At 7:48 a.m. on Monday, March 20, 1995, five members of the Japanese new-religious-movement *Aum Shinrikyo* boarded five different trains on three converging Tokyo subway lines. Each carried two or three plastic bags wrapped in newspaper, each bag containing approximately 600 milliliters of impure liquid sarin. As the trains approached Kasumigaseki station — the station at the political heart of Tokyo, beneath the National Diet, the Supreme Court, and the major ministries — each man set down his package, pierced the bags with the sharpened tip of an umbrella, and stepped off at the next station. The released sarin evaporated through the morning commute. The first 911 call came at 8:09 a.m. By the time the trains had been cleared, hospitals across Tokyo were processing the largest mass-casualty event in Japanese postwar history: 13 dead (a 14th died of injuries 14 years later), approximately 5,800 injured, of whom approximately 1,000 required hospitalization. The attackers belonged to a cult that, in 1989, had been registered as a recognized religious organization with Japanese authorities, and by 1995 claimed approximately 40,000 members worldwide. Its founder, Shoko Asahara — a half-blind acupuncturist and yoga instructor — had ordered the attack as part of a planned millenarian apocalypse that would establish Aum theocratic rule in Japan. Asahara was executed by hanging on July 6, 2018, together with six other Aum senior figures. The attack remains the single most consequential act of chemical-weapon terrorism by a non-state actor in modern history.
Religion, Cults & Spirituality
1995
