Japan cult guru defiant over gas attack
By Eugene Moosa
TOKYO (Reuter): Shoko Asahara, who went on trial on Wednesday accused of masterminding the gassing of travelers on the Tokyo subway, is a partially sighted acupuncturist who found "enlightenment" in the Himalayas before starting a cult that spread panic in Japan.
Now he is accused of murder in what the local media calls Japan's "Crime of the Century", a sarin nerve gas attack on subway trains on March 20 last year that killed 11 people and made about 5,500 ill.
Asahara, 41, whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto, is the son of a maker of tatami straw mats. Born partially sighted, he attended a school for the blind.
Years later, as head of a cult with 10,000 members in Japan and overseas, he was waited on by worshipers who catered to his every whim. He had a penchant for luxury hotel suites, Rolls- Royce limousines and a steady supply of high-priced melons, his favorite food.
On May 16 last year, two months after the subway attack, Asahara was arrested in a tiny cubicle hiding place in the cult's headquarters near Mount Fuji, west of Tokyo.
Dragged out by police, his first words were: "How could a blind man like me carry out these acts?"
In court on Wednesday, he appeared slimmer than when arrested, but he still sported his familiar long hair and beard and maintained a defiant tone.
His team of court-appointed lawyers demanded, unsuccessfully, that he be allowed to wear a white cult tunic in court, and he himself told the judge he had "abandoned" his real name in favor of his cult name.
Asked his occupation, he replied: "I am the leader of the Aum Shinri Kyo (Supreme Truth Sect)."
Asahara declined to enter a plea, ending a short diatribe on his religious beliefs by saying: "I have no concerns for my life. I have nothing else to say."
Asahara's adult life has been dominated by a fascination with Oriental health treatment.
His first job was as an acupuncturist. In the early 1980s he opened a Chinese medicine shop where he was once arrested for selling quack remedies such as tangerine peel in alcohol.
He studied yoga and set up a school to teach it. He traveled to the Himalayas to study Hinduism and Buddhism and had his photo taken with the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader.
In 1987 he set up the sect with a few followers and started attracting new members with the promise that he could help develop supernatural powers.
It was not the only claim that remained unproven.
He says he can levitate, but video footage of him in the lotus position, naked except for a loin cloth and with his face screwed up as he tries to rise, makes it look more like energetic bouncing.
He also says he is a disciple of the Dalai Lama, who denounced him last year.
On a visit to Japan last year, the Dalai Lama said the cult's fanaticism and its emphasis on supernatural powers went against the true spirit of Buddhism.
In last December's edition of a cult periodical, Asahara claimed he had traveled to the year 2006 and talked to people about what World War Three had been like.
Asked what a religious sect was doing with factories and vast stockpiles of chemicals, members said they were preparing for such an Armageddon.
Asahara's wife, cult member Tomoko Matsumoto, 37, is also under arrest in the case. They have four daughters. The third- oldest, aged 13, has been designated by her father to succeed him as head of the cult.