Word: aum
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Before al-Qaeda, before the anthrax scare, there was Aum Shinrikyo. The mysterious cult, based on distortions of the tenets of Buddhism and Hinduism, attracted tens of thousands of followers in Japan and around the world. Asahara, its founder, was an intelligent misfit who claimed he could levitate himself and who appeared regularly on the TV talk-show circuit. Then, on a sunny March morning in 1995, followers of the doomsday cult, in an apparent attempt to create mayhem and distract police investigating their secretive chemical-manufacturing operation, quietly used the tips of umbrellas to puncture plastic bags filled with...
Fast-forward to the present, to an era when terrorism is a global nightmare. Surprisingly, Aum lives on. True, many members quit after the atrocity, which led to the arrest and prosecution of Asahara and 18 others. But hundreds more (1,186 according to the group; hundreds more than that, according to police who watch them) stuck with it. And additional cults are springing up, offering refuge to disillusioned youth in a Japan that, owing to a pervasive sense of economic doom, is searching for its soul. By one government estimate, there are more than 10,000 "new religions...
Asahara's group, which in 2000 changed its name from Aum Shinrikyo ("Supreme Truth") to Aleph (the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet), endures because its most loyal followers can't let go of their devotion to Asahara and his teachings. It has seven main facilities throughout Japan and 20 smaller branches where members can practice meditation. The Public Security Investigation Agency assigns about 50 agents to keep tabs on Aleph. Investigators say it organizes yoga classes, computer seminars and clubs on university campuses--activities that don't at first reveal the nature of the religion--to attract unsuspecting recruits...
Still, it has followers like Ai Ozaki, 25. A shy, thoughtful woman from outside Tokyo, Ozaki (that's her cult name; she asked that her real name be kept confidential) joined Aum after the sarin attack. Though she knew of the group's connection to the subway terrorism, she was drawn to its promise of life after death in a reincarnated form. "I was afraid of dying," she says. "So I liked their creed." She left the group when Japan's new surveillance law required members to fill out forms that would be shared with the government. She couldn...
Before Sept. 11, there was March 20, 1995. On a sunny spring morning, five members of the Aum Shinrikyo cult entered the Tokyo subway and pierced plastic packs of liquefied sarin gas with their umbrella tips, leaving 12 people dead and thousands injured. Only two months before, more than 5,000 people were killed by an earthquake that shook the western port city of Kobe. "Some strange malaise, some bitter aftertaste lingers on," writes novelist Haruki Murakami in his account of the times, Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche. "We crane our necks and look around...