On
this date, July 6, 2019, the founder of Japanese doomsday cult, Aum Shinrikyo,
Shoko Asahara, along with six other cult members, was executed by hanging in
Japan.
Shoko
Asahara
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Born
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Chizuo Matsumoto
March 2, 1955
Yatsushiro, Kumamoto, Japan
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Died
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July 6, 2018 (aged 63)
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Cause of
death
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Execution by hanging
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Occupation
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Cult leader, founder of Aum
Shinrikyo
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Criminal
status
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Executed
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Spouse(s)
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Tomoko Matsumoto (took the name "Akari
Matsumoto" after her release from prison)[1]
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Children
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12
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Criminal
charge
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Murder, terrorism
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Penalty
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Date apprehended
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16 May 1995
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Shoko Asahara
(麻原 彰晃 Asahara Shōkō, March 2, 1955 – July 6, 2018), born Chizuo
Matsumoto (松本 智津夫 Matsumoto Chizuo), was the founder of the Japanese doomsday-cult
group Aum Shinrikyo. Asahara was convicted of masterminding
the deadly 1995 sarin-gas attack on the Tokyo subway, and
was also involved in several other crimes. He was sentenced to death in 2004. In May
2012, his execution was postponed due to further arrests of Aum Shinrikyo
members. He was executed by hanging on July 6, 2018.
INTERNET SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoko_Asahara
Early
life
Asahara
was born on March 2, 1955 into a large, poor family
of tatami-mat-makers
in Japan's Kumamoto Prefecture. He had infantile glaucoma from birth, which made him
lose all sight in his left eye and go partially blind in his right eye at a
young age, and was thus enrolled in a school for the blind. Asahara was known to
be a bully at the
school, taking advantage of the other students by beating them and extorting
money from them. He graduated in 1977 and turned to the study of acupuncture
and traditional Chinese medicine, which
were common careers for the blind in Japan. He married the following year and
eventually fathered 12 children, the eldest of whom was born in 1978.
In
1981, Asahara was convicted of practicing pharmacy without a license and
selling unregulated drugs, for which he was fined ¥200,000 (equivalent to about
¥245,000 in 2013).
Asahara's
interest in religion reportedly started at this time. Having been recently
married, he worked to support his large and growing family. He dedicated his
free time to the study of various religious concepts, starting with Chinese
astrology and Taoism.
Later,
Asahara practiced western esotericism, yoga, meditation,
esoteric Buddhism, and esoteric Christianity.
Aum
Shinrikyo
In
1984, Asahara formed Aum Shinsen no Kai. He changed his name from Chizuo
Matsumoto to Shoko Asahara and renamed his group Aum Shinrikyo in 1987. Asahara
applied for government registration and, although authorities were initially
reluctant, after an appeal, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government
eventually granted it legal recognition as a religious corporation in 1989.
After
this, a monastic order was established, and many lay
followers joined. Asahara gained credibility by appearing on TV and on magazine
covers. He gradually attained a following of believers and began being invited
to lecture-meeting at universities. Asahara also wrote several religious books,
including Beyond Life and Death, Declaring Myself the Christ, and
Supreme Initiation.
The
doctrine of Aum Shinrikyo is based on the Vajrayana
scriptures, the Bible,
and other texts. In 1992 Asahara published Declaring Myself the Christ,
within which he declared himself Christ,
Japan's only fully enlightened master, and identified with the Lamb of
God.
His
purported mission was to take others' sins upon himself, and
he claimed he could transfer spiritual power to his followers. He saw dark
conspiracies everywhere, promulgated by the Jews, the Freemasons,
the Dutch,
the British Royal Family, and rival Japanese
religions.
He
outlined a doomsday
prophecy, which included a third
World War, and described a final conflict culminating in a nuclear
"Armageddon",
borrowing the term from the Book of Revelation 16:16.
Asahara
often preached the necessity of Armageddon for "human relief". He eventually
declared, "Put tantra Vajrayana into practice in accordance with the
doctrines of Mahamudra,"
and he led a series of terrorist attacks using a secret organization
hidden from ordinary believers.
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A woman walks by a
television screen in Tokyo showing the news of executions of six former Aum
Shinrikyo cult members on July 26 last year. | KYODO
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Tokyo
subway gas attack, and arrest
Main
article: Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo
subway
On
March 20, 1995, members of Aum Shinrikyo attacked the Tokyo
subway with the nerve agent sarin. Thirteen
people died and thousands more suffered ill effects. After finding sufficient
evidence, authorities accused Aum Shinrikyo of complicity in the attack, as
well as in a number of smaller-scale incidents. Dozens of disciples were
arrested, Aum's facilities were raided, and the court issued an order for
Asahara's arrest.
On
May 16, 1995, the police investigated the headquarters of Aum Shinrikyo.
Asahara was discovered in a very small, isolated room in one of the facilities.
Wary
of possible Aum military power, the First Airborne Brigade of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force was
stationed nearby to support the police if needed.
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死刑 日本
[PHOTO
SOURCE: https://theme.udn.com/theme/story/6775/2582583]
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Accusations,
trial and execution
Asahara
faced 27 counts of murder in 13 separate indictments.
The prosecution argued that Asahara gave orders to attack the Tokyo Subway in
order to "overthrow the government and install himself in the position of Emperor
of Japan".
Later,
during the trial which took more than seven years to conclude, the prosecution
forwarded an additional theory that the attacks were ordered to divert police
attention away from Aum. The prosecution also accused Asahara of masterminding
the Matsumoto incident and the Sakamoto family murder. According to
Asahara's defense team, a group of senior followers initiated the atrocities
and kept them a secret from Asahara.
During
the trials, some of the disciples testified against Asahara, and he was found
guilty on 13 of 17 charges, including the Sakamoto family murder; four charges
were dropped. On February 27, 2004, he was sentenced to death by hanging. The
trial was called the "trial of the century" by the Japanese media.
Meanwhile, Asahara resigned from his position as the Aum Shinrikyo
representative in an attempt to prevent the group from being forcefully
dissolved by the state.
The
defense appealed
Asahara's sentencing on the grounds that he was mentally unfit, and psychiatric
examinations were undertaken. During much of the trials, Asahara remained
silent or only muttered to himself. However, he communicated with the staff at
his detention facility, which convinced the examiner that Asahara was
maintaining his silence out of free will. Owing to his lawyers' failure to
submit the statement of reason for appeal, the Tokyo
High Court decided on March 27, 2006, not to grant them leave to appeal.
This decision was upheld by the Supreme Court of Japan on September 15, 2006.
Two
re-trial appeals were declined by the appellate court. In June 2012, Asahara's
execution was postponed due to arrests of several fugitive Aum Shinrikyo
members.
Asahara
was hanged on
July 6, 2018, at the Tokyo Detention House, 23 years after the
sarin gas attack, along with six other cult members. Relatives of victims said
they approved of the execution.
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The
members of Aum Shinrikyo who have been executed
TOP LEFT TO RIGHT: Shoko
Asahara, Tomomasa Nakagawa, Yoshihiro Inoue, Tomomitsu Niimi,
Seiichi Endo ,
Masami Tsuchiya and Kiyohide Hayakawa
Japan
death penalty – does Japan have capital punishment, what execution methods do
they use and when were Aum Shinrikyo killed?
Japan has executed the last members of the cult group Aum Shinrikyo responsible for the sarin attack on Tokyo's underground in 1995 https://www.facebook.com/VictimsFamiliesForTheDeathPenalty/posts/1656190981169528 https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6868031/japan-death-penalty-capital-punishment-method-aum-shinkrikyo/ BLOG POST: http://victimsfamiliesforthedeathpenalty.blogspot.com/2014/08/why-japan-still-has-death-penalty-in.html |
AUM Shinrikyo cult founder Asahara, 6 ex-followers executed at once
(Mainichi Japan)
TOKYO
-- AUM Shinrikyo cult founder Shoko Asahara, 63, who orchestrated the 1995
Tokyo subway sarin gas attack and other murders, and six former members of the
cult were executed on the morning of July 6, the Ministry of Justice announced.
- 【Related】Asahara unresponsive to calls from guards, but could walk, eat on own before execution
- 【Related】Chronology of major events related to AUM Shinrikyo cult
- 【Related】3 major criminal cases involving AUM doomsday cult
- 【Related】Japan vigilant against retaliation after AUM founder's execution
The
executions came 11 years and 10 months after the Supreme Court upheld a lower
court ruling that sentenced the former AUM leader to death in September 2006 as
the "mastermind" of the series of crimes by the cult, which sent
shockwaves through Japanese society and carved a place in the history of
Japan's Heisei era.
Along
with Asahara, whose real name was Chizuo Matsumoto, 12 other former top members
of AUM Shinrikyo were also sentenced to death. The six other members executed
on the same day as Asahara were Kiyohide Hayakawa, 68, at the Fukuoka Detention
Center; Yoshihiro Inoue, 48, and Tomomitsu Niimi, 54, at the Osaka Detention
Center; Masami Tsuchiya, 53, at the Tokyo Detention Center; Tomomasa Nakagawa,
55, at the Hiroshima Detention Center; and Seiichi Endo, 58, also at the Tokyo
Detention Center. The death sentences for the six were finalized between 2009
and 2011.
The
latest executions bring the total number signed off by Minister of Justice Yoko
Kamikawa to 10, including during her previous run in the same position from
October 2014 to October 2015. In addition, seven death row inmates is the
highest number ordered executed in a single day in Japan since executions
resumed in the country in 1993.
Asahara
was born in Yatsushiro, Kumamoto Prefecture, in 1955, and established the
predecessor of AUM Shinrikyo, "AUM Shinsen no Kai" in 1984. The
organization attracted believers through yoga and meditation classes that
claimed to give practitioners special abilities. In 1987, the organization
changed its name to AUM Shinrikyo and became an incorporated religious body in
1989.
In
1990, Asahara himself and other followers ran as candidates for the House of
Representatives, but none of them were successfully elected to office. Trouble
continued with members leaving the cult and the payment of expensive
"offerings," attracting harsh criticism from the public.
After
the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system, Metropolitan Police Department
raided the cult's facility in the then village of Kamikuishiki in Yamanashi
Prefecture, and arrested Asahara and other leaders of the cult, and
subsequently indicted Asahara on murder and other charges in 17 cases. In order
to speed up proceedings, the prosecution subsequently dropped relatively light
charges against Asahara in four of these cases. The remaining 13 cases included
the 1989 murder of anti-cult lawyer Tsutsumi Sakamoto and his family, and a
1994 sarin gas attack in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, in central Japan, which
killed eight people. In total, 29 people died (27 confirmed by the court as
victims) and over 6,500 people were injured.
When
his trial began in the Tokyo District Court in 1996, Asahara asserted that he
was almost completely innocent, claiming that it was his disciples who carried
out the attacks. However, he was handed the death penalty 2004 on the grounds
that "committing crimes that stole the lives of so many people based on
fictitious fantasies is foolish and despicable and deserves maximum social
condemnation," citing that Asahara had "planned to expand the power
of the religious cult by arming it, and imagined taking over Japan in the name
of salvation and installing himself as king."
A
total of 13 former members were sentenced to death for their involvement in
either the death of the Sakamoto family or the two sarin gas attacks, or a
combination of the incidents. In addition, six received life sentences, 81
prison time, 87 suspended sentences and three were fined. Two former members
were found not guilty.
Following
the cult leader's sentencing, because his legal group "could not
communicate" with Asahara, they missed the deadline for submitting
paperwork to appeal the court's decision on the grounds that he was mentally
unfit to stand trial. Because of this, the Tokyo High Court struck down an
appeal in 2006. The Supreme Court also upheld the Tokyo High Court's ruling,
and Asahara's death sentence was finalized the same year.
In
1995, the Tokyo District Court revoked the legal status of AUM Shinrikyo as an
incorporated religious organization. In 2000, the group renamed itself Aleph,
and a new group called "Hikari no wa" (The Circle of Rainbow Light)
broke away in 2007.
The
trials over incidents related to AUM Shinrikyo's activities came to an end in
January 2018. In March, the Justice Ministry moved seven of the 13 death row
inmates, excluding Asahara, from where they were being held in the Tokyo
Detention Center in the capital's Katsushika Ward to five regional centers, and
the details of the execution of their sentences and the timing started being
considered.
INTERNET
SOURCE: https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20180706/p2a/00m/0na/003000c
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Journalists and
policemen stand in front of Tokyo Detention Center where former leader of Aum,
the Japanese doomsday cult, Chizuo Matsumoto, who went by the name Shoko
Asahara, was executed, in Tokyo, Japan July 6, 2018. Photo: REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
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See
also
EXTERNAL
LINKS:
- Aleph: the organization's official website, with an English section
- A Japan Times article about two documentary films on Aleph
- BBC profile of Asahara
- A, a documentary film about Asahara made in 1998 by Tatsuya Mori on IMDb
- A2, a follow-up documentary made in 2001, also by Mori on IMDb
OTHER
LINKS:
SAMURAI
POLICE CHIEF: KAWAJI TOSHIYOSHI (JUNE 17, 1834 TO OCTOBER 13, 1879)
NATIONAL
POLICE AGENCY (JAPAN) A.K.A SAMURAI POLICE
10 factors
that make Japan a safe country
In loving memory of Rie Isogai, We decided to post this article by
Charles Lane and also some information from Wikipedia about Capital Punishment
in Japan.
Why Japan Still Has the Death Penalty By Charles Lane
COVER PHOTO:
https://www.facebook.com/VictimsFamiliesForTheDeathPenalty/photos/a.254785131310127/1699863240135635/?type=3&theater
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Capital punishment is a legal penalty in Japan. It is applied in
practice only for murder, and executions are carried out by hanging.
Death sentences are almost uniquely imposed in cases of multiple
murders, though some single murderers have also been hanged in rare cases.
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