Tokyo subway sarin attack
in Shinjuku-ku, JapanCategory: Attraction
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Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, 2 Chome Nishishinjuku, Shinjuku-ku, Tōkyō-to 160-0023, Japan Print route »
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The Tokyo subway sarin attack (Subway Sarin Incident (地下鉄サリン事件, Chikatetsu Sarin Jiken) was an act of domestic terrorism perpetrated on March 20, 1995, in Tokyo, Japan, by members of the cult movement Aum Shinrikyo.Aum Shinrikyo - a new religious movement and doomsday cult lead by Shoko Asahara - believed in a doctrine revolving around a syncretic mixture of Indian and Tibetan Buddhism, as well as Christian and Hindu beliefs - especially relating to the Hindu god Shiva. They believed that armageddon - in the form of a global war involving the United States and Japan - was inevitable; that non-members were doomed to eternal hell, but that they could be saved if they were killed by cult members; and that only members of the cult would survive the apocalypse, and would afterwards build the Kingdom of Shambhala. The group had executed several assassinations and terrorist attacks using sarin previously - including the Matsumoto sarin attack nine months earlier - and had also produced several other nerve agents, including VX. The cult had also attempted to produce botulinum toxin, and had perpetrated several failed acts of bioterrorism.
Asahara had been made aware of a police raid scheduled for March 22nd, and had planned the Tokyo subway attack in order to hinder police investigations into the cult, if not in order to spark the global apocalypse. In five coordinated attacks, the perpetrators released sarin on three lines of the present-day Tokyo Metro (then part of the Tokyo subway) during rush hour, killing 12 people, severely injuring 50 and causing temporary vision problems for nearly 1,000 others. The attack was directed against trains passing through Kasumigaseki and Nagatachō, home to the Japanese government.
In the raid following the attack, police arrested many senior members of the cult. Police activity continued throughout the summer, eventually arresting over two hundred members, including Asahara himself. 13 of the senior Aum management have been sentenced to death, with many others given prison sentences up to life. The attack shocked Japan which, up until that point, had widely thought of itself as generally free from crime and unrest. Until the Myojo 56 building fire on September 1, 2001, it was the deadliest incident to occur in Japan since the end of World War II. The attack remains the deadliest terrorist incident to have happened in Japan, and Aum Shinrikyo remain the only group in Japan to have utilised biological and chemical weapons.
