the knowledge of ordinary believers, a claim disputed by prosecutors.
Location: Kamikuishiki, Yamanashi Prefecture, Japan
Trials and Death Sentences
Trials of Aum leaders ran over two decades. Asahara was sentenced to death in 2004, and in total thirteen senior members, including Asahara, received death sentences for the subway attack and related murders, including the Sakamoto family and the Matsumoto attack. Many other members received prison terms up to life imprisonment.
Location: Tokyo, Japan
The Cult Survives as Aleph
The group renamed itself Aleph in January 2000 under new leadership, formally renouncing Asahara's teachings, and a splinter group, Hikari no Wa, separated in 2007. Japan, Russia, Canada, France, Kazakhstan, and the European Union designated the organization a terrorist group, and Japanese authorities have kept the successor groups under continuous surveillance, a regime the groups have repeatedly challenged in court.
Location: Japan
Asahara and Senior Members Are Executed
After exhausting all appeals, Shoko Asahara and six followers were executed by hanging on 6 July 2018, with six more senior members executed on 26 July. The executions closed the legal chapter of the deadliest terrorist attack in modern Japanese history and renewed public debate over the cult's surviving organizations and the surveillance that keeps them monitored.
Location: Tokyo and Osaka, Japan