Commemorating Crisis: State, Media, and Civil Responses to the Aum Affair

Abstract

This chapter discusses how different state and civil actors have commemorated the Aum Affair through legislation, media representations, commemorative ceremonies, and material objects. The first section details legal responses to Aum, including changes to the oversight of religious organisations, surveillance of Aum's successor organisations, state compensation to victims, and criminal trials of the perpetrators. It then discusses mass media commemoration, which has continued to reproduce the dominant narrative of Aum as a brainwashing cult. Contrasting elite responses with grassroots commemorative efforts, this chapter shows that civic actors have conducted various forms of commemoration including conducting commemorative ceremonies and events as well as self-publishing testimonies. Lastly, it argues that while media narratives about Aum are abundant, stakeholders have sought to erase material reminders of Aum as much as possible, leading to a relative scarcity of public memorial objects associated with the negative legacies of the Aum Affair.