Editors’ Introduction. Impact and Ramifications: The Aftermath of the Aum Affair in the Japanese Religious Context

Latency Through Uncertainty: the 1994 Matsumoto Sarin Incident as a Delayed Cultural Trauma

“…Regrettably, subsequent social ramifications of the Aum Affair in Japanese society are beyond the scope of this article and are better discussed elsewhere (see, e.g., Baffelli and Reader 2012;Gardner 1999;Hardacre 2007;Kisala and Mullins 2001;Pendleton 2009 the discovery of its true culprits was a mixed blessing for fact-finders. As the police raided Aum's premises two days after the attack (contrary to Asahara's initial aims to divert attention from them), investigators found massive quantities of sarin ingredients, confirming Aum's culpability.…”

“…38 The commemoration of Matsumoto has stood apart from other crimes committed by Aum, as the false accusation has been a recurring theme in remembering Matsumoto alongside condemning Aum's violence. Thus, unlike the commemoration of the Tokyo attack, which has been characterised by unequivocal moral condemnation of Aum as a mind-controlling cult (Baffelli and Reader 2012;Ushiyama and Baert 2016), the symbolic opposition of Japan as good and Aum as evil has been attenuated somewhat in public discussions of Matsumoto as the media have had to acknowledge their own moral transgressions. For example, in 1999, Yomiuri Shimbun and Asahi Shimbun both ran a series of reports marking five years since the Matsumoto attack.…”

Media and New Religions in Japan

“…Others appeared immediately after the sarin attack, such as the Subway Sarin Incident Victims' Association (Chikatetsu Sarin Jiken Higaisha no Kai) and the Japan Society for Cult Prevention and Recovery (Nihon Datsukaruto Kyōkai). The Aum Affair (Oumu jiken), as it was referred to in the media, is considered an important turning point in the relationship between religion and society in Japan (Baffelli and Reader 2012;Kisala and Mullins 2001 ) and it strongly affected how religion is perceived there nowadays.…”

“…After the Aum Affair, religious organisations in Japan had to face open criticism and still-lingering negative images of religion in society. As other studies have discussed (Baffelli and Reader 2012;Chilson 2004;Dorman 2012a;Gag né 2014;McLaughlin 2012), the consequen ces of the Aum Affair invo lved not only new religions, but also more traditional religious organisations with no evident link to Aum. For the groups discussed in this book (Agonshū, Kōfuku no Kagaku and Hikari no Wa), the situation was more complicated, due to the fact that they were, as discussed in the Introduction, more or less directly a target of criticism and were associated in the public mind with Aum.…”

“…Before 1995, being a small-scale group, Aum Shinrikyō had not been extensively studied. This caused a lot of criticism toward Japanese scholars, who were accused of not having recognised the potential public threat and even of having been supportive of Aum 29 (Baffelli and Reader 2012;Dorman 2012b;Reader 20 00b;Tsukada 2011;Watanab e 2001). As a consequence, t he media becam e the primary source of information about the group, as explained by Hardacre:…”