Three decades since Shizue Takahashi's husband and a dozen others were killed with a nerve agent on Tokyo's subway, she fears Japan could see a repeat of the doomsday cult attack.
Takahashi, whose husband worked for the metro system, told AFP it was "unbelievable" that successor groups to Aum Shinrikyo, the sect that carried out the attack, remain active today.
"In this volatile society, in Japanese society where it is not so easy any more to make a living, some say people are more prone to be attracted to cults," the 78-year-old said. "I feel, with a real sense of crisis, that the same thing could happen again."
Aum members released sarin on five trains during morning rush hour on March 20, 1995 -- killing 13 people while a 14th victim, who suffered severe brain damage, died in 2020.
More than 5,800 others were injured in the attack, for which the wild-haired, nearly blind cult leader Shoko Asahara was executed in 2018 along with 12 disciples.
On the day, five men, one on each train, dropped bags of sarin on the floor and pierced them with umbrellas.
The assailants quickly disembarked but the carriages filled with deadly fumes as the trains drove on.
Passengers first noticed a smell that irritated their eyes and nose. Then they began to gasp for air and some collapsed, convulsing or foaming at the mouth.
As people scrambled to escape, Takahashi's husband Kazumasa, then 50, was seen carrying a bag of sarin away by hand and wiping the floor with newspapers, before keeling over.
When Takahashi arrived at hospital, "I saw so many people suffering that I could tell something disastrous had happened," she said. "The doctors had tried very hard to resuscitate my husband... but his body was already cold. He was dead."
Aum's leader Asahara, whose real name was Chizuo Matsumoto, preached that the apocalypse was coming and that murders could elevate souls to a higher realm.
Disaffected young people in Japan, including doctors and engineers who later manufactured toxins, took solace in his doctrines.
At the height of its influence, the cult counted more than 10,000 followers, mostly in Japan but also in Russia, the United States and elsewhere.
Aum has since disbanded, but its hanged guru is still worshipped in Japan by an estimated 1,600 members of successor groups.
Experts warn that the groups are reaching young recruits in secret both in person and through social media and messaging apps, where they are also spreading posts saying that Aum's crimes were misportrayed.
"It's concerning that memories of the series of heinous crimes committed by Aum Shinrikyo are fading, and that the dangers of the group are not properly understood," Justice Minister Keisuke Suzuki told reporters recently. "This is not a story from the past. It is a present problem."
Authorities believe Asahara ordered the subway carnage in an effort to deflect investigators who were closing in on Aum facilities.
He and several followers had stood for public office in 1990 but none were elected, something that may have pushed him to militarise the group.
Two months after the sarin attack, Asahara was arrested and later convicted of 13 major crimes including the train strike and another using VX nerve agent.
Survivors of the subway attack say they still have vision problems, flashbacks and nightmares, with some too afraid to approach stations.
On one of the targeted trains was architect Manabu Takeda, then a 31-year-old father of two small children.
"I noticed some liquid oozing out from a package wrapped in newspaper. The liquid was seeping out on the floor, which started to worry me," he told AFP.
Takeda moved down the carriage and soon got off at Kasumigaseki Station in central Tokyo.
"I was incredibly fortunate" to suffer no major injury, Takeda said.
Even so, his pupils temporarily contracted and he felt his vision became darker, as if he were wearing sunglasses.
"I want people to remember the attack," said Takeda, who describes himself as now "very aware of my surroundings. I want to say: Are you OK with just looking at your phone, and not paying attention to what's happening around you?"
© 2025 AFP
6 Comments
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MilesTeg
She's absolutely right. How Aum is allowed to continue to exist is a farce and an insult to those who died, remain injured, their family members, and Japanese society as a whole. Yet the Moonies may be banned? I say get rid of them all.
Kuribozu
Religion vs a cult: what's the difference? Might it be that decent religious believers should be able retain a personal sense of morality and responsibility, and be able to resist when, for example, their leader prompts them to do something morally wrong? Whereas with a cult... If you find yourself devoted to a leader to the point that your own moral principles begin to deteriorate, and you begin to echo immoral positions of the leader, you might be on a slippery slope.
Tim Sullivan
My girlfriend narrowly escaped being murdered by the Aum nutjobs on her way to work. Many of the cult members were graduates of Japan's best universities -- why were they so easily brainwashed? It depresses me that we are approaching the 30th anniversary of that terrible day and we still don't have any real answers.
kaimycahl
More interesting is the media keeps the memories alive by giving them a space to report their past. I understand that the news event was historical but as Shizue Takahashi's reported she believes history will repeat itself.
starpunk
The same way that other cults continue existing. Not to mention, they also murder those who leave them, just like gangs often do. After all, the NOI murdered Malcolm X Shabazz when he left, and it still exists with that Screwy Louis Farrakhan as its head. And allowing these gang/cults to carry on IS an insult to the innocents they kill. And didn't a Moonie murder the Japanese PM a few years ago? Well, these subway survivors count too!
Religions are meant to better a person in this life and prepare him/her for a better eternity in the afterlife after surviving the trials and temptations of material life. Religions advocate morality, concern for others, good deeds, good acts, peace and LOVE. Any religion that doesn't promote these things is a false one. And for that same matter, every religion (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Sikhism, Zoroastrianism, Baha'ism, the various forms of Hinduism + Buddhism, folk religions, any old thing) has its true moral practitioners and their fanatics who distort religion for their selfish hateful violent agenda.
1995 saw this sick terrorist attack and the OKC Federal Bldg. bombing. Some of the ones who endorsed that evil deed were 'Christian' fundamentalist fanatics who would later on join the MAGA cult.
And in early 1993 there was the Christian fanatic Branch Davidian cult standoff, a failed attack on the World Trade Centers by a small Islamic fanatic gang and a trashing of a historical mosque in India by Hindu fanatics.
In the previous three cases the terrorist cults were led by 'gurus'/false messiahs/phony gods. That's what makes them different from true religions.
Then the cult really isn't 'disbanded', is it? As long as they have these social media posts, contacts in prisons and denials of Aum's crimes (or any other crimes, such as the Holocaust) then the problem isn't 'solved', is it?
The Moonies worship the dead Sun Myung Moon even now, just like Aum does Asahara. The danger remains.
TokyoLiving
And in the last minute, they begged mercy for their lives..
Justice were done !!!..