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Agence France-Presse

Shoko Asahara, executed Friday for his role in the deadly 1995 sarin attack on Tokyo’s subway, used a mixture of charisma and mysticism to lure followers to his Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult.
The “guru” with his wild hair and unkempt beard once led up to 10,000 followers, including some who in 1995 targeted the Tokyo subway in a shocking chemical attack that killed 13 people and injured thousands more.
He reportedly cut a very different figure as he was led to the noose on Friday morning.
Kyodo News, citing sources with knowledge of his behaviour in a detention, said Asahara had long ago cut his famous hair short and shaved off his beard.
Japan hangs cultist Asahara and 6 disciples for 1995 Tokyo subway attack
He refused to use a toilet and instead wore adult diapers at all times.
Since mid-2008, Asahara, whose real name was Chizuo Matsumoto, had declined all meeting requests from his family and lawyers.
Asahara was talented at brainwashing...[he] lured young people, who felt a sense of emptiness in Japanese society
Kimiaki Nishida, psychology professor
But he was deemed to suffer no psychiatric problems. “Based on the diagnosis by a psychiatrist, he maintains body functions and at least has no explicit psychiatric disorders,” a document submitted by the detention centre to the Yokohama family court in May 2015 said.
He was able to stand up on his own when he was told to take a bath every several days at the Tokyo Detention House, sources familiar with his behaviour said.
The 1995 Tokyo attack brought international infamy to the Aum group, which attracted a range of devotees, including the doctors and engineers who produced chemical agents for the group’s crimes.
Despite humble beginnings and being nearly blind, Asahara was a charismatic speaker who attracted hordes of recruits to the cult he developed in the 1980s.
How Shoko Asahara cult brought terror to Tokyo - a witness account
“Asahara was talented at brainwashing,” said Kimiaki Nishida, a professor of social psychology at Rissho University in Tokyo.
He “lured young people, who felt a sense of emptiness in Japanese society,” Nishida said.
Asahara told followers that he would help them acquire “the power of God with the right kind of training” and they would “create a new world” after Armageddon, which he predicted would occur in 1997.
He was born on March 2, 1955, one of nine children of an impoverished straw mat maker in Yatsushiro on the southern Japanese island of Kyushu.
He started calling himself Asahara in the 1980s, when the Aum cult was being developed.
He was admitted to a state boarding school for blind children when he was six, quickly earning a reputation for bullying classmates.
“For him, violence was like a hobby. Once he got angry, there was no way to stop it,” a former classmate once said.
Asahara left school at 19 after qualifying as an acupuncturist.
His poor eyesight meant he was unable to pursue his first choice of medical school, and he failed to gain admission to study law at the University of Tokyo – a traditional route into the nation’s elite class.
In 1978, he married Tomoko, and the couple would go on to have four daughters and two sons.
Four years later, he had his first brush with the law, being arrested and fined for selling quack medicine out of his acupuncture practice east of Tokyo.
After the arrest, he became a recluse, reportedly travelling to India and reading religious books, before emerging as a yoga instructor two years later.
He claimed to have achieved enlightenment in the Himalayas and preached an esoteric mix of various Eastern religions combined with his own apocalyptic prophecies.
His followers claimed their guru, who dressed in Chinese-style pyjama tunics, had extra-sensory powers and could levitate for hours at a time.
In 1990, Asahara and a group of followers ran unsuccessfully for parliamentary election, and after the failed bid he became increasingly violent.
In June 1994, Aum members released sarin in the central Japanese city of Matsumoto at night, killing eight people, but the attack was not initially linked to the cult.
The group went on developing their chemical weapons, and on March 20, 1995 released sarin at several points across the Tokyo subway during the morning rush hour.
The attack shocked the world, and prompted a massive crackdown that saw Asahara and some of his followers arrested. 
He was on death row for the attack and other crimes from 2006, after a lengthy prosecution during which he regularly delivered rambling and incoherent monologues in English and Japanese.
Twelve other Aum members were also sentenced to death over the 1995 attack and other crimes.
The Aum cult, now renamed Aleph, officially disowned Asahara in 2000, but experts believe his influence remains strong, with some members using pictures of him and recordings of his voice for meditation.
And there have been fears that Asahara’s execution could usher in a replacement “guru.”
“It would be no surprise if another Asahara emerges in the future,” Nishida said.
Additional reporting by Kyodo


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Japan

Led to the noose in diapers: the strange life and death of Shoko Asahara, murderous guru behind Tokyo sarin attack

An undated photo of Shoko Asahara, that he used to help convince disciples that he could levitate. See full version in story below. Photo: Handout

FILE - In this March 20, 1995, file photo, subway passengers affected by sarin nerve gas in the central Tokyo subway trains are carried into St. Luke's International Hospital in Tokyo. Japanese media reports say on Friday, July 6, 2018, doomsday cult leader Shoko Asahara, who has been on death row for masterminding the 1995 deadly Tokyo subway gassing and other crimes, has been executed. He was 63. (AP Photo/Chiaki Tsukumo, File)

File photo taken in May 1995 shows AUM Shinrikyo cult founder Shoko Asahara, whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto, being arrested at the cult group's complex near Mt. Fuji west of Tokyo. (Kyodo) ==Kyodo

epa06866856 (FILE) - A black and white file photo taken on 22 October 1990, shows cult Aum Shinrikyo founder Shoko Asahara speaking at his cult headquarters in Fujinomiya, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan (issued 06 July 2018). According to media reports, Matsumoto was executed in Tokyo on 06 July 2018. The doomsday cult leader Matsumoto was convicted for the group's nerve gas attack on Tokyo subway in March 1995, killing 13 people and injuring thousands of people. EPA-EFE/JIJI PRESS JAPAN OUT EDITORIAL USE ONLY NO ARCHIVES

Japan hangs doomsday cult guru Shoko Asahara and six followers for 1995 sarin attack on Tokyo subway

In this file picture taken on July 19, 1995, Shoko Asahara (centre), head of the doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo, is transferred from Tokyo police headquarters to Tokyo District Court for questioning. Asahara was executed on Friday. Photo: Agence France-Presse

(COMBO) This combo of file photos received via Jiji Press and the Yomiuri Shimbun (top 2nd R) shows (from top L-counter-clockwise) Yoshihiro Inoue, the intelligence chief of Japan's doomsday Aum Shinrikyo (Supreme Truth) sect; Aum senior member Tomomitsu Niimi; the sect's top chemist Masami Tsuchiya; Aum leader Shoko Asahara; Aum senior member Kiyohide Hayakawa (pink shirt); Aum officer Tomomasa Nakagawa; and Aum officer Seiichi Endo at various locations in Japan in the early 1990s. Shoko Asahara, the leader of the Aum Shinrikyo cult that carried out a deadly sarin attack on Tokyo's subway in 1995, was executed on July 6, 2018 two decades after the group's shocking crime, along with Aum members Masami Tsuchida, Seiichi Endo, Tomomitsu Niimi, Yoshihiro Inoue, Tomomasa Nakagawa and Kiyohide Hayakawa. / AFP PHOTO / JIJI PRESS AND Yomiuri Shimbun / JIJI PRESS AND YOMIURI SHIMBUN / Japan OUT

(FILES) This file picture taken on May 16, 1995 shows doomsday cult leader Shoko Asahara (C) being arrsted by police at the cult's headquarters in Kamikuishiki village in Yamanashi prefecture, 100 kilometres west of Tokyo. Shoko Asahara, the leader of the Aum Shinrikyo cult that carried out a deadly sarin attack on Tokyo's subway in 1995, was executed on July 6, 2018, local media reported. / AFP PHOTO / JIJI PRESS / JIJI PRESS

(FILES) This 20 March 1995 file picture shows a commuter being treated by an emergency medical team at a make-shift shelter before being transported to hospital after inhaling a lethal nerve gas unleashed by attackers in the Tokyo metro system during rush hour. Ten years has past after the deadly Tokyo subway nerve-gas attack, but grief and anger of the bereaved families remain deep with the scar of thousands of survivors still unhealed physically and mentally. AFP PHOTO/Junji KUROKAWA

FILE PHOTO : Doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo followers chant in religious training before a portrait of guru Shoko Asahara at Aum's Adachi office in Tokyo, Japan July 19, 1999. REUTERS/Eriko Sugita/File Photo

epa00141009 (FILES) An undated copy of a photo belonging to a Aum cult member showing cult leader Shoko Asahara (C) with his wife Tomoko (L forward) and daughter Archery (C forward) along with inner group of disciples. On Friday, 27 February 2004 the Tokyo District Court is widely expected to hand down the death penalty on Aum cult leader Asahara, 48, whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto, for his involvement in the Tokyo subway Sarin gas terrorist attack on 20 March 1995. EPA/HO

Patients receive treatment in front of Tsukiji Station in Tokyo in this file photo taken on March 20, 1995, after a sarin gas attack by the AUM Shinrikyo cult group on the Tokyo subway system. (Kyodo) ==Kyodo

Doomsday cult leader Shoko Asahara was ‘criminal’ says member on death row

Doomsday cult Aum Shinri Kyo's former guru Shoko Asahara. Photo: Kyodo

Undated photo shows former senior member of the AUM Shinrikyo cult Tomomasa Nakagawa. Nakagawa, who is on death row, has described the founder and guru he once revered, Shoko Asahara, a "criminal" in a recently published memoir. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE AFTER MARCH 16, 2017)(Kyodo) ==Kyodo

Aum Shinri Kyo followers defy order to quit cult's buildings

Daughter of Aum Shinri Kyo doomsday cult founder ‘sorry to be alive’

Shoko Asahara is on death row after being convicted for masterminding the sarin attacks. Photo: AP

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‘For him, violence was like a hobby. Once he got angry, there was no way to stop it’


“For him, violence was like a hobby. Once he got angry, there was no way to stop it.”


Crime