The facts and figures surrounding Aum Shinrikyo founder Shoko Asahara's almost eight-year trial are extraordinary.
If all of the roughly 56,000 sheets of paper said to have been used to document his trial were stacked in a single column, it would stand about 10 meters, the height of a four-story building. Legal experts describe a case as being major when documentation exceeds 10,000 sheets.
The Tokyo District Court, the nation's busiest district court, held 257 sessions in the trial of Asahara, second only to the trial of Hiromasa Ezoe, with 322. Ezoe, the founder and former chairman of Recruit Co., who was found guilty and handed a suspended sentence for his role in a stock-for-favors scandal.