Welcome back to the deep dive today. Wow. Today
we are staring into an absolute abyss. We really
are. I've got this, uh, this stack of documents
here, articles, timelines, court records, psychological
profiles, and honestly. Looking through this,
it feels less like history and more like the
script of some dark dystopian thriller. But it's
real. That's the terrifying part. It actually
happened. It's so real. And it's a story that,
you know, it challenges so many of our assumptions
about intelligence, about belief, and just how
quickly a group can slide from self -improvement
to mass murder. That's it exactly. We are here
to understand how a yoga teacher, just a guy
teaching meditation in Tokyo, managed to transform
a group of spiritual seekers into a, well, a
fully militarized doomsday cult. A cult capable
of chemical warfare. We're talking, of course,
about Shoko Asahara and Yamashin Rikyu. It's
really the definitive story of modern cult psychology
meeting terrorist capability. It's the moment
the world realized that... Cults weren't just,
you know, people living on a farm singing songs.
No. They could be sophisticated organizations
building weapons of mass destruction. And just
to set the hook for anyone listening who thinks
they know this story, this isn't just a cram
story. Not even close. This is a story about
a man who, and I'm looking at the research right
here, explicitly wanted to rule a robot kingdom.
That's a real quote. A robot kingdom. A robot
kingdom. And yet this is the same man who ended
up orchestrating the 1995 Tokyo subway sarin
attack. That's the headline everyone remembers.
But the journey to get there, I mean, that's
where the real terror is. So let's unpack this.
We're working primarily from a comprehensive
biography of Asahara, covering everything from
his childhood to his execution. And the mission
for this deep talk is to answer one really big,
really uncomfortable question. Right. And the
framing question is this. How does a visually
impaired acupuncturist convince Japan's intellectual
elite? And we're talking about scientists, doctors,
graduates from the absolute top universities
to manufacture weapons of mass destruction for
him. That's the part that just stops me in my
tracks every time. You expect cults to prey on
the vulnerable, maybe the lost people who don't
have any other options. But these were rocket
scientists. Heart surgeons. Engineers. How does
that happen? It creates a terrifying paradox,
doesn't it? How do you hack a smart person's
brain? So let's rewind. Let's go all the way
back to the beginning. Before the robes, before
the beard, before the supreme truth. Who was
this guy? Well, before he was Shoko Asahara,
he was Chizuo Matsumoto. He was born on March
2nd, 1955 in Kumamoto Prefecture. And the background
wasn't exactly... Not at all. He was the fourth
son in a large, very poor family. Their family
trade was making tatami mats. So hard manual
labor. Very hard. But the defining feature of
his early life, and really the lens through which
he saw the entire world, was his eyesight. He
was born with infantile glaucoma. Yes. And it
was severe. He lost all sight in his left eye
completely. In his right eye, he was partially
blind from a very young age. And because he couldn't
follow in the family trade of making match. I
mean, you need precision for that. At age six,
he was sent away. Sent away. Enrolled in a boarding
school for the blind. At six years old. I mean,
that's traumatic for any kid. But. Looking at
the school environment, something very specific
seems to have happened there that it sort of
set his entire personality in stone. This is
the crucial psychological turning point. At this
school, you have to understand, most of the other
children were completely blind. Matsumoto, however,
still had some vision in one eye. The one -eyed
king in the land of the blind. Literally. And
he didn't use that advantage to help people,
not at all. He used it to dominate them. He discovered
a hustle. The candy store hustle? Yes. He would
offer to guide the other kids to the local candy
store. Which on the surface sounds like a nice
thing to do. Except he charged them for it. He
essentially taxed them for their disability.
He was monetizing his slight advantage over them.
It went further than that, though. He became
a bully. We have accounts of him beating other
students, exhorting money, forcing them to do
things for him. He figured out early on that
having even a slight advantage gave him total
power over those who had none. Wow. It established
this hierarchy in his mind. I am above, you are
below, and my ability justifies my dominance.
And he didn't exactly keep his ambitions secret,
did he? No. Even as a teenager, he had these
grandiose fantasies. He would confide in his
schoolmates that he wanted to be the prime minister
of Japan. And this is where that incredible robot
kingdom quote comes in. Right. He told people
he wanted to rule a robot kingdom with total
power. Now, you could just write that off as
a teenager who reads too many comic books. Sure.
But if you dig a little deeper, what is a robot
kingdom? It's a population that obeys without
question. It's a system with no dissent. It was
a projection of his desire for absolute automated
control. So he graduates in 1973. He's got this
hunger for power. And he tries to go the legitimate
route first. He does. He aims for the absolute
top. He applies to the University of Tokyo. Now,
for context, in Japan, today... The University
of Tokyo isn't just a good school. It is the
school. It's the Oxbridge or the Ivy League of
Japan. Exactly. It is the pipeline for prime
ministers, for CEOs, for the top bureaucrats.
And he didn't just apply anywhere. He applied
to the Faculty of Law. Which is the traditional
path to becoming prime minister. The only path,
really. But he was rejected. He didn't get in.
That must have been a massive blow to his ego.
It was the closing of the door to legitimate
power. The establishment looked at him and said,
no. You're not one of us. So he pivoted. Right.
He turned to what was a common career for the
blind in Japan at the time, acupuncture and traditional
Chinese medicine. Right. So he's a practitioner.
He opens a shop. He opens a Chinese medicine
shop near Tokyo. He gets married, starts a family.
He eventually had six kids. You know, he's living
a seemingly normal life. But that hustler side,
the kid who taxed blind children for candy, that
guy didn't go away. No. In 1981, he had his first
real brush with the law. And what did he do?
He was practicing pharmacy without a license
and selling unregulated drugs. Snake oil. Basically
snake oil. He was selling cures that weren't
cures. He got caught, convicted, and fined 200
,000 yen. Okay, so let's just pause and look
at the scoreboard here. We have a guy who wants
to be prime minister. fails, tries to be a businessman,
gets arrested for selling fake cures. And this
is the pivot point. Yeah. The analysis suggests
that this failure, the arrest, the fine, the
rejection from the elite world, it marks the
moment he shifts gears completely. He realizes
he's not going to get secular power through politics
or business. The system is rigged against him,
or at least that's how he sees it. So he decides
to seek spiritual power instead. If you can't
rule the real world, you create your own world
where you make all the rules. Precisely. In the
spiritual marketplace, there are no entrance
exams. There are no licenses to practice being
a guru. You just have to be convincing. So we
move into the transformation. How do we get from
Chizuo Matsumoto, failed medicine seller, to
Shoko Asahara, holy guru? It starts with a rebrand,
a total image overhaul. He lets his hair grow
out long and wild. He grows that distinctive
flowing beard that became his trademark. And
he changes his name to Shoko Asahara. And he
starts studying. He becomes a voracious student
of the occult. And it's a real mix. The research
lists a pretty wild combination of influences.
It's not just one religion, is it? No, it's buffet.
He's pulling from Chinese astrology, Taoism,
Western esotericism, yoga, esoteric Buddhism,
esoteric Christianity. It's like he's taking
bits and pieces that serve his purpose and stitching
them together into this patchwork theology. It
sounds a bit like he's trying to hack spirituality.
Finding the shortcuts to power. That's a great
way to put it. And to sell this new brand, he
needed legitimacy. So he goes to India. Starting
in 1984. Right. And this is a key part of his
propaganda machine. He manages to meet the 14th
Dalai Lama. Now, Asahara spins this meeting into
something huge, doesn't he? Oh, massive. He comes
back to Japan claiming the Dalai Lama personally
gave him a special mission to preach real Buddhism
in Japan. He basically tells his followers the
Dalai Lama himself ordained me. I'm the chosen
one for this era. But what's the fact check on
that? The fact check is, well, false. Years later,
the Dalai Lama clarified what happened in that
meeting. He said he met Asahara, sure, just like
he meets thousands of people, but he described
him merely as a strange Japanese man. A strange
Japanese man. And he completely denied giving
him any special mission. Wow. That's a far cry
from Savior of Japan. But I guess Asahar didn't
need the Dalai Lama to verify it. He just needed
the photo, right? Correct. It was all about the
optics. He returns to Japan in 1987 and assumes
the title Sonshi, which means guru or venerable
master. And then he pulls his most famous stunt.
The levitation claim. The levitation claim. Oh,
the photo. I'm sure you've seen it. It's him
in a full lotus position, seemingly floating
in midair. Yes. He looks like he's hovering.
he claimed he had mastered meditation to such
an extent that he could defy gravity he published
this photo in his own magazines to prove his
supernatural power but let's be real Was it just
a guy jumping really high with his legs crossed?
Essentially, yes. It was just a high shutter
speed capturing him at the apex of a hop. But
you have to think about the time. This is the
late 80s. Photoshop wasn't a thing people were
thinking about. True. To a spiritual seeker looking
for a miracle, looking for proof that the physical
world could be transcended, that photo looked
like the real deal. So he starts a group. What
was it called initially? It started as a small
yoga and meditation class called Umu Shinsen
no Kai. Which means? The Alparum Immortal Mountain
Wizard Association. Mountain Wizard Association.
That is, well, it's certainly descriptive. A
little niche, maybe. It was eventually renamed
to Akum Shinrikyo, which translates to Supreme
Truth. Much more marketable. And this brings
us back to that big question about the membership.
Because Mountain Wizard Association sounds like
something for, you know, fringe hobbyists. But
he starts pulling in some really serious people.
He does. And this was deliberate. Asahura specifically
targeted the elite. He went after graduates from
Japan's top universities, the very institutions
that had once rejected him. It was even dubbed
a religion for the elite. How do you get a scientist,
someone trained in the scientific method, to
join a group led by a guy who claims he can fly
by hopping? You have to understand the context
of Japan in the late 80s, the bubble economy.
People were working insane hours. The corporate
track was rigid, hierarchical, and frankly, soul
crushing for a lot of these brilliant, creative
minds. So there was a spiritual void, a meaning
crisis. Exactly. You graduate from today, you
join a massive conglomerate like Mitsubishi,
and you spend the next 40 years pushing paper
until you die. Asahara filled that void. He spoke
their language, but he twisted it. The source
material mentions they used anime and manga themes.
Yes, but even more interestingly, they referenced
Isaac Asimov. The science fiction writer. The
one and only, specifically the Foundation Trilogy.
Asahara pitched this idea of a group of spiritually
evolved scientists who needed to go underground
to rebuild civilization after an inevitable collapse.
That is an incredibly seductive idea if you're
a smart... maybe socially awkward scientist who
feels unappreciated by the world. It's perfect
for them. We are the foundation. We are the secret
saviors. It weaponized their intellect against
their own morality. He told them the world is
going to end in Armageddon. Ordinary people,
mass man, can't save it. Only we can. Only the
enlightened elite. It gave them a purpose that
Sony or Toshiba never could. And he promised
them upgrades, right? It wasn't just pray with
me and feel good. Right. This was key. The Anso
Salvation Plan promised to cure any illness and,
this is the crucial part, improve your intelligence.
He told them, if you follow my teachings, you
will unlock your brain's full potential. He framed
enlightenment almost like a software update for
your mind. But behind all the sci -fi promises
and the yoga, things were getting dark really
fast. The training wasn't just sitting on mats.
No. The initiation rituals involved the use of
hallucinogens, specifically LSD. They would disguise
it as a spiritual sacrament. They called it the
Christ initiation. So you drug them and they
think they're seeing God, but really they're
just seeing Azahara's version of God. Precisely.
And they practiced extreme asceticism. The source
describes initiates being hung upside down for
hours at a time. They use sleep deprivation.
And they use shock therapy disguised as yoga
practices to purify the body. Wait, shock therapy,
like actual electric shock? Yes. It was all about
breaking down the individual. You strip away
their identity, you drug them, you subject them
to intense pain, and then you replace their reality
with Asahar's reality. It's classic brainwashing,
but it's wrapped in the language of spiritual
self -improvement. And I imagine once you're
in that deep, you can't exactly just put in your
two weeks notice and leave. That became the rule.
And that leads us directly to the turning point.
The moment Ayam Shinrikyo went from a weird,
abusive cult to a murderous organization. We're
moving into the Sakamoto family murder. This
is 1989. Right. So Ayatollah is starting to face
some real heat. Parents are complaining that
their kids are being held against their will.
There are accusations of extortion, of forcing
members to sign over their entire life savings.
And standing in their way is a lawyer named Tsutsumi
Sakamoto. He was a huge threat, a serious legal
threat. He was only 33, but he was working on
a class action lawsuit against the cult. He was
gathering evidence that could dismantle the whole
organization. And this brings us to... a massive
media scandal involving tbs tokyo broadcasting
system this is one of the biggest ethical failures
in the history of broadcast journalism it's just
staggering what happened there tbs taped an interview
with sakamoto where he laid out his case against
the cult but before they could air it acm officials
somehow found out and demanded to see the tape
and tbs just showed it to them they showed the
cult the interview with the whistleblower before
broadcasting it and without sakamoto's knowledge
or consent Unbelievable. IOM officials, of course,
pressured TBS and the network actually canceled
the broadcast. But more importantly, the cult
now knew exactly what Sakamoto was planning.
They knew every piece of evidence he had. They
basically handed the cult an intelligence briefing
on their number one enemy. They did. Asahara
decided Sakamoto had to be silenced. And this
is where he introduces the doctrine of POA. Poa.
We need to explain this because this concept
seems to be the engine of their violence. It
is. Poa is a concept Asahara twisted from Tibetan
Buddhism. Originally, it refers to the transfer
of consciousness at the moment of death to achieve
a better rebirth. But Asahara reinterpreted it
to mean that if someone is accumulating bad karma
-like, say, a lawyer attacking the supreme truth,
it is actually an act of mercy to kill them.
Wait, so killing them is... Doing them a favor.
In his twisted logic, yes. By killing them, you
stop them from accumulating more bad karma, which
saves their soul in their next life. It transformed
murder into a spiritual service. That is a terrifying
mental gymnastic. It's the ultimate rationalization.
So, November 1989, Asahara orders a hit team.
And you have to note who is on this team. It
includes Hideo Murai, the chief scientist. The
scientists are now the enforcers. What was the
initial plan? Originally, they planned to kidnap
Sakamoto at a train station. They were going
to use hypodermic needles to sedate him. But
he didn't show up. It was a national holiday,
so he was at home with his family. So they changed
the plan on the fly. They went to his apartment.
At 3 a .m., the door was unlocked. And this part
of the story is, it's just hard to read. It wasn't
just the lawyer they went after. No. They entered
the apartment and they murdered Tsutsumi Sakamoto.
They beat him with a hammer. They strangled him
and they injected him with potassium chloride.
But his wife, Satoko, was there. So they killed
her, too. They killed her and their son, Tatsuhiko.
He was a baby. He was 14 months old. They injected
a baby with potassium chloride because he was
crying and might alert the neighbors. And the
cover up was meticulous. This wasn't a crime
of passion. This was a black ops disposal. They
took the three bodies, put them in separate metal
drums and drove to three. different rural prefectures,
Niigata, Toyama, and Nagano. Why spread them
out like that? It was pure strategy. To prevent
the police from linking the disappearances if
the bodies were ever found. If you find one body,
it's a murder investigation. If you find three
together... you immediately know it's the missing
Sakamoto family. They even smashed their teeth.
Smashed their teeth to prevent dental identification.
And it worked. The bodies weren't found until
1995, after the cult had collapsed and members
started confessing. For six years, nobody knew
for sure what happened to them. And during those
six years, because they got away with it, they
just escalated. They realized they could kill
and get away with it. They felt untouchable.
They felt invincible. And that emboldened Asahara
to dream much, much bigger. moves us into the
full scale militarization phase because they
didn't just stick to hammers and needles for
long. No. Asahara tried to enter politics legitimately
one more time in 1990 with something called the
Shinri Party. They ran this bizarre campaign.
I've seen the videos. It's cult members in white
robes and. Like elephant masks, dancing and chanting
Asahara's name. It looks completely unhinged.
It was. And they lost miserably, every single
one of them. Asahara took this as a final rejection
by society. He decided that if the world wouldn't
elect him, he would destroy the world and rebuild
it in his own image. He becomes obsessed with
Armageddon. And conspiracy theories. And this
is where the intellectual elite members really
come into play. He sets them to work on biological
and chemical weapons. started with biologicals,
right? They did. They wanted to create a pandemic.
In 1993, they tried to spray bacillus and thyrsus
anthrax from the roof of their Tokyo headquarters.
Wait, they sprayed anthrax in central Tokyo in
1993. Why didn't we hear about mass deaths then?
Because luckily for everyone, they were incompetent
terrorists at that stage. Doing science in a
lab is one thing. Weaponizing it is another.
They used a liquid mixture and sprayed it from
a cooling tower. But the strain they used was
an attenuated vaccine strain. It wasn't lethal
enough. Plus, the pressure from the sprayers
likely killed most of the bacteria before it
even hit the air. So what was the result? The
source says it just caused a bad smell. Neighbors
complained about the odor. They said it smelled
like rotting garbage. But nobody got infected.
So they failed at biology. So they switched to
chemistry. Chemistry is more predictable. You
mix A and B, you get C. They started looking
into nerve agents, specifically sarin and VX.
And they needed a testing ground. You can't just
cook up nerve gas in a Tokyo apartment and see
if it works. So they bought a property in Western
Australia, a huge sheep station called Banja
Warn Station. It's in the middle of absolutely
nowhere, a vast red desert. And what did they
do there? They tested sarin gas on sheep. I mean,
just picture this scene. Japanese scientists
in full hazmat suits in the Australian outback
putting sheep in a pen and releasing homemade
nerve gas to see how fast they die. How many
did they kill? They killed 29 sheep. And it worked.
The gas was effective. It was proof of concept.
The sheep convulsed and died horribly. The gas
worked. So now they have a working nerve agent.
Yeah. And they start using it for targeted assassinations.
Yes. They manufactured VX. Now, VX is an incredibly
potent nerve agent, much deadlier than sarin,
but it's an oily liquid, so it persists on surfaces.
In December 1994, they attacked a man in Osaka
who Asahara suspected was a spy. They sprayed
VX on his neck on the street. Did he die? He
chased them for about 100 yards, then he collapsed.
He was in a coma for 10 days and then died. At
the time, doctors thought it was severe pesticide
poisoning. They had no idea a cult was manufacturing
military -grade nerve agents in Japan. They also
attacked a member of the Owing Victim Society,
didn't they? Hiroyuki Nagaoka. Same method. VX
on the neck. He survived, but he was critically
ill for a long time. But it wasn't just chemicals.
The outline mentions conventional weapons. This
part sounds like they were trying to build an
actual army. They were. There's no other way
to describe it. They smuggled an AK -74 rifle,
a modern Soviet assault rifle, into Japan. To
use it? No, to reverse engineer it. The plan
was to build a secret factory and mass produce
1 ,000 of their own assault rifles. They wanted
to arm their followers for the final war with
the state. 1 ,000 rifles. Did they succeed? They
only finished one working prototype, but the
intent was there. They also purchased a Russian
Mil Mi -17 military helicopter. A helicopter?
What for? The plan, investigators believe, was
to use it to spray sarin gas from the air, like
a crop duster of death over Tokyo. And they were
stealing industrial secrets, too. They broke
into Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to steal data
on tanks and laser technology. This was a full
-scale attempt to build a private military state
within Japan. This is absolutely terrifying.
You have a group that believes in Armageddon,
led by a man who thinks he's a savior, armed
with nerve gas trying to build machine guns,
and they have a helicopter. And nobody had stopped
them yet. Which leads us to the dress rehearsal.
The Matsumoto Seren attack. This is June 1994.
The motive here was just incredibly petty. Asimov
was facing a lawsuit over a real estate dispute
in the city of Matsumoto. They expected the judges
to rule against them. So the plan wasn't kill
everyone in the city. It was kill the judges.
Correct. They specifically targeted the three
judges handling their case. How did they deliver
the gas this time? It was grimly inventive. They
converted a refrigerator truck. They built a
heating contraption in the cargo space to turn
liquid sarin into an aerosol and then used fans
to blow it out through a vent in the side. It
sounds like something out of a bad movie, but
it's real chemical engineering. And they drove
this truck to Matsumoto on the night of June
27th, but they were late. The courthouse was
closed, so they decided to go to where the judges
lived. Which was a residential apartment building?
A regular apartment building in a regular neighborhood.
At 10 to 40 p .m., they parked the truck and
just... sprayed the gas into the night air. But
wind, you know, it's unpredictable. The gas floated
through the neighborhood. It killed seven people
immediately. An eighth victim, a woman named
Sumiko Kono, fell into a deep coma and died 14
years later without ever waking up. And the symptoms?
Saren is nasty stuff. It attacks the nervous
system. The hallmark symptom is meiosis. Your
pupils constrict a tiny pinpoint so everything
looks dark. Victims said it felt like the lights
were going out. Then comes the nausea, the spasms,
the suffocation. 274 people were treated. And
did the police catch them then? Surely a chemical
attack would lead straight to them. No. And this
is another tragedy within the tragedy. Suspicion
actually fell on an innocent local man, Yoshiyuki
Konosumiko's husband. He was the one who called
the ambulance. The first victim. The first victim.
And the police and the media decided he must
be the culprit because he had some chemicals
in his house for his photography hobby. He was
vilified for months. So the real killers got
away completely. And the victim was blamed. Precisely.
And for the cult, this was a success. They saw
it as a successful test run. They proved their
home -brewed sarin could kill, and they got away
with it. Which brings us to the main event. March
20th, 1995. The day everything changed in Japan.
The Tokyo subway attack. Right. By March of 95,
the walls are finally closing in on Asahara.
The police are planning a massive simultaneous
raid on all the cult facilities across Japan.
And he knew it was coming. He was tipped off.
He knew the police were coming on March 22nd.
So he needed a distraction. A big one. He orders
an attack in central Tokyo. The logic was completely
twisted. If there is a massive terror attack
in the city, the police will be too busy dealing
with the chaos to raid the cult. It's a desperate
panic move. It is. So March 20th, 1995, during
the morning rush hour, they targeted five different
subway lines, specifically lines that converged
on Kasumigaseki Station, which is the hub of
the Japanese government. The diet, the ministries,
they're all there. And the delivery method this
time. It wasn't a fancy truck. No, it was disturbingly
simple and low -tech. They put liquid sarin in
plastic bags like something you'd get from a
convenience store. They wrapped them in newspaper.
And then what? The perpetrators boarded the trains,
dropped the packets on the floor, and then as
they exited the train, they used the sharpened
tips of their umbrellas to puncture the bags.
So the liquid just leaks out onto the floor of
a crowded train car. And evaporates into deadly
gas in an enclosed space. During rush hour, 13
people died, 54 were seriously injured, many
permanently. But the number of people affected,
people who sought treatment, who had vision problems,
PTSD, the estimates go as high as 6 ,000. It
paralyzed the city. I see the footage. People
stumbling out of subway stations, coughing, blinded,
being treated on the sidewalks. But here's the
thing about his desperate plan. It backfired
horribly. It didn't stop the raids. No. Instead
of diverting the police, it triggered a massive,
furious crackdown. The police realized, we are
dealing with a domestic terror army. We have
to end this now. So they raided the facilities.
What did they find? It was a house of horrors.
They found the Russian helicopter. They found
explosives, guns. But the chemicals? They found
stockpiles of chemicals sufficient to produce
enough sarin to kill an estimated 4 million people.
4 million? That's a significant chunk of Tokyo's
population. If they had been more efficient or
if they had deployed it from the air like they
had planned. The scale is unimaginable. We were
all very, very lucky it was a botched job. Asahara
goes on the run. He does. But the cult doesn't
go down quietly. They get desperate and violent.
Ten days after the subway attack, the chief of
the National Police Agency, Takaji Kunimatsu,
is shot four times near his house. He survived,
though. He survived, but it was a direct attack
on the head of the Japanese state security apparatus.
Then there's Hideo Murai, the science minister
we talked about. The one involved in the Sakamoto
murders. Yes. In April 95, he's stabbed to death
on live TV, surrounded by reporters. I remember
seeing that clip. It was absolute chaos. A Yakuza
member did it, though the motives were never
fully clear. Some say it was to silence him before
he could talk. Then the cult tries one last terror
campaign. They plant hydrogen cyanide devices
in the toilets in Shinjuku Station. Did they
go off? They were discovered and extinguished
in time. But if they had gone off, the gas would
have been sucked into the station's ventilation
system. It could have killed 10 ,000 people.
They also sent a bomb to the governor of Tokyo.
A parcel bomb mailed to Governor Yukio Aoshima.
It blew off his secretary's fingers when she
opened it. It's just chaos. Violence flailing
in every direction. But finally they catch him.
May 16th, 1995. The police are searching the
cult's headquarters in Kamikalushiki. They are
searching a building known as the Sixth Session.
Where was he? He was hiding inside a wall. In
a wall. You mean like a secret room? A tiny hidden
compartment between two floors. He was curled
up in a sleeping bag with a stash of cash. The
Supreme Truth, the man who claimed he could levitate,
was found cowering in a crawlspace. Which brings
us to the final chapter, the trial and the execution.
The trial of the century, they called it in Japan.
Asahara faced 27 counts of murder across 13 separate
indictments. And his defense strategy. His lawyers
tried to claim he was mentally unfit to stand
trial. And Asahara played the part. For years
in court, he just stayed silent. Or he would
just sit there muttering nonsensically to himself.
He refused to answer any questions. So was he
actually insane? Or was he faking it? That's
the big debate. But the prison staff didn't think
he was insane. They reported that he communicated
with them perfectly normally when his lawyers
weren't around. The court eventually determined
that the silence was a choice. A strategy. A
strategy to delay or maybe a final act of narcissism,
refusing to engage with a world he could no longer
control. He was found guilty. Guilty on 13 of
the 17 charges he faced. Four were dropped for
various reasons. He was sentenced to death in
February 2004. But it took a very long time to
actually carry it out. Appeals dragged on for
years until 2011. Then it was postponed again
because some other high -level fugitive members
were still being caught. But finally, on July
6, 2018, Shoko Asahara was executed by hanging
at the Tokyo detention house. 23 years after
the subway attack. 23 years. And even after his
death, the drama just didn't end, did it? No.
The issue of what to do with his remains became
a huge legal battle. Asahara, in one of his final
directives, assigned his remains to his fourth
daughter. And why her specifically? She had left
the cult. She was very critical of him. Her plan
was to have the ashes disposed out at sea so
they couldn't become a shrine for his remaining
followers. But his wife and other children objected.
They contested it. They likely wanted to enshrine
the ashes to keep the cult's worship alive and
make him a martyr. As of 2024, the courts have
affirmed the ashes should go to a second daughter.
It's a mess that continues to this day. So let's
just take a breath. That is a lot. It is a heavy,
heavy history. We've gone from a bullied kid
in a blind school who wanted a robot kingdom
to a yoga teacher to a guru to the mastermind
of a terror organization that nearly wiped out
Tokyo. It's a trajectory that really shows the
danger of unchecked narcissism combined with
what you might call the isolation of intelligence.
The isolation of intelligence. That really sticks
with me because those scientists, they were brilliant.
But they were lost. And Asahara found them. He
used science fiction to give them a grand narrative.
He used religious prophecy to validate their
sense of superiority. And he used fear, the threat
of bad karma, of hell, to keep them all in line.
It's terrifying to think about the what -ifs,
the anthrax that didn't quite work, the 1 ,000
assault rifles they only managed to build one
of, the helicopter they didn't fly. The 4 million
lethal doses of sarin they didn't use. We talk
about the Tokyo subway attack as this massive
tragedy, and it absolutely was. But in reality,
it was a botched job. It was a desperate last
-minute distraction. If they had ever executed
their real master plan, the death toll could
have been in the tens of thousands, maybe millions.
It really puts the fragility of public safety
into perspective. It forces you to look at the
people on the fringes in a different way. It
raises a final really provocative thought for
me. What's that? Asahara was, by all accounts,
a fraud from the beginning. He sold fake medicine.
He was rejected from college. He faked a levitation
photo. He was a snake oil salesman through and
through. A con artist with a beard. Yes. But
he convinced some of the brightest minds in Japan
to kill for him. He convinced doctors to breach
their ethics, scientists to build gas chambers.
So it forces us to ask. At what point does a
guru cross the line from spiritual leader to
warlords? And maybe more importantly, why didn't
society stop him when he was just selling fake
cures? That is the question, isn't it? At what
point do we stop laughing at the weird yoga guy
and start realizing he's building an army in
plain sight? Exactly. We ignored him because
he looked ridiculous. But ridiculous people can
be very, very dangerous. Well, that is something
that will definitely keep me up tonight. Thank
you for listening to this deep dive. It's a dark
chapter. but one we absolutely have to understand
if we want to prevent the next one. Absolutely.
Knowledge is really the only defense. Thanks
for listening. We'll see you next time.