On the morning of March 20, 1995, members of the doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo released sarin gas on Tokyo subway trains, killing 13 people and injuring over 5,800. The attack came as the nation was still reeling from the Great Hanshin Earthquake in Kobe just over two months earlier. It deeply shocked Japan and the world and raised concerns over nonstate organizations obtaining weapons of mass destruction.
What was Aum Shinrikyo and who led it?
Aum Shinrikyo was a doomsday cult that fused elements of different religions, including Buddhism, along with the works of Nostradamus into its own belief system. The cult began in 1984 and included a yoga training center run by Chizuo Matsumoto, who was blind in his left eye and had limited sight in his right eye. Matsumoto was born in Kumamoto Prefecture, traveled to India (where he met, briefly, the Dalai Lama) and, in the mid-1980s, reinvented himself in Tokyo as Shoko Asahara, an aspiring holy man. But he also had an interest in UFOs and telepathy. At various times, Asahara claimed he could levitate, meditate underwater, walk through walls and even — after a trip to Cairo — took credit for helping design the ancient pyramids in a past life.
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