Aum Shinrikyo Research Articles

Aum Shinrikyo – a religious sect or a modern terrorist organization?

This article examines the history of the Japanese totalitarian sect Aum Shinrikyo. Characteristics of the biography of its founder is given. The main aspects of religious teaching, based on the expectations of the Judgment Day and the salvation of mankind thanks to Aum, were clarified and determined. The activity of the organization in Russia has been analyzed and the terrorist actions of Aum Shinrikyo members themselves have been covered.

Saturnalia in the Theory of Niklas Luhmann: The Terror Program Manifest Through Charles Manson’s Family with Reference to additional Groups such as Aum Shinrikyo and ISIS

AbstractThe terror program, considered within the framework of Niklas Luhmann’s systems theory, serves to contradict society in many ways, functioning as a form of saturnalia to expose paradox. Though terror and terrorism have roots in antiquity, modern differentiated systems of communication and society’s oppositional/terrorist organizations have evolved into distinct forms, and terrorist events can trigger information processing in a variety of society’s subsystems, including but not limited to the political system. Charles Manson and his Family, considered alongside the groups Aum Shinrikyo and ISIS, serve to illustrate the ongoing terror program as manifest in modern society. Despite the best efforts of security analysts and related system observations, the evolution of these violent communications is highly unpredictable. Though terrorism that achieves quasi-state (‘successful insurgency’) or full state authority (a ‘terror regime’) may reduce complexity or distinctions among modern political, legal or other subsystems, the same destabilizing operations conducted by terrorist organizations that fail to achieve the authority of states may nonetheless influence the increasing complexity of modern society.

Can Care and Compassion—Be the Ultimate Solution of Terrorism?

<p><em>Like a number of serious problems in our world terrorism is also one of them. Now what do we mean by; ‘terrorism’? It is a political phenomenon, where violence and bloodshed are brought upon the innocent citizens in order to shaken up the Government as it exploits the so-called terrorists. This is a set up which runs parallel with the main stream to devastate the main stream, in a secretive or clandestine method. Thus any violent bloodshed such as killing in robbery or insurgency cannot be called terrorism as there either the cause is not political as in case of killing in robbery; or common men are not targeted as in case of insurgency (although its cause is political). Again Guerilla tactic although is a clandestine or secretive method still it is not terrorism as here the units of the Government, that is innocent citizens are not killed. Revolution also involves violence but unlike terrorism it gains public support. The terrorists claim that they are actually waging a war against the Government, but in a war certain just rules are followed which states that proportionality between the means and end should be maintained, there should be a legitimate authority waging a war, it goes on within a particular territory, it should have a consistent success rate and most importantly it protects the immunity of the innocent mass. But in terrorism such rules of just war are lacking. Thus terrorism is a political violence between the mighty and the weak, for which it can also be called a class struggle or power struggle, where the weak sect shake the mighty by attacking upon those who are part and parcel of the mighty. This ‘ism’ is thus different from war, insurgency, revolution, crime and guerilla tactic because of its distinct feature that it does not attack its direct victim but attacks its indirect victim. In other words instead of destroying the Government which is guilty to them it attacks the innocent citizens of the Government because they are the units of the Government. Thus if the part is destroyed then the whole would automatically be shaken up. This unique mentality is found only in this ‘ism’ thus it differs from all other instances of violence. Terrorism is of two types—Terrorism from Above and Terrorism from Below. The former is also known as ‘State Sponsored Terrorism’ where the state is found to torture its citizens. The latter is termed ‘Non-State Terrorism’ where the exploited lot terrorizes the state for having been oppressed by it for years. The Non-State Terrorism is formed by the private parties such as Al Qaeda, Aum Shinrikyo, Maoists of India and so on.</em></p>

Aum Shinrikyo’s Nuclear and Chemical Weapons Development Efforts

This article details the terrorist activities of the Japanese cult, Aum Shinrikyo, from the perspective of its complex engineering efforts aimed at producing nuclear and chemical weapons. The experience of this millenarian organization illustrates that even violent non-state actors with considerable wealth and resources at their disposal face numerous obstacles to realizing their destructive aspirations. Specifically, Aum’s attempts at complex engineering were stymied by a combination of unchecked fantastical thinking, self-imposed ideological constraints, and a capricious leadership. The chapter highlights each of these mechanisms, as well as the specific ways in which they constrained the decision-making process and the implementation of the complex engineering tasks associated with their unconventional weapons development. Disclaimer Editor’s Note: This article forms part of a series of related case studies collected in this Special Issue and should be viewed in the context of the broader phenomenon of complex engineering by violent non-state actors. Readers are advised to consult the introductory and concluding papers for a full explanation and comparative analysis of the cases. This article is available in Journal of Strategic Security: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/jss/vol9/iss1/5 Acknowledgements This work was supported by Sandia National Laboratories, Contract #1525332. Any opinions, findings, conclusions and recommendations in this issue are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect views of Sandia National Laboratories or the U.S. Department of Energy. This article is available in Journal of Strategic Security: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/jss/vol9/iss1/5

Самозванство в России в прошлом и настоящем: социокультурный и историко-психологический аспекты

<p>В статье рассматриваются социокультурный и социально-психологический аспекты самозванства в России в истории и современности. Суть понятия «самозванство» заключается в том, что тот или иной человек проявляет себя в ином обличье, что дает ему возможности купаться в чужой славе, извлекать выгоду в материальном, общественном и личном плане. Дается типология самозванства: 1) мирское (царистское), 2) религиозное, 3) индивидуальное и 4) «человек в маске». Вскрываются психологические механизмы самозванства, причины и способы ложной самоидентификации.</p><p>Самозванство мирское (царистское) — одна из форм социального протеста в России в XVII–XVIII вв. Показаны через призму исторической психологии портреты самозванцев Лжедмитрия I (Г. Отрепьев) и Петра III (Е. Пугачев) как «царей-избавителей». Выявлены представления низов о правителях с точки зрения «справедливости», «благочестивости» (праведности) и «законности».</p><p>Самозванцы религиозные — не только порождение прошлых эпох (XVII–XVIII вв.), но являют собой и современные типажи. Если самозванцы царистские исчезли, то самозванцы религиозного толка продолжают манипулировать, произрастать на доверии людском. Свидетельством этого является деятельность деструктивных сект как зарубежного, так и российского происхождения, в частности секта Аум Синрикё, японца Асахары, секта Андрея Попова («Бог Кузя») и др.</p><p>Особенности современного этапа — появление индивидуальных самозванцев под именами известных людей. Их действия попадают как под Уголовный кодекс, так и под моральное публичное осуждение.</p><p>«Человек в маске» (условное обозначение) — явление наших дней. Так скрываются свидетели уголовных дел, которые попадают под государственную защиту и изменяют фамилии и даже внешность. Жизнь в маске — серьезная психологическая травма для человека.</p><p>Индивидуально-психологическими предпосылками самозванства называются: склонность к фантазированию и вера в собственные иллюзии, способность к самовнушению, сильный тип нервной системы. </p>

Conspiracy Theories and the Study of Alternative and Emergent Religions

This introduction addresses a number of approaches to the emerging field of the study of conspiracy theories and new and alternative religions. Scholars can examine how certain religious groups have been the subject of conspiracy narratives created by the wider culture, and how conspiracy narratives are mobilized within religious groups such as Aum Shinrikyo, Scientology or others. Moreover, we can fruitfully examine secular conspiracy theories through ideas typically applied to religions, such as theodicy, millenarianism, and esoteric claims to higher knowledge. Most studies assume that conspiracy theories indicate pathology—paranoia or simply stupidity. Increasingly however, scholars have begun to interpret the term “conspiracy theory” as operating polemically to stigmatize certain beliefs and ideas. The field therefore offers a microcosm of broader trends in the interplay of knowledge and power. The study of both new and emergent religions and conspiracy theories comes of age only when we cease to think of them as necessarily deviant and irrational.

Controversial new religions

This book complements Lewis's Oxford Handbook of New Religious Movements. The former provides an overview of the state of the field. This volume collects papers on those specific New Religious Movements (NRMs) that have generated the most scholarly attention. With few exceptions, these organizations are also the controversial groups that have attracted the attention of the mass media, often because they have been involved in, or accused of, violent or anti-social activities. Among the movements to be profiled are such groups as the Branch Davidians, Heaven's Gate, Aum Shinrikyo, Solar Temple, Scientology, Falun Gong and many more. The book will function as a reference for scholars, as a text for courses in NRMs, and will also appeal to non-specialists including reporters, law enforcement, public policy makers, and others.

The Bioterrorism Act and Water Utilities Protection: How to Proceed from Policy to Practice

The use of biological agents to attack water utilities is a real and serious threat that terrorists pose. The Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo and Muslim extremist groups’ development and deployment of such weapons have proven the potential of a bioterrorist attack. After the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the Bioterrorism Act of 2002 was signed into law. This act aims to address threats to resources such as the food supply and pharmaceuticals. In this article the water security portion of the act will be discussed while highlighting various security methods in which the bill can be implemented into practice.

Psychological aspects of the Aum Shinrikyo affair

IntroductionJapan is known as one of the safest countries in the world, but terrorism has become so global, that nowadays any country can suffer from terrorist attacks. The most famous (and to be accurate, one of the very few) acts of terrorism to have occurred in Japan was the sarin attack of 1995, perpetrated by Aum Shinrikyo. Terrorism in every region has its own typical features, as does Japanese terrorism. By analyzing the psychological aspect of the Aum Shinrikyo affair, we can learn more about the goals and motivation of terrorists in general.Aum Shinrikyo is a Japanese religious organization, better known for its terrorist activity, mainly the for sarin attack in the Tokyo subway on March 1995. This act of terrorism came as a surprise to the whole world (for the first time in human history weapons of mass destruction were used by non-combatants, and it happened in Japan, which is known as one of the safest countries), but it was a much greater shock for Japan itself. Japanese society always had confidence in a perfectly organized social system, with no possibility of violence. The sarin attack showed that this was an illusion: Japanese people for a long time could not feel safe in their own country. It is what can be called an effective terrorist attack: 12 people killed, but with a great psychological impact on the whole country.The most surprising fact for the Japanese people, after news of Aum had spread all over the country, was that most of the terrorists were graduates of famous universities: Tokyo, Waseda, Kyoto, etc. They were not uneducated misfits (from whom violence is more often expected), but qualified specialists, with good educations and with ambitions. This fact meant, in general terms, that in spite of career and other material opportunities provided by Japanese society, young people could choose anti-social forms of behavior. Moreover, they were not only anti-social, but they acted violently against their own country. Psychologists, sociologists, historians and journalists from Japan (and several specialists in other countries) tried to explore the Aum Shinrikyo phenomenon and came to the conclusion that Aum was a result of many factors, leading from religion to tragedy.Terrorist motivation was always a great field for discussion between scientists; psychologists try to find the proper method to analyze the problem (Zinchenko, 2007, 2011). Terrorism in Japan is, of course, a special case (Raevskiy, 2012), but in this study we tend to use the achievements of the Soviet psychological school.According to the Cultural-historic approach, introduced to psychology by L.S. Vygotskiy, every event should be analyzed not as a certain independent case, but in connection with the specific cultural features of the region and the time it took place. If we take a look at the situation in Japan in 1980s, when Aum Shinrikyo appeared, we can see that the social-cultural background can be definitely seen as one of the main factors of the Aum phenomenon.First of all, we should not underestimate the role of Japan's defeat in World War II and the occupation of Japan by American soldiers. It was preceded by Emperor Hirohito's speech on the radio: for the first time in Japanese history, the emperor admitted that he was not a God (kamisama), but an ordinary man. Some historians argue that this had a greater psychological impact on people than the defeat itself (Mesheryakov, 2009). In any case, Japan had to build a new country under the supervision of the USA, and for post-war generations, work for the sake of their country was of the greatest value.The next generation, born in the 1960s, was much less idealistic in its aims: money for them was not an ultimate goal, but merely a way to provide a living; young people were seeking spiritual enlightenment more than economical welfare. Some Japanese sociologists invented a new term for the post-war generation: they call them shinjinrui, meaning New Generation (Tanaka). …

Psychological Aspect of Religious Terrorism in Japan

Terrorism has become recently a subject to research in many fields of knowledge, and psychology is no exception. Happening in different parts of the world, terrorist acts are very difficult to predict, and also difficult to analyze because every terrorist organization differs in its social, cultural and psychological background. It means, that terrorism should be considered not as a common phenomenon with the same number of features, but as a complex problem depending much on the individual and cultural distinctive features. Current paper analyzes one of the most famous terrorist acts of previous century – “sarin attack” in Tokyo in 1995, and “Aum Shinrikyo”, a religious organization responsible for the attack. This event has some specific features which could happen only in Japan, and the analysis of the Japanese mentality and of the time the accident took place (Cultural-historic approach by L.S. Vigotskiy) can be a key to the understanding of this case. Click here and insert your abstract text.

Subterfuge of Aum Shinrikyo: How the Sarin Gas Attack Shocked Japan

In recent times, the word cult has taken on a pejorative undertones. Cults are looked upon with suspicion due to their eccentric rituals and practices. One such cult which proved to have a violent agenda was Aum Shinrikyo of Japan. The aim of this paper is to throw light on this cult, its weapons of mass destruction program, its charismatic but nefarious leader Shoko Asahar and his goal of becoming the emperor of Japan. This cult's activities left Japanese society reeling in shock, especially after the deadly Sarin Gas Attack, however, it was the political and cultural environment of Japan itself which indirectly helped nurture Aum Shinrikyo.

Lessons from Japan: Resilience after Tokyo and Fukushima

In the spring of 1995 Japan experienced the world’s first major terrorist attack using chemical weapons by a little-known religious cult called Aum Shinrikyo. The attack on the Tokyo subway, which killed 13 people, was the first lethal case of a non-state actor using a chemical agent against a civilian population. In March 2011, following a 9.0 magnitude earthquake in Japan, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor experienced a full meltdown releasing radiation into the surrounding area. The seemingly unhurried government reaction provided conflicting information to Japanese citizens, slowing evacuation and protective actions. Government failure is cited as a significant factor in the severity of the nuclear disaster in three investigations conducted after the incident. This article defines resilience and raises the question of whether the U.S. government has the ability to address the issues raised by the two case studies. There are four primary lessons of these two case studies from Japan: Trust is essential; two-way communications are vital; someone or something will always unexpectedly fail to act appropriately, while others will provide surprising support and; finally, recovery is long-term. This article is available in Journal of Strategic Security: http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/jss/vol6/iss2/6

Celebrity gods: new religions, media, and authority in occupied Japan

Celebrity Gods explores interaction of new religions and media in postwar Japan. It focuses on leaders and founders (kyoso) of Jiu and Tensho Kotai Jingu Kyo, two new religions of Japan's immediate postwar period that received substantial press attention. Jiu was linked to popular prewar group Omotokyo, and its activities were based on millennial visions of its leader, a woman called Jikoson. When Jiu attracted legendary sumo champion Futabayama to its cause, Jikoson and her activities became a widely-covered cause celebre in press. Tensho Kotai Jingu Kyo (labeled odoru shukyo, the dancing religion, by press) was led by a farmer's wife, Kitamura Sayo. Her uncompromising vision and actions toward creating a new society-one that was far removed from what she described as maggot world of postwar Japan-drew harsh and often mocking criticism from print media. Looking back for precursors to postwar relationship of new religions and media, Benjamin Dorman explores significant role that Japanese media traditionally played in defining appropriate and acceptable social behavior, acting at times as mouthpieces for government and religious authorities. Using cases of Renmonkyo in Meiji era and Omotokyo in Taisho and Showa eras, Dorman shows how accumulated images of new religions in pre-1945 Japan became absorbed into those of immediate postwar period. Given lack of formal religious education in Japan, media played an important role in transmitting notions of acceptable behavior to public. He goes on to characterize leaders of these groups as celebrity gods, demonstrating that media, which were generally untrained in religious history or ideas, chose to fashion them as celebrities whose antics deserved derision. While prewar media had presented other kyoso as antithesis of decent, moral citizens who stood in opposition to aims of state, postwar media reports presented them primarily as unfit for democratic society.Celebrity Gods delves into an under-studied era of religious history: Allied Occupation and postwar period up to early 1950s. It is an important interdisciplinary work that considers relations between Japanese and Occupation bureaucracies and groups in question, and uses primary source documents from Occupation archives and interviews with media workers and members of religious groups. For observers of postwar Japan, this research provides a roadmap to help understand issues relating to Aum Shinrikyo affair of 1990s.

Hikari no Wa: A New Religion Recovering from Disaster

In March 2007 Joyu Fumihiro, ex-spokesperson of Aum Shinrikyo and exrepresentative of Aleph, set up a religious organization called Hikari no Wa (literally of Light) with around two hundred members. Hikari no Wa strongly and publicly rejects Asahara's authority, and the image the is trying to construct and promote is centered on its desire to separate itself from Furthermore, the seems interested in exploring different religious practices (including practices related to the Shinto tradition) in order to project itself as a ''new group and not be accused of being a new Aum. This article draws on fieldwork and interviews with Hikari no Wa's members in order to explore the tension in Hikari no Wa between its attempt to create a ''new religion, distancing itself completely from the previous leader and practices, and, at the same time, its need to deal with the legacy of Aum Shinrikyo and the consequences of the tragic event of 1995. keywords: Hikari no Wa-Aleph-new religious movements-Aum Shinrikyo (ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.) past is the one thing we are not prisoners of. We can do with the past exactly what we wish. What we can't do is to change its consequences. -John Berger, From A to X: A Story in Letters At the beginning of March 2007, Joyu Fumihiro ... ex-spokesperson of Aum Shinrikyo ... and ex-representative of Aleph ... (the name used by Aum since 2000), and four other members held a press conference to announce their withdrawal from Aleph and to reveal their intention to start a group. Two months later another press conference was organized in Tokyo and Joyu, together with the group's representatives, proclaimed the foundation of Hikari no Wa ... (the English name used by the is The Circle of Rainbow Light). Members briefly introduced to the journalists the changes they intended to make to the group's teachings and practices. 1 They openly emphasized their intention to separate themselves from Aum, invited people to visit their centers, showed videos of their activities to journalists, and presented themselves in front of the press wearing suits or tracksuits rather than the religious clothes worn by Aum's renunciants (shukkesha ...). This event drew attention to the fact that Aum, in various guises, had continued to exist after the events of 1995, and that people associated with that movement were continuing to search for a religious identity in the aftermath of This is an area that has thus far not been covered to any degree in studies of Aum, and my article is aimed at dealing with this lacuna. Several works were published on Aum immediately after the sarin gas attack (Kaplan and Marshall 1996, Watanabe 1996; Repp 1997; Shimazono 1997; Metraux 1999; Reader 2000; Kisala and Mullins 2001), and the has gained attention from scholars in very different fields such as religious studies, sociology, psychology, political studies and so on, but comparatively little academic study has been done on what happened to Aum members after the leader and high-ranking members were arrested.2 Materials produced by the media are also very limited. After two years of deep interest in Aum (1995-1996), newspapers and tv channels now report about the only in the case of significant events, for example, the final results of trials or incidents involving ex-members such as the dispute that arose between Aleph members and residents in Adachi ward in Tokyo in 2010 and 2011.3 Yet the continued activities of those associated with Aum to pursue religious paths-an issue highlighted by the attempt by Joyu and others to form a movement in 2007-merit serious attention, since this not only allows us to explore the question of what impact the Aum Affair had on the movement itself, but also raises major academic questions about how religious groups that are associated with catastrophes try to deal with their past while striving to continue or develop their activities in the present. …

Did Aum Change Everything? What Soka Gakkai Before, During, and After the Aum Shinrikyo Affair Tells Us About the Persistent “Otherness” of New Religions in Japan

Did Aum Change Everything? What Soka Gakkai Before, During, and After the Aum Shinrikyo Affair Tells Us About the Persistent “Otherness” of New Religions in Japan

Scholarly Reactions to the Aum and Waco Incidents

This article investigates some scholarly reactions towards the Aum incident of March 1995 and the incident of 1993 involving the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. The Waco incident began on 28 February 1993 with an armed exchange in which four federal agents and six Branch Davidians died, and ended on 19 April 1993 with the deaths of seventy-six Branch Davidians. While both incidents highlighted questions that democracies face in terms of the balance between protecting religious freedom and guaranteeing public safety, they also highlighted stark cultural differences in reactions, approaches, and expectations between scholars in Japan and the West, particularly the United States. There is, of course, a danger in attempting to compare the same research methods and assumptions scholars generally operate on in one region to another, in conjunction with prevailing social and cultural attitudes. Nevertheless, the growing field of new religious movements, or nrms, necessarily requires at least some consideration into scholarly methods and assumptions from an international perspective. keywords: Branch Davidians-new religious movements (nrms)-fieldwork- Waco (ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.) The Waco incident of 1993 involving the Branch Davidians stands beside the Aum subway gassing incident as a major event of the 1990s that drew international attention to the potential dangers associated with so-called new religious movements (hereafter, nrms). Since the Waco incident, the study of nrms has grown significantly in the West, and particularly in the United States. Although the study of Japanese nrms was relatively popular in Japan from the late 1970s to the mid 1990s, the Aum Affair appears to have contributed significantly to a drop in such studies. Shimada Hiromi, a religious studies scholar who had done some work on Aum and was perceived to have endorsed the group in some way, lost his university position as a result. In the years after the Aum incident, the public perception of religion in Japan took a serious dive (see the Editors' Introduction in this issue). In the us, the growth of the field can be partly attributed to the activities of scholars who strove to place the subject of nrms on the public agenda in the wake of the Waco incident. This field had begun to develop in the 1970s as scholars became interested in the rise of movements (often originating from Asia) that were linked to the counter-culture of the 1960s, and developed further after the Jonestown mass murder/suicide involving the Peoples Temple in 1978. The Waco incident of 1993 definitely gave it a further strong boost, as it gave scholars who had worked in the area a chance to voice their concerns and establish the legitimacy of the study of nrms. The development of the field manifested in a greater presence and voice at academic conferences by scholars of new religions, more interactions between scholars in the media, larger numbers of students enrolling in classes on new religions, and the foundation of a journal, Nova Religio, specifically focused on the study of new, emergent, and alternative religions, and which provided scholars with a forum for their studies of such movements. The Japanese case stands in stark contrast to this. Even if we consider a recent, major new work in Japanese on the Aum case, which focuses on new information that was not available soon after the sarin gas attack (Inoue 2011), the amount of Japanese scholarship specifically dealing with Aum is minor compared with that on Waco, and the public engagement by Japanese scholars has been virtually nonexistent (particularly from the public's point of view).1 There are, of course, significant factors that need to be taken into account regarding these differences, such as the sheer numbers of scholars studying religion of any kind, the role of the media, and fieldwork methods that work in one country or region but not another. Scholars studying the Branch Davidians and Aum Shinrikyo tend to consider them as nrms, or new religions (shinshukyo, the phrase that is most used in Japan). …

Barriers to Bioweapons: Intangible Obstacles to Proliferation

Although the issue of knowledge diffusion has been at the heart of nonproliferation research and policies, no study in the political science field has thus far systematically identified the mechanisms that allow the acquisition and efficient use of specialized knowledge related to bioweapons. This analytical gap has led to the commonly held belief that bioweapons knowledge is easily transferable. Studies of past weapons programs, including the former U.S. and Soviet bioweapons programs, show that gathering the relevant information and expertise required to produce a weapon is not sufficient to guarantee success. The success of a bioweapons program is dependent on intangible factors, such as work organization, program management, structural organization, and social environment, which can enhance the advancement of a program or create obstacles to progress. When assessed within smaller state and terrorist bioweapons programs, such as those of South Africa and the terrorist group Aum Shinrikyo, these intangible factors produce the same constraining effects as in larger programs. More important, intangible factors have a significant effect on covert programs, because clandestinity imposes greater restrictions on knowledge diffusion. By taking into account these intangible factors, analysts and policymakers can improve their threat assessments and develop more effective nonproliferation and counterproliferation policies.

Doubting the Global War on Terror

Soon after Al Qaeda's terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001, the Bush Administration described its new grand strategy: the "Global War on Terror". This article examines the 'two-track' process that US neoconservatives and 'echo chamber' media used, to promote the GWOT grand strategy. It re-examines why many experts and institutions expressed doubt about specific claims the Bush Administration made to support the 2003 Iraq War. Historical counterfactuals suggest that the Bush Administration's Global War on Terror could have evolved very differently . . . or not occurred at all.

Geopolitical Mission Strategy: The Case of the Unification Church in Japan and Korea

Japan presents a useful case for studying new religious movements and their development of public relations and growth strategies, not only because there are large numbers of new religious movements in Japan, but also for the presence of controversial movements such as Aum and the Unification Church. The strategies employed in recruitment and fund-raising have become increasingly important for such movements in Japan-as well as for research on these movements-in the wake of the "Aum Affair." This article will focus on the strategy employed by the Unification Church, which is broadly perceived as a social problem. KEYWORDS: cult controversy-new religion-recruitment-Unification Church-fund-raising (ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.) Ever since Aum Shinrikyo members carried out the sarin gas attack in 1995, the "cult controversy" has been considered a major social problem in Japan. The word "cult," used by Margaret Singer when she referred to Aum as a "doomsday cult" in the Kyodo News Service report of 24 March 1995, fed public anxiety. Aum believers, especially those convicted of the crime of mass murder, were considered by the public to be under the "mind control" of the group's founder, Asahara Shoko. Various professionals have diagnosed pathological religious conversion in cults, which has given authorization for individuals with cult problems to be treated with medical care as well as legal remedies (Nishida 1995). As for Aum, the acts of violence were dealt with by judiciary authorities as self-centered organized crimes, even though its members were following the orders of the founder under the intense pressure of religious dogma. Moreover, psychiatrists and clinical psychotherapists who participated in cult criticism began withdrawing from their attempts to rescue members when they learned that approximately fifteen hundred members still remained affiliated with Aum (later renamed "Aleph") and still believed in the founder's teachings and practices (Koanchosacho 2008). Contrary to the development process of anti-cult movements formulated by Shupe and Bromley (1994), for the Japanese anti-cult movements the Aum incidents were not sufficient to allow for its "professionalization," that is, the movement must still rely on "nonprofessional" volunteers such as pastors and lawyers. Also, most Japanese did not regard cult members as "patients" to be diagnosed and treated psychiatrically, and easily forgot and overlooked the malfunctions of New Age and cult movements. Recently, the "cult problem" has been fading from view as a topic in the news. The anti-cult movements, however, have been continuing their regular activities such as reporting on cult issues, counseling, and working to fix problems. Among those problem cases, the Unification Church (Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity; hereafter "uc") in Japan must be noted because this religion has persistently provoked cult controversy, and critics of this religion have succeeded in suggesting a new perspective on the "religious freedom" of the proselytized, that is, the right to not believe in a religion is just as much as part of the "freedom of religion" as the right of a religious group to conduct mission activities. In Japan, the liability of the uc with regard to former members and private citizens has been the center of many court cases. Its proselytizing has been found to be illegal, and its fund-raising activities (including the sales of spiritual goods) ruled fraudulent. Yet they continue these illegal missionary activities and fund-raising. Since attention to the cult issue was monopolized by the Aum affair in the 1990s, the uc's missionary and fund-raising work, which has actually been conducted for more than fifty years, did not receive proper attention from the media, police authorities, and academics. The matter of "conversion" has been discussed from the perspective of the sociology of religion, and this organization has been a continuous subject of investigation in connection with this issue. …

Degradation of the chemical warfare agents HD, GD, thickened GD, and VX on ambient and moist environmental substrates

The rates, products, and mechanisms of the degradation of the chemical warfare agents GD, thickened GD, HD and VX on environmental substrates were determined using Solid State Magic Angle Spinning Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (SSMAS NMR). Increases in temperature were found to increase the rates of the reactions. The addition of water affected b oth the rate of the reactions and the products formed. The alkalinity or acidity of the substrate was also observed to affect t he products formed and the mechanism of the reaction. The chemical warfare agents VX (O-ethyl S-(2-N,N-(diisopropylamino)ethyl) methylphosphonothio- late), sulfur mustard (bis(2-chloroethyl) sulfide, HD), So man (GD, pinacolyl methylphosphonofluoridate, O-1,2,2-trimethylpropyl methylphosphonofluoridate), an d thickened GD (TGD, which is GD with�3% polymeric thickener added) are of interest due to the possibility of use by terrorist organizations and in global conflicts. Sulfur mustard was used during WWI and WWII (1), and in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980's (2). Sulfur mustard is known for persistence in the en vironment, especially at the bottom of the ocean (3,4). The terrorist organization Aum Shinrikyo used Sarin (GB) in the Tokyo subway in March, 1995, killing 13 civilians, and VX in 1994 to kill a disgruntled ex-member (5). The results discussed here are part of a series of experiments performed to determine the degradation rates of agents on the environmentally prevalent substrates concrete, sand, asphalt and soil, and to determine any chemical properties of the substrates that may influence the degradation rates of the agents. This article summarizes the agent-substrate inter actions observed to date by the authors and other researchers, and highlights the influence the substrate has on the observed agent reactivity.