Religious Violence in Contemporary Japan

The Case of Aum Shinrikyo

Ian Reader

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780700711086
• eBook ISBN: 9781136819483
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

The Tokyo subway attack in March 1995 was just one of a series of criminal activities including murder, kidnapping, extortion, and the illegal manufacture of arms and drugs carried out by the Japanese new religious movement Aum Shinrikyo, under the guidance of its leader Asahara Shoko. Reader looks at Aum's claims about itself and asks, why did a religious movement ostensibly focussed on yoga, meditation, asceticism and the pursuit of enlightenment become involved in violent activities?

Reader discusses Aum's spiritual roots, placing it in the context of contemporary Japanese religious patterns. Asahara's teaching are examined from his earliest public pronouncements through to his sermons at the time of the attack, and statements he has made in court. In analysing how Aum not only manufactured nerve gases but constructed its own internal doctrinal justifications for using them Reader focuses on the formation of what made all this possible: Aum's internal thought-world, and on how this was developed.

Reader argues that despite the horrors of this particular case, Aum should not be seen as unique, nor as solely a political or criminal terror group. Rather it can best be analysed within the context of religious violence, as an extreme example of a religious movement that has created friction with the wider world that escalated into violence.

救

1 A Death in the Culture of Coercive Asceticism – Killing for Salvation, Religious Violence and Aum Shinrikyō

A POTENTIAL DEFECTION AND ITS MEANINGS

In May 1997 Ōuchi Sanae, a woman in her thirties who had been a high-ranking figure in A urn Shinrikyō, testified in court in the trial of Ishii Hisako, another woman of similar age and high rank in Aum. The trial was one of the many that have taken place in Japan since the spring of 1995 resulting from the Japanese police investigations into Aum after the Tokyo subway attack of 20 March 1995. Aum Shinrikyō was generally considered to be one of the ‘new’ new religions of Japan that had come into prominence in the 1980s, most particularly in urban areas and with a particular appeal for younger, educated Japanese.¹ Originally founded as a small yoga and meditation group in 1984 by Asahara Shōkō, the movement’s partially blind and charismatic leader, it had, by 1995, developed into a highly structured and hierarchic movement of perhaps 10,000 followers in Japan,² of whom around 1,200, or just over 10 per cent, had renounced the world to become shukkesha (a general term in Aum for those who had ‘left the world’, severed ties with their families, and become nuns or monks in Aum’s religious system). It had a number of centres in the Mount Fuji region in Shizuoka and Yamanashi prefectures, with a commune near the village of Kamikuishiki in Yamanashi, some two hours from Tokyo, where Aum had erected numerous buildings known in the movement as satian (this term being the movement’s Japanised rendition of the Sanskrit word satyam, or truth).³ While some of the satian were used for legitimate religious purposes as halls of worship and living quarters for the movement’s shukkesha, others, it transpired, had more sinister uses. Satian 7 (each had been assigned a number) turned out to have harboured laboratories and plants where the poison gases used in the subway attack were produced.

Aum was already suspected of a number of criminal activities, including the murder and kidnapping of opponents, when the subway attack occurred, triggering police raids on the Kamikuishiki commune and other Aum centres. As a result, evidence began to emerge of various crimes and illegal activities that went back at least to 1988, and hundreds of Aum members were arrested, including Asahara (who was arrested on 16 May 1995, almost eight weeks after the subway attack) and his closest associates. They were charged with various offences including murder, and were brought to trial.

In the trial in question, Ishii was charged with the illegal disposal of the corpse of an Aum practitioner who had died in June 1993 during severe ascetic training ordered by Asahara. Ōuchi was appearing as a witness in the trial and her testimony provided a chilling insight into the atmosphere and attitudes within Aum at this time – attitudes that were central to Aum’s uses of violence and espousal of the means of mass destruction. Ishii and Ōuchi were close disciples of Asahara and had been with the movement since its earliest days. Both held high positions in Aum, Ishii as head of Aum’s finance ‘ministry’ in the quasi or alternative ‘government’ that it had established in June 1994,⁴ and Ōuchi as second in charge of the ‘ministry’ overseeing new disciples. In addition to their having renounced the world as shukkesha, they both possessed ‘holy names’ (hōrinēmu); these names had their origins in Sanskrit, and were bestowed by Asahara on practitioners who had reached the higher levels of Aum’s rigidly structured hierarchy. The two women had powerful reputations in Aum as seasoned ascetic practitioners. Ishii was the first in the movement and Ōuchi the second to be accredited with attaining the awakening of the kundalini,⁵ a stage of yoga development that, according to Aum’s system of practice, unleashed immense spiritual energy and awareness.

As will be discussed in later chapters, Aum had developed a highly structured and intensely hierarchical ranking system which related to its belief that there were various levels of existence and of consciousness, and that success at different levels of ascetic practice enabled the practitioner to enter these different realms. Members ‘challenged’ these various stages in their practice, and success (which was normally verified by Asahara as a result of the experiences disciples had during their practice) could lead to promotions on Aum’s hierarchic spiritual ladder. At the top of this spiritual hierarchy was Asahara himself, who was referred to as the ‘ultimately liberated one’ (saishu gedatsusha) and as the ‘Spirit of Truth: his Holiness the Master’ (shinri no mitama saisei).⁶

Ishii was the highest-ranked practitioner in the spiritual hierarchy below Asahara, considered to be capable of carrying out spiritual initiations. She was one of only five members who held the rank and title seitaishi (‘sacred grand teacher’),⁷ while Ōuchi held the next rank below this, that of seigoshi (‘sacred awakened teacher’). Besides her prowess as an ascetic practitioner and teacher (she gave various lectures and teachings to Aum disciples, and published numerous articles and volumes of her spiritual experiences),⁸ Ishii had great control over the movement’s finances and was central to Aum’s administration. She had also for some time, although this was not widely known outside Aum’s upper echelons, been Asahara’s lover, and had borne three children in the 1990s, all presumed to be his, although it appears that this relationship had ended some time before the subway attack.⁹

She had also previously been imprisoned in the service of Aum, having been arrested and incarcerated in October 1990 along with Aoyama Yoshinobu, Aum’s chief lawyer, and other officials on suspicion of violations of the Japanese land registry laws in relation to Aum’s purchase of land at Namino in Kumamoto prefecture in southern Japan. This was one of many incidents (to be discussed in subsequent chapters) in which Aum came into conflict with mainstream society and demonstrated contempt for its laws. Basically Aum operated with wholly different perspectives and in a different moral universe from that of mainstream society, regarding its own interests and religious imperatives as being above or not bounded by the law of the land. This attitude was amply illustrated by Ōuchi’s testimony in the trial of Ishii Hisako in May 1997.

According to Ōuchi, a 25-year-old Aum disciple, Ochi Naoki, had voiced doubts about his continued faith in Aum and had decided to quit the movement in the summer of 1993. Defections had been a matter of grave worry to Asahara for some time, and he had expressed fears that the very existence of the movement would be threatened as a result.¹⁰ This feeling had become increasingly pronounced by 1993, which was a period that has been described by an Aum member as one of increasing paranoia.¹¹

Aum had a polarised view of the world, in which the forces of good and evil were ranged against each other in a cosmic struggle. The origins of this polarisation were founded in Asahara’s early religious conviction that he had been entrusted with a sacred mission to lead the forces of good in a war against evil. Aum had come to regard the world at large as corrupt and spiritually polluted, described by Asahara as being a ‘den of evil’ (akugō no sōkutsu)¹² and ‘nothing but a cesspit’.¹³ This profound rejection of the everyday world was one of the bases upon which Aum’s system of world renunciation had been founded: members of the movement were deeply critical of the materialistic world and sought liberation from it. Aum did not just regard the everyday world as a hindrance to liberation, however: it saw it as a pernicious force that could pull down all those who lived in it. By 1993 this view was so strong that commune members who considered leaving were forcibly detained to ‘save’ them from ‘falling’ into the realms of evil, while Aum made concerted attempts to ‘rescue’ people from the world of evil by persuading or cajoling lay members to renounce the world and enter Aum’s communal life as shukkesha.

Unsurprisingly in such a paranoid atmosphere, there were many who did try to leave, and this led to numerous incidents of forced detention, violence and maltreatment, as well as kidnappings in which defectors were forcibly brought back to Aum’s premises. In the period from 1993 until the police raids in March 1995, numerous dissident followers were incarcerated by Aum at Kamikuishiki. There were two primary concerns behind this forcible resistance to defections and the kidnapping of defectors.

The first of these related to a belief that had first manifested itself in Asahara’s thoughts in the latter part of the 1980s but that eventually became an overarching theme colouring his entire view of the world: the notion that Aum was surrounded by hostile forces and that a vast conspiracy bent on world domination was seeking to destroy Aum as part of its fiendish plans. It was seeking to destroy Aum because, in Asahara’s aforementioned vision of sacred struggle, Aum was the only force left standing between the conspirators (who included the US and Japanese governments, the Freemasons, the Jews and numerous others) and their evil intentions.¹⁴ The agents of this conspiracy, he stated in numerous sermons in 1993 and 1994, were not only using poisonous weapons against Aum but were also gathering information on the movement through the use of spies. This fear, that Aum was surrounded by conspirators intent on destroying it and was being infiltrated by spies, is indicative of the paranoid siege mentality in which Aum’s leadership had come to exist. Thus defecting members were seen either as spies seeking to spread news of Aum’s activities to the movement’s enemies or as renegades who would spread false rumours and stories about what went on at Aum’s commune at Kamikuishiki. As events have shown, there were clearly plentiful reasons for Aum’s leadership to fear what defectors might say about its internal affairs because it was heavily engaged in a number of illegal activities, including the manufacture of various weapons of mass destruction that later were put to use against the Japanese public. By 1994 the fears about spying were such that Aum’s leadership had started interrogating and using truth drugs on members whom they suspected (almost certainly erroneously) of being ‘spies’, In one case in 1994, a person so accused was interrogated, deemed to have been a spy, and then killed on Asahara’s orders. Asahara and four devotees have been charged for that case¹⁵

The second reason why defections were so abhorred was rooted in Aum’s view of the world beyond its borders as evil. In leaving Aum and returning to the outside world, the defector was in effect considered to be descending into certain doom and spiritual destruction. The term used in Aum for leaving the movement was gekō (going down),¹⁶ a term that implies descent into lower realms. This concept was closely linked to Aum’s beliefs about the transmigration of souls and of rebirths in different realms.

According to Aum, the universe was multi-dimensional, consisting of various realms: the realm of desire, the realm of form and the realm of non-form, each of which was subdivided into a number of different spiritual levels. Humans exist in the realm of form, which is divided into six levels, the lowest of which are various hells. Above the human world and the realm of form is the realm of non-form, which can only be entered by those with high levels of consciousness and spiritual practice. Souls transmigrate at death and can ascend or descend through the realms depending on the deeds of the person in this life. Such movement was determined by the laws of karma (karuma no hōsoku), a critical concept in Asahara’s teachings which refers to one’s accumulated merits and demerits in life, and to how this balance of merits and demerits (or good deeds and sins) determines the realm in which one is reborn.¹⁷

Such beliefs about transmigration, rebirth and different realms of existence were present in Aum from early in its development and reflect some of its most constant and central doctrinal attitudes. In Aum’s view, the task of the religious practitioner was to accrue spiritual merits and raise his/her consciousness so as to be able to ascend into higher realms. At death the spirits of the dead would be judged and, depending on their karmic status, would either be allowed rebirth into higher realms of consciousness or be cast into the lower realms and hells. It was Aum’s belief that Asahara, as a supremely enlightened being, could intercede on behalf of the spirits at death and help them attain a better rebirth.¹⁸ Hence it was one of the attractions of the movement that it offered members the hope of salvation in the form of escape from such a fate after death, provided they engaged in spiritual practices under its guidance.¹⁹ However, although it offered its followers the hope of ascent to higher realms, Aum had an essentially negative view of transmigration, for it saw the most likely path at death to be a downward one to the lower realms, rather than one leading up to higher stages of consciousness.

This negative view was rooted in Aum’s views of the laws of karma. This notion has played an important role in the thinking of many Japanese new religions of Buddhist persuasion. While karma can imply the potential for a better rebirth and have positive connotations, it has more often been conceived of in negative terms by the Japanese new religions. For example Agonshū, to which Asahara belonged for a period in the early 1980s and from which he imbibed many ideas, talks of the necessity of ‘cutting karma’ (karuma o kiru) and of ‘escape from the bonds of karma’ (karuma kara no dasshutsu), terms which imply an inherently negative view of karmic forces.²⁰ Aum’s view was, if anything, even more negative: the power of the evil passions (bonnō) and the corrupt nature of the human world meant that simply living in this world caused one to absorb all manner of negative data and impulses from it – influences that invariably dragged one downwards. The normative patterns of the laws of karma, then, led downwards into lower realms at death while retribution for evil deeds could also strike people in this life.²¹ This bleak view of the negative aspects of karma and of the corrupting ways of the world became progressively more pronounced in Asahara’s teaching: in sermons in 1993 and 1994, for example, he preached that Japan was swamped with bad ‘data’ (dēta) a term that Asahara used to refer to the general cultural and social impulses of society, which were intrinsically evil and corrupting. Hence, just by living in society one accumulated bad karmic forces which would inevitably cause one to fall into the three miserable realms or hells (sanakushu, the realms of hell, of animal spirits and of hungry ghosts) at death.²² The way to avoid this and to attain the salvation of a higher rebirth was through spiritual and ascetic practices that erased the negative effects of karma and enabled one to avoid retribution for one’s deeds. According to Aum, it was only through devotion to Asahara as guru that people could avoid this fate.

Thus leaving Aum and returning to the ‘corrupt’ world was tantamount to embarking on a journey directly to the lowest hells. This was an especially critical issue by the ti...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Terms and Conventions
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. A Death in the Culture of Coercive Asceticism – Killing for Salvation, Religious Violence and Aum Shinrikyō
• 2. Compassionate Cruelty and the Cosmic Struggle – The Life and Nature of Asahara Shōkō
• 3. Creation, Preservation and Destruction – The Development and Nature of the Religion of Supreme Truth
• 4. The World of the True Victors – The Motivations, Experiences and Practices of Asahara’s Followers
• 5. Losing the Struggle – From World Salvation to World Destruction, 1988–1990
• 6. Perpetual Conflict, Foreign Excursions and Cosmic Wars – Conspiracies, Retribution and the Right to Kill
• 7. The Violence of the Lambs – Murder, Chaos, Vengeance, Power and Immortality
• 8. Concluding Comments – Aum Shinrikyō and Religious Violence
• Notes
• References
• Index