Morbid Mondays - Episode 32 - Tokyo Sarin Gas Attack

I'm going to say the name of this cult wrong every time except for once. I'm sorry to the listener, not the organization.

Today Katy and I talk about the worst cult leader in Japan. The Aum Shinrikyo cult executed murders, kidnappings, extortion, torture and most of all... a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo Subway. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Uh welcome back to Morbid Mondays. We just did a pre-show.

SPEAKER_02 0:04

Yeah. And it was it was it was a lot of fun, actually. Like our pre our pre-shows are always fun, but like that is so loud. What's it like being able to hear out of both ears? Because I didn't hear nothing.

SPEAKER_00 0:15

So mine uh noises like that make them go whoop real loud.

SPEAKER_02 0:19

And you know, I say that, but I can hear one of our light bulbs, one of my light bulbs in my bathroom.

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Yeah, because you don't you don't typically lose all your hearing, you lose tones of it. And so, like, there's probably a couple of tones in there that you can still grab on and they irritate that shit out of you. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 0:37

My left ear kind of works.

SPEAKER_00 0:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 0:40

All right, let's fucking do this.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Yeah. Welcome back to Morbid Mondays. Your unhinged source for all the weird, fucked up, wild, gross. There's a bunch of words in there.

SPEAKER_02 0:52

What the fuck history? There we go. What the fuck moments in history.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

I'm Brian.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

I'm Katie.

SPEAKER_00 0:58

All right.

SPEAKER_02 0:58

Let's neither of us have memorized this intro.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

That's okay. That's okay. I was like, I know most of it. I love that thing.

SPEAKER_02 1:06

You'd think I'd know it.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

We've done it for like a year.

SPEAKER_02 1:10

I know. I know.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

We still don't know it.

SPEAKER_02 1:13

Well, I mean, we always have it in front of us, and I didn't bring my notebook. You don't have anything but your laptop in front of you.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 1:19

You know what? Today's a fuck it, we're doing it live day.

SPEAKER_00 1:21

Yep. Yep. Yep.

SPEAKER_02 1:23

I've kicked this table. I don't even know sometimes today.

SPEAKER_00 1:28

So what do you know? Uh, what do you think? What are your opinions?

SPEAKER_02 1:33

Word association, I love it.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

About cults. Oh.

SPEAKER_02 1:39

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

I Oh, wait, trigger warnings.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, let's do trigger warnings.

SPEAKER_00 1:45

So early trigger warnings. Um, we will be talking about a murder. Murder. Yeah. Jesus. Jesus. Murder, occultish stuff. Uh, lots of occultish stuff. I'm staying away from essay. There's a little bit of that that was in the actual story. But there's when we touched on our story, there's better, longer form documentaries all over YouTube. You're about to knock your drink over. There we go.

SPEAKER_02 2:13

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 2:13

That uh that you can watch if you're like you want better details. This is more conversational format. Uh, but that's pretty much it. It it's like, you know, corruption cult kind of stuff. It's about cults. So this is a good thing.

SPEAKER_02 2:26

God, I hate that these words are about to come out of my mouth. That's pretty tame for trigger warnings.

SPEAKER_00 2:31

Yeah. Cause I because we're, you know, there's there's some there's some bad shit in there, but like it's mostly the murder aspect.

SPEAKER_03 2:37

Murder.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

Um, murder and um a bit of terrorism that thankfully does not go as bad as it could have. It could have gone much worse. And most people actually, even that tell this story, don't go into how bad it could have got. They actually skip a pretty major part. Um most of them. There's a couple that really get this right. Um, but yeah, what are your uh what are your beliefs?

SPEAKER_01 3:02

What are my beliefs? No, what are you just doing? Well, buddy. That's gonna be a whole episode.

SPEAKER_00 3:07

Yeah, in 30 seconds, describe your tea le uh Take to I have a stutter. Um describe your entire philosophy of religion and life. Oh, that's easy. Ah okay. Um, but what are your what are your thoughts on um like what's your experience in studying like cults and stuff?

SPEAKER_02 3:25

So I enjoy looking at cults because I have I have a whole lot of of entertainment that comes out of them from going, what the fuck? Um uh recently I I actually I watched a whole mess of documentaries on the um of like the of the Latter-day Saints guys?

SPEAKER_00 3:46

Yes. Uh no, sir. Not the Church of Latter-day Saints, but they're like a they were a weird weird offshoot. Yeah, that kind of broke. Um it was because the the guy who ended up being Warren Jeff's.

SPEAKER_02 3:56

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 3:57

The guy that ended up being in charge of it was not the founder.

SPEAKER_02 4:00

I watched the whole like a block of documentaries on that recently.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

What a creep.

SPEAKER_02 4:05

Oh my god, yes.

SPEAKER_00 4:06

Yeah, geez.

SPEAKER_02 4:08

Like going any anyway, but yeah, I I derive a lot of entertainment from reading about them. Um while they are happening, like if like if and when a new story breaks, I'm usually pretty disgusted by them. I don't have a lot of uh I guess I would say care or regard, positive care or regard for most organized religion.

SPEAKER_03 4:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:30

Um, I I have opinions. Yeah, yeah. Uh, but like cults in particular kind of like make me angry because you generally in a cult, you are surrendering your free will and or your individuality to to this person that represents a higher power and they're almost always full of bullshit.

SPEAKER_00 4:53

Yeah, it's kind of like it's it's to me, uh they've always kind of registered as like I'm a creep.

SPEAKER_02 5:00

Yes, you are.

SPEAKER_00 5:01

It's like what if what if Jesus was like really into gold? You know what I mean? Like that's that's kind of what it's your father-in-law. That's that's that's kind of what like they they always like remind me of because it's like they have this vibe of like teacher, healer, all this kind of stuff. But then when it comes down to the works, quote unquote, of these people, it's always like theft, sexual gratitude, fame.

SPEAKER_02 5:26

Why is it always sexual gratitude to base human draw? Always like every single cult that I have looked into, and I I have done a lot of cult research because like once again, I derive entertainment from them after the fact.

SPEAKER_03 5:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:41

Um, like I I watched the one that was like about a lady that was like that was supposed to be a living goddess on earth and like literally died from liver failure.

SPEAKER_00 5:50

Oh shit.

SPEAKER_02 5:51

Uh and that one was uh central almost entirely on sex. It was insane.

SPEAKER_00 5:58

Yeah. Uh and this is the one in California.

SPEAKER_02 6:02

I think so, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:02

Like the 1920s.

SPEAKER_02 6:03

No, no, no, no. It was it was recent. It was recent. And like they her acolytes or whatever you call them, her initiates. I don't know what her vocabulary was because it's been months since I watched this documentary. But her people carted her body around for like a couple of months, and like because of all of the huh in her system, she had like mummified.

SPEAKER_00 6:25

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:26

And like they were like waiting for her to wake up even though she was very obviously dead dead, like dead, like capital D dead.

SPEAKER_03 6:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:35

It was it was so weird, and then there was uh, and there was the then when there was the one dude that like killed himself with um colloidal silver or something.

SPEAKER_00 6:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:45

Uh I don't know, because a lot of people with colloidal silver.

SPEAKER_00 6:48

Yeah, a lot of people have been injured by that shit. Oh, yeah, let's put a bunch of metals you can't pass easily from your body. Because that's that is here's my this is my big for the money cults. And lesser cults, right? Like people who have very strong beliefs about things that are not really based in reality. So like I talk to people all religion.

SPEAKER_02 7:09

Yeah. Um, anyway. Right, because well the thing is like with with I say I am a Christian, like, you know, my entire like belief system is based on, you know, big brother in the sky.

SPEAKER_00 7:19

Yeah. Uh most people have a kind of pantheist morality where where they believe the earth and life in general is kind of just like good, and that they have a kind of morality that is probably am Abrahamic, and unless you're specifically from like India or East Asia, probably Abrahamic. You know what I mean? Like so there's um or indigenous, there's plenty of indigenous uh religions. That's true. So which are great. And and uh often I think the thing that separates cults from religions is really does it have a moral, does it have a strong moral philosophy that can be reasoned with. Case in point, Judaism has the Talmud, right, centuries of arguments. Um Christians have gone through multiple reformations. There are so many different flavors of Christians where somebody goes, I got beef, fuck it, and then I'm out. Yeah, you know what I mean? Like, and and even in within the Catholic Church, which is maintained to be like one thing mostly, there's been two major schisms where large parts have broken off.

SPEAKER_02 8:23

Yeah, that's right. We have two popes.

SPEAKER_00 8:24

Yeah, and really three. There's a a a third tiny group in Spain.

SPEAKER_02 8:29

There's a third mook?

SPEAKER_00 8:30

Yeah, and he's like, he doesn't look too happy about it. Uh, but it's like from a relic from the Anti-Pope movement. And then there's Martin Luther. Yeah. All of Protestantism broke off over a legal argument. And so like it can be reasoned with, even in its worst times. And then you have like religions like Buddhism, right?

SPEAKER_02 8:50

That are Who is just chill.

SPEAKER_00 8:52

Yeah, that are essentially like depending on your version.

SPEAKER_02 8:54

But like okay, that's the version I know then.

SPEAKER_00 8:56

Yeah, because essentially baseline Buddhism Buddhism, Buddhism, Buddhism. Um baseline Buddhism. Oh my god, I did it again. Baseline Buddhism is basically uh a semi-atheist belief system, right? It has to do, it definitely has spirituality in it and a cosmology. I know I'm stuttering hard.

SPEAKER_02 9:21

No, you're good. My brain just like reverted back to you know, BAME strand is having a honk.

SPEAKER_00 9:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:26

Is having a honk.

SPEAKER_00 9:28

Yeah, bame strand. Call the bambulence, call the bondolence. Um but but cults don't have that. They can't be reasoned with.

SPEAKER_02 9:38

Cults are crazy, dude.

SPEAKER_00 9:39

Yeah, they they they they make up rules for nonsense reasons that are not based in any kind of long-standing cultural tradition. They just make them up and like on the spot for no real reason. You know, like when we talk about like Judaism, right? The the the cleansing rituals and stuff in Judaism predate Judaism. I mean, like they're old standing cultural traditions that get assimilated into a rising faith.

SPEAKER_02 10:03

Um a Christian uh Christianity did that with a lot of stuff. Like Christianity ate cultural belief systems.

SPEAKER_00 10:10

Yeah. Because you have what what a lot of people refer to as like syncretism. If two people live next to each other for 500 years, their beliefs will meld. Like their cultures, everything will meld.

SPEAKER_02 10:21

I love the consistency of people. That makes it sound like I'm eating people.

SPEAKER_00 10:25

Um the texture. Uh no, but the constancy. They they they are like the I mean, the the that one goddess in Skyrim would disagree with you. A new hand touches the beacon.

SPEAKER_02 10:43

I can't believe you just busted that out.

SPEAKER_00 10:46

All right, so we'll actually get into the damn episode now. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_02 10:52

So we've been trying to rein ourselves in for like three hours now. We got here at 1.30. It is currently 4'11. 4'11.

SPEAKER_00 11:00

Jeez.

SPEAKER_02 11:01

Cults are awful, but they're great for entertainment like 10 years later.

SPEAKER_00 11:04

And then they also they do things like rewrite the definition of words.

SPEAKER_02 11:07

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 11:08

Which is why I'm always very fucking sketchy on on any kind of like TikTok grifter that wants to redefine terms because that is that is a sketchy thing. So they they do things like that. They also separate you from family and friends.

SPEAKER_02 11:22

Oh, yeah, they isolate you hardcore because that's how they get control of you.

SPEAKER_00 11:25

Yeah. It's any social network, and then they limit your communication and movement. That that's the kind of thing that separates them from like any spiritualism or religion, is that most places you can just kind of like walk in and leave.

SPEAKER_03 11:38

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 11:38

You know, like that that's not really a thing. If you decide to go to another church, there might be a little bit of like social backlash.

SPEAKER_02 11:44

A cult wants you to stay the fuck put.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

Yeah, and might do things about it too. Shoko Asuhara, in March 2nd, 1955.

SPEAKER_02 11:53

Oh, so this is like recent.

SPEAKER_00 11:54

This is fairly recent. Yeah, in fact, uh definitely within our lifetime, actually. Um, was born as Shizuo Matsumoto. Uh into a poor good name. It's a pretty cool sounding name. He's not a cool dude. Um, he was born into a post-war family with nine children. So pretty poor.

SPEAKER_02 12:12

That's a big family in 1955.

SPEAKER_00 12:14

It's just 10 years after World War II ends.

SPEAKER_02 12:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:17

So um he was left mostly blind from infantile glaucoma.

SPEAKER_03 12:22

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

So he can't really see that well. Uh he has attended, so he attends as a young man, he attends a boarding school. That's very common in that time period for men to go to like men's schools. Um, all the way up to the 80s, really.

SPEAKER_02 12:34

Uh yeah, we talked about this with uh what's his name?

SPEAKER_00 12:37

Uh Yukio Mishima.

SPEAKER_02 12:38

Thank you. I cannot think of his name. Um I got as far as Yuki, and that was it. And I'm like, nope, that's too short.

SPEAKER_00 12:43

Yep. And then so anyway, so he went there, right? He he goes to the school, school for the blind, but he can partially see, and that's where his true color first starts to really show itself.

SPEAKER_02 12:53

Oh no.

SPEAKER_00 12:54

He was a fuckload of a bully. Uh he would extort the fully blind kids who could not defend themselves from the guy that could still kind of see.

SPEAKER_02 13:02

We were just talking about how much I hate bullies.

SPEAKER_00 13:04

Yeah. And he would like order them around and and and like sort money from them and all that kind of stuff, bullied people hardcore. Um, and he liked that. That's the thing, is some people never really grow out of it, but he did give it the good old college try. In fact, by the 1980s, um by the 1980s, he had graduated from a junior college. That's the thing about Japan, uh, at the time, especially. Um, we are entering a time period which is referred to as the Japanese economic miracle. Uh, thanks to the Marshall Plan and a good, solid fucking Japanese work ethic is legendary. True that. And they have a typic at the time, anyways, were very, very obsessed with quality. And so they opened up cheap Japanese crap as they knew it in the 1950s, became the cars that everyone was buying, the radios, the televisions that everyone was buying. Companies like Toshiba and Nissan and all these start start around like some of these around this time, Mazda.

SPEAKER_02 14:06

The the phonetic of Nissan has always cracked me up, like especially.

SPEAKER_00 14:11

Yeah, yeah, or big brother rather.

SPEAKER_02 14:13

For for those of us that that speak Japanese over here in the States for no reason now, um, for me anyway. I shouldn't uh what do you drive? A Nissan.

SPEAKER_00 14:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:23

You drive your big brother?

SPEAKER_00 14:25

Yeah. Because it's like a combination of two different words.

SPEAKER_02 14:28

Yeah, yeah. Well, a Nissan. Anyway.

SPEAKER_00 14:31

So he graduated from college, um, where he studied religion a lot and tried to branch out into spiritual paths. And we're seeing for a brief moment, anyways, a different side of him where he's trying to trying to better himself. Yeah, theoretically. He gets an acupuncture. He's he's looking for a spiritual path. Acupuncture in its original form is more closely tied to certain spiritualist beliefs.

SPEAKER_02 14:57

Oh, trust me, I understand. I've watched enough of those Chinese romance dramas where acupuncture cures everything.

SPEAKER_00 15:03

It's a Taoist, largely a Taoist belief. So, like, um, and that's not me tanking on fucking acupuncture.

SPEAKER_02 15:11

Three needles in your leg, and then you're coughing up these gouts of blood, and suddenly you're cured.

SPEAKER_00 15:15

Yeah. Actual acupuncture as we know it today, very effective. Um, not the cool magic that it used to be. Because now they're just like, oh, you have a tingling in your uh your fingers. Maybe we should try to to stimulate the nerve around your shoulder blade. Yeah. They've actually mapped out and it works.

SPEAKER_02 15:33

It's so cool.

SPEAKER_00 15:33

It works very well.

SPEAKER_02 15:34

They can they can poke a point on your foot and unclog your sinuses. Yeah. And that is so awesome.

SPEAKER_00 15:40

And also the best lymph, like some of the best drainage people in the world when you have like lymphedema and stuff. Uh so um after that, however, he he starts going further into um into deeply religious studies. Some of us might have the gut reaction to think Christianity because we're here in the West. However, the predominant religions of Japan are Buddhism and Shinto.

SPEAKER_02 16:03

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 16:03

And Shinto is not really much of a religion, right? And I say that in that it's a great religion and that it doesn't have a lot of hardline rules.

SPEAKER_02 16:12

Yeah. So like Shinto is difficult to explain to people that don't understand bits of the culture at least.

SPEAKER_00 16:19

I like to explain it as pantheism with a lot of cultural overtone.

SPEAKER_02 16:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:27

And then like it used to be something different, it used to be uh animist folklore, and then and then it came out of that, and now it is mostly used for honor rituals around like family and times of year, and it's a very cultural practice. I think it's kind of awesome. Always I've always kind of adored some of the cultural like but Shintuism also has a lot of breaks, it has small cult groups that have kind of latched on in the in the past like 50 years or so. Some of them completely harmless, some of them not so much. Uh and this guy's not so much.

SPEAKER_02 16:59

So he studies I would suspect so, otherwise he wouldn't be a Morvin Monday.

SPEAKER_00 17:03

Yeah. So around this time in Japan, uh in the 1980s and the mid-80s specifically, Japan is going to start to lose the the the crest of the Japanese economic miracle is said to This is like 1984, 1985.

SPEAKER_02 17:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:18

The the crest is normally considered to be about 1975. That's when the rate slows down and they're still going up in the GDP. Right around 1990, uh the Japanese, the late 80s, 1990s, the Japanese are going to experience a crash. Um their economic miracle was largely brought on by a combination of a very, very uh work-friendly culture and also a national bank. They could accrue a lot of debt. That's what got us our thing, too. At some point it will stop. So, like, that's what the two great recessions of our lifetime were mostly about.

SPEAKER_02 17:54

And they were so close to fucking gather.

SPEAKER_00 17:56

Yeah. Because it was housing. First it was housing and then it was other right. So it it was uh housing is our because our our economy is largely based on expansion.

SPEAKER_02 18:06

Dude, and we have towns. We have entire towns of unoccupied, like ghost towns.

SPEAKER_00 18:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:11

Nobody lives there.

SPEAKER_00 18:12

Because we we have to like housing is one of the biggest indicators of of our economy. And so we're just scared to death that it's gonna crumble. And and the especially when you get to like big investment banks. That's what the too big to veil thing in our life was about. And so that's that's what happens here. There's a little corruption, and there's also a huge looming debt bubble. The yin loses a lot of its power. After this young guy, who we'll call Asahara from this point on, Asahara um begins to study religious philosophy, Tibetan uh Buddhism was just esoteric in nature. Oh yeah, it is not like uh like there's a couple of different kinds of Buddhism, you know, like and in Japan, one of the big ones is called Nichiren. Yeah. Um, but Tibetan Buddhism is way more like it's way more esoteric, and like there's this, you know, Chinese Buddhism has like different kinds of hells, and these guys guard hell, and like in some versions of Japanese Buddhism are very similar. Um we talked about what's going on in Japan right now, uh, but there is also in this period of time, ever since the 1940s, a mass urban migration where people are moving into cities to find jobs. That continues to this day with dying Japanese talents everywhere. Um that causes this kind of between the the end of the economic miracle, this loss of the country like social fabric and loss of some of the tradition, there is like a hole in people. And you can actually look at a graph of cults in Japan and see that right around this time when the economic miracle ends and people are kind of like lost and afraid, that is prime picking for cults.

SPEAKER_02 19:58

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:59

Economic collapse. We saw this in our spiritualism episode, actually. Epic economic collapse and post-war always have a new fresh crop of cults.

SPEAKER_02 20:11

Yep. Um I have an entire book about stuff like this. Yeah. Okay. Anderson has the book. I have borrowed it.

SPEAKER_00 20:20

So in 1985, Asahara starts up a yoga studio having stuck in. Now yoga, when I say yoga, I don't mean like hot girl yoga. You know, like I mean, because we think about yoga in the modern sense, but yoga as in he is a yogi.

SPEAKER_02 20:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:34

Right? A spiritual leader that uses this to open your spiritual pathways.

SPEAKER_02 20:39

I knew what you meant, but my brain immediately supplied, you know.

SPEAKER_00 20:43

Yeah. Get into position one. Where's the goats? No, no, I and I actually do Sun salutation.

SPEAKER_02 20:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:56

I sound like I'm making fun of it. Like I don't do yoga myself. I do.

SPEAKER_00 21:00

I was like the pandemic yoga, man, yoga blew up right around the pandemic. We were all stuck in our house.

SPEAKER_02 21:06

Um trying to find something to do to stay active.

SPEAKER_00 21:08

Yeah, many, many people's lives were uh yoga by yoga by Adrian's.

SPEAKER_02 21:13

I learned to play ukulele.

unknown 21:14

That's right.

SPEAKER_00 21:15

Uh hardship brings art, right?

SPEAKER_02 21:17

It's a shame I didn't do something useful with it.

SPEAKER_00 21:19

You got really good at several crafts.

SPEAKER_02 21:22

Uh yeah, well, okay. Kind of.

SPEAKER_00 21:25

You you became a dedicated writer, learned how to knit. Like really crochet. I do that every time.

SPEAKER_02 21:31

Crochet. And that was because your wife asked for a replacement blanket.

SPEAKER_00 21:36

That's right. Her baby blanket. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 21:38

The whole reason I learned how to crochet.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

Disgusting, and thank you for fucking because we have your your new one, and it is a lot less greasy.

SPEAKER_02 21:46

Well, so it's also made of yarn that's a that's allowed to be washed anyway, cults.

SPEAKER_00 21:52

Um, so after all this study of religion.

SPEAKER_02 21:54

Yoga studio. That's not a yoga studio.

SPEAKER_00 21:57

Not a yoga studio. It's a it's it's yoga in the tradition. Sense where you have a guru that is teaching you spiritual things. Asahara starts this thing called Um Shinrikyu. So it's spelled A-U-M, but it's um gotcha. Right. Specifically, later on they're gonna a branch is gonna call it be called Aleph. So that's fine. So here's why it's like Omnis. I'm so sorry. When you translate Japanese into English words or English words into Japanese, rather, there's a system called hepburn.

SPEAKER_03 22:34

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 22:35

Which is why we say things like credito kado, right? Like so there are words that cannot be said in Japanese syllabary. So hep burning is moving those things into a way to say it. Um when they say um sh om shinriky, uh, it is pronounced sometimes, or at least they did it in their day, omu shin shin rikyu. And so the omu is the you on the end denounce usually a foreign word of some form. So cool stuff about language.

SPEAKER_02 23:09

Trying to ask for a caramel macchiato in Japan is like saying it in English with extra letters.

SPEAKER_00 23:15

Yeah, yeah. Some people describe it as um uh saying it with a racist accent. Yes, because that's always feel that way. Yeah, it it doesn't quite sound great, but like Kohi instead of coffee. And so um it literally means om supreme truth.

unknown 23:32

Huh.

SPEAKER_02 23:32

Uh so well, there's your first red flag.

SPEAKER_00 23:35

That's your yeah, anytime somebody's got the one and only way, be a little reticent, hesitant, rather.

SPEAKER_02 23:42

Um I will, I will, I will absolutely roast my own religion for that.

SPEAKER_00 23:45

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I blame, I blame Paul, though, over Jesus. You know what I mean? I'm like, but but uh 1989, Alm is legalized as a religious corporation. That may seem odd, but uh we do this here in America, right? Everybody's got that 10 whatever that makes them a uh charitable and religious organization.

SPEAKER_02 24:07

And tax-free.

SPEAKER_00 24:09

That's right, and they're tax-free in Japan too. But a second theory thing, you're not uh really allowed to investigate them. So there's a long history of why that is. Uh Japan has a rough time with religion. Oh, yeah. Right. They've had Buddhist cults, warrior cults, uh, they've had Shito cults, they've had all kinds of stuff throughout the history. They had a brief uprising in Christianity around the uh Warring States, period, that they fought like a rebellion over for a little while, uh, and persecuted ruthlessly. Um and then um foreigners coming in with different religions has always kind of freaked them out, and for good reason, we don't always come in well.

SPEAKER_02 24:49

No. So like the Inquisition.

SPEAKER_00 24:52

Yeah, yeah. And in in Japan, it was the Portuguese bringing in uh the Jesuits, and then later on it was um Admiral or Commodore Matthew Perry with a fucking giant armored steamship opening up the Japanese harbors, and then it was World War II. Yep. So like But this case, what we're gonna talk about right now, is one of the major reasons why like the Japanese people don't really fuck with religion in the way that we would think about it. Right? They Shinto is a cultural practice, Buddhism teaches pacif pacifism. So like um you're a lot less dangerous as a Buddhist. Also, Buddhism has been in Japan for fucking ever. I mean, for a very long time. They're granted protection against some investigations to recruit new members, um passed out flyers, advertised in magazines, uh, even at one point created an anime. It's good too. I watched it. Um it's weird.

SPEAKER_02 25:48

The the the ballet that I said I wanted to go see.

SPEAKER_00 25:51

Uh Shinyan.

SPEAKER_02 25:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:52

Yeah, yeah. Very similar. Yeah, it's a kind of propaganda, right?

SPEAKER_02 25:57

That's that's where I was going with that. Thank you for picking that up because I could not articulate. It is, it is I can say articulate, but I couldn't get out.

SPEAKER_00 26:04

Well, it it's a weird thing to think of like a ballet as propaganda, but it's it is. I mean, like it's a kind of propaganda.

SPEAKER_02 26:10

Well, I mean, so is celestial seasonings, but right.

SPEAKER_00 26:14

So is Oneida.

SPEAKER_02 26:15

Really?

SPEAKER_00 26:16

The the Oneida uh is the name of a uh native indigenous group, but uh the Ona I think, anyways, I might be very wrong about that. But the Oneida Cutlery Company started off as the Oneida religion.

SPEAKER_02 26:30

Really?

SPEAKER_00 26:30

Which different people altogether, but Oneida was a um Great Awakening religion. Yeah. Today I learned danced a lot and were very concerned sex. It was a sex cult.

SPEAKER_02 26:42

Yeah, it's always sex because it's much like syphilis, it always comes back to it.

SPEAKER_00 26:47

Uh, but they were a lot less problematic, to be honest with you, than this guy is. Um so the hippies of the cults. Uh no, dude. I never trust like really. Uh members believed that an apocalypse was coming. Because it's always that. It's yeah. And only um the members would survive. They also believed Asahara could levitate for up to four hours later on. He would take pictures.

SPEAKER_02 27:11

You should see a doctor about that.

SPEAKER_00 27:12

I know. Yeah, I think it's called preepism. Uh Asahara taught uh that there would be multiple levels of that there were multiple levels of consciousness, in which he possessed the highest form as being an enlightened being. Um, and that he could, of course, teach so he's cultivated his qi. That's right.

SPEAKER_02 27:33

And to reach ascension.

SPEAKER_00 27:35

Well, he started off as a guy that kind of like tagged on to Nietzsche and Buddhism. So this is very Buddha, right? Buddha was in in in the bodhisattvas and stuff. So uh, except for Shitti, right? Because Buddha was like a nice guy.

SPEAKER_03 27:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:48

Yeah. Trying to free the world from its pain and you know, all that kind of stuff, right? Um, and from all examples, never really did anything wrong.

SPEAKER_02 27:57

Yeah, he was so tall.

SPEAKER_00 28:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 28:00

He's just hanging out.

SPEAKER_00 28:02

And then uh through meditation, cleansing, ritual cleansing, which we see in Shinto religion, um, and intense yoga and instructions, you too, you Katie, should raise your consciousness to the next level.

SPEAKER_02 28:16

I should not be trusted with that kind of power.

SPEAKER_00 28:18

TLDR, you don't think like me, and that makes me better than you. Yep. That's how I translate that. So how did they get money? Because it's a cult, right? They always they need money.

SPEAKER_02 28:30

Yeah, they need money and they need money, they need bodies, and they need uh marks.

SPEAKER_00 28:34

And legitimate religion like Buddhism does things like walk around asking for it. They they kind of go like, hey, we need money, and then maybe you give them money and they say thank you, and then they go away because that's what they were they just want something to to maintain the temple. Or they do things like services.

SPEAKER_03 28:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:50

Right? Like spiritual services. People come in and they say, Hey, can you like help us name our baby? In Buddhism, that's a pretty common thing, especially in Japan. That's cool. Yeah, and then they go, Yeah, okay. Um, you know, here's an auspicious name. And um Oh Steven. And then you go, you know, here's a small donation, or um Shinto Shrines, do Matsuris, you know, there's big cultural festivals. Yeah, clap, yeah, bow twice, clap twice, ask the gods for favor, and and uh so they're doing all kinds of fucking hanky shit. Very much like um strict religious orders. When typically when you become a priest of some form in certain Buddhist sects and uh Catholic sects and many other things, you give up all your worldly goods, right? Catholic priests take a vow of poverty. So that's what this guy has them do. So they're already kind of primed for this, because this is a thing with a lot of Buddhist monks as well. Kind of. Because the thing is when you become a Buddhist monk, a lot of people just give their stuff to their family members, and if they stop being a monk, because you can do that in Buddhism.

SPEAKER_02 29:57

Um yeah, you can just you can just bounce anytime you want.

SPEAKER_00 30:03

You know what I mean? Like people have done this, and as a Jedi.

SPEAKER_02 30:06

Yeah, I'm just saying, you could you could just walk as a Jedi.

SPEAKER_00 30:09

Yeah. So like but but looking at you, Anakin. Yeah. Um But in in this uh in this thing, he asked all their members to give up all their stuff. Um, he asked them to be, you know, silent about what's going on. We're controlling information now.

SPEAKER_02 30:25

Red flag number two.

SPEAKER_00 30:27

In 1990, however, this is very successful because he's a pretty charismatic guy, as they all are.

SPEAKER_01 30:32

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 30:33

And also, the thing about a culture that is losing its identity is that when someone comes up and says, I can get it back, there's multiple cults in Japan at this point in time. And like I said, some are harmless, some of them are still around today and like have built hospitals and shit.

SPEAKER_02 30:50

Yeah, not all cults are bad.

SPEAKER_00 30:52

No, they sometimes they transition into legitimate religious faith and then or or or spiritualism in some form. Um, and so but that's not this guy's not one of those.

SPEAKER_02 31:04

So so otherwise we wouldn't be here today, right? Um or if we were, we would be talking about something else.

SPEAKER_00 31:10

In 1990, Um reached 10,000 members and amassed 500 million yen, which is roughly about four to five million dollars, US dollars. Um, anti-Yom groups started up, yom, anti-UM groups started to appear almost immediately because people started making it out of the cult, like they all do. There's an information breach. Somebody goes, Where's my grandma? Right?

SPEAKER_02 31:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 31:36

Well, grandma's got stories of long intensive meditation where you don't eat, uh, which is, you know, but forced. Also these weird things where they you go into a tank of water and just hold your breath for as long as you possibly can.

SPEAKER_02 31:51

What?

SPEAKER_00 31:52

Yeah, like really crazy shit. There's like dunk tanks. It's it's really wild.

SPEAKER_02 31:56

Um is there target practice with it?

SPEAKER_00 31:58

No, unfortunately, not that fun. Damn it. Unless you count, uh, this is the only time I'm ever I'm gonna mention this for the rest of the episode, because I said like cult stuff, but minimal essay stuff. In esoteric Buddhism, sometimes you place your like fingers to someone's palm, right, to transfer your spiritual wealth into the like there's a kind of like woo about it.

SPEAKER_02 32:20

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 32:21

You can guess how this guy transfers his spiritual wealth.

SPEAKER_02 32:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:26

Yeah. So like yeah, nasty. And of course, with like young women.

SPEAKER_02 32:31

Of course.

SPEAKER_00 32:32

Yeah, and that's always a thing, right?

SPEAKER_02 32:35

Every time. So every time.

SPEAKER_00 32:37

Every time. If there's a guy, if there is a man leading your cult, it's gonna be about sex.

SPEAKER_02 32:42

Honestly, and the women are just as bad.

SPEAKER_00 32:44

Yeah. So here's the thing, right? Uh this guy's name is a little hard to say, so forgive me. Tsutsumi, there we go, nailed it. Tsumi Sakamoto was a lawyer working on class action lawsuits against the cult. He publicly denounced their leader, saying that the members were held against their will, which was true for many people. Escape members claimed that the cult had zero tolerance policy on disobeying Asahara, and that they would be tortured for trying to leave.

SPEAKER_02 33:13

Jesus, red flag number three.

SPEAKER_00 33:16

Very true, by the way. Um on November 3rd, 1989, Sakamoto suddenly disappeared, along with his wife and child from their home in Yokohama. Second largest city in Japan, by the way. Yeah. So crowded, right? Yokohama is the Bay Area of Tokyo, basically, right? So um we've got kidnapping on our stuff now. But you know what? That didn't stop his rise because the guy disappeared, but nobody really connected it to the cult. Weird. And you know, the guy handling a class, but he was a lawyer, so he was handling a lot of shit. Yeah, but like right, you would figure. So we're gonna get into why that happened later, but for now, let's skip it. Um because the cult's doing great. They're advertising, they're dancing in the street, they look so happy in a time period where people just don't know what to do with themselves. A lot of people are losing their jobs, job market is increasingly more like stringent and gives rise to the modern office culture of Japan where everybody just works, works, works.

SPEAKER_02 34:17

Oh, Japan. Japanese office culture frightens me.

SPEAKER_00 34:20

Yeah, it's especially when they call uh the black companies, you know, like would just work you to death. Um so he, you know, he's he's feeling pretty good. He's doing great. And he so he is his thing. He was like, you know what? I should run for government. And he tries to run for parliament government, along with many other members, senior members of the cult. Um, and the bigger the cult gets, like the more outreach it has and and public more, the more free publicity they have, because these these guys are, you know, it's like the the Rama, whatever it was, that was up in uh Dakota Hills or wherever they were, just walking around in orange robes all the time. Um, they get a lot of free press. A new base of operations is built at the base of Mount Fuji. Um, because you know, holy mountain, right? It's built in Asahara, emboldened by success, decides to run for office. Many of the members run for position in the Japanese Parliament. They even created their own political party, the Truth Party.

SPEAKER_03 35:16

Oh, Jesus.

SPEAKER_00 35:16

Or Shinrito. And it it's nice and it's nice and shoutable because they go Shinri To like that over and over and over again. He campaigned idol style by singing with backup dancers from the cult. And he was danced too.

SPEAKER_02 35:31

Uh so this was in the 90s, right? Yeah. So this was like peak.

SPEAKER_00 35:34

Yeah, yeah. This was this was a Yumi Hamazaki days. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. He would perform songs in downtown Tokyo's crowded streets where they would dance around and and and give out papers and all that good stuff. Five hundred thousand ballots were cast in the Japanese parliamentary election.

SPEAKER_02 35:51

How many did he get?

SPEAKER_00 35:53

You want to take a guess?

SPEAKER_02 35:54

Uh it's either gonna be really high or really low.

SPEAKER_00 35:57

She's trying to read my mind.

SPEAKER_02 35:58

I am, and it's so hard to do right now because you're so excited about this.

SPEAKER_00 36:02

I know.

SPEAKER_02 36:04

Okay, I'm gonna say zero.

SPEAKER_00 36:06

You know what? You're closer to that than anything. 1,700. Uh, and the worst part is to his ego, many of the cult members didn't vote for him. There were more than 1700 cult members. There were 10,000 cult members.

SPEAKER_02 36:24

Oh my god. Well, that's what you get for holding people against their will.

SPEAKER_00 36:27

Yeah, they were like, no, that's a bad idea. So yeah, Dark Souls theme plays, you died across the screen. This hurts his ego, or maybe it was just uh a time in Asahara's life where he evolves his spiritual practices into doubling down and getting much worse. Because that's the thing with these like ego maniacal types. When you hurt their ego, they double down on their followers hard.

SPEAKER_02 36:51

I really hope the mic didn't pick that up.

SPEAKER_00 36:53

Well, even if it did, I mean, they know you can't listen to the show and not know.

SPEAKER_02 36:58

I okay, yes, but yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:02

But but with all people in power, that's just how they are.

SPEAKER_02 37:04

I'm attempting to be kind of a little bit sort of respectful.

SPEAKER_00 37:10

It is Memorial Day here.

SPEAKER_02 37:12

Oh, yeah. It is.

SPEAKER_00 37:14

Um, so members that escaped are murdered. That's what yeah, people just die. They get attacked in the streets. Uh, Sakamoto, the lawyer that we mentioned before, was murdered. All three of his family members were injected with potassium chloride.

SPEAKER_02 37:29

Good lord.

SPEAKER_00 37:30

Uh, that is after um, of course, they enter their way into the house with a hammer. Evidence showed that the cult had plans to assassinate leaders of other organizations and organizers who uh cried out against the cult. Even leaders of other cults.

SPEAKER_02 37:44

But we're not a hit list a mile long.

SPEAKER_00 37:46

It was anybody who crossed them. We're not going to find that out for a long time. But in October 1998, sorry, 1989, the group negotiation with Sakamoto's law firm, the anti-court lawyer, threatened a lawsuit against them, which potentially would have bankrupted the group because you're talking about millions of dollars in injuries and all kinds of stuff. Those negotiations failed in the same month. Sakamoto recorded an interview for a talk show on the Japanese television station TBS. That is not our TBS, different TBS.

SPEAKER_02 38:18

I want you to know that the TBS like theme just played in my head when you said that.

SPEAKER_00 38:22

Yeah. Not Turner Broadcast or whatever it is is a different thing, right? The network then had made an the interview, secretly shown it to the group without notifying Sakamoto. So he didn't even know there was a possibility of danger.

SPEAKER_02 38:36

Oh wow.

SPEAKER_00 38:36

He thought like the the banter between them, right? He would decried them in public, but they were also in negotiations. The worst he thought was the negotiations just failed. Maybe we'll pick it back up in a week or so. Without notifying Sakamoto, intentionally breaking the protection of sources. Because remember, these are real journalists. This is before Rupert Murdoch and his bullshit.

SPEAKER_02 38:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:56

Back when, if you were on a news station, you had to behave like a journalist. There was no like opinion column as a new station.

SPEAKER_02 39:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:04

You opt-ed or you told news, right? Like that was it. Because remember, the Japanese are taking a lot a lot of their cues from us. Just in case you were thinking maybe Am Shinriky couldn't get much scarier. The marketing plan was so successful that chemists, military members, doctors were in their ranks.

SPEAKER_02 39:25

God damn. Well, and most of them were trapped.

SPEAKER_00 39:28

Yeah. Or really fucking bought the sauce.

SPEAKER_02 39:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:32

And that chemist, one of them is a master chemist, like master's degree in chemistry. He's gonna get real important a little later on later on. In 1991, Am began uh using wiretapping to get the NTT uniforms and equipment and created a manual for wiretapping.

SPEAKER_02 39:51

What the fuck?

SPEAKER_00 39:52

NTT is the national, like it's like a bell, right? It's a telephone, it's the telephone organization, the wire and telephone organization of Japan. I don't know what it stands for. Unfortunately, I didn't write that down.

SPEAKER_02 40:05

Don't you hate it when you do that to yourself?

SPEAKER_00 40:06

I'm pretty sure it was in English, which was weird. So in 1993, cult members sprayed large amounts of liquid containing bacillus anthracis spores from cooling from a cooling tower on the roof of Amshenrigu's Tokyo headquarters. However, their plan was to cause anthrax epidemic. Yeah. Their plan to cause an anthrax epidemic failed, likely because they used vaccinate a vaccine strain of bacillus uh rat or of the of the anthrax bacteria that is generally regarded as non-pathogenic.

SPEAKER_02 40:40

My God.

SPEAKER_00 40:42

The attack resulted in numbers of complaints, 41, in fact. Um I did watch this, it was 41 called in complaints of a strong odor. Uh because it's made in pig shit, right? It's made in pig guts. So, and it just stinks, right? Like the the method of making it kind of smells funny, and they people kept complaining of the smell coming from the tower, and they knew that the cult was in there. So it lodged a bunch of complaints, but remember they have protection.

SPEAKER_02 41:08

Yes, they investigate them.

SPEAKER_00 41:10

Up to an extent, right? So they came in and then they like there's a point where one of their buildings gets shut down, but it takes them so long to come in and do the investigation that they clear out all their lab equipment. So their outreach was global. 20,000 members in Russia were made uh as they made friends with prominent political politicians. This was right around this time he goes, like, let's branch out. He goes to Russia, he meets one of the presidents of the USSR, and like, so he made friends with a lot of prominent politicians, and they were able to train 200 members in combat, learn a lot about weapons, get the plans for the AK-47, because Japan is a capitalist nation. It's like Japan is America's bulwark against China, and people don't think of it as that way. But the reason why we have that giant base in Okinawa is that if we ever fight China, that's the staging point. So, like, yeah, it's Korea, South Korea, Japan, and then Singapore, like Singapore and a couple other places make this kind of rim around China that is our defensive strategy in the East. So at the end of 1993, the Colts started secretly manufacturing nerve. Oh, I mentioned all that defense stuff because Russia has a vested interest at the time. The Soviet Union had a vested interest in upseting that a little.

SPEAKER_02 42:30

Fucking red flag, what what are we up to now at this point?

SPEAKER_00 42:34

Oh, who infinite. At the end of 19 uh 93, the Colts started secretly manufacturing the nerve agent sarin.

SPEAKER_03 42:44

And later VX.

SPEAKER_02 42:46

Bro!

SPEAKER_00 42:47

Yeah, I'm tested You don't need anything.

SPEAKER_02 42:50

You don't need them for anything.

SPEAKER_00 42:52

This is super dangerous shit. Alm tested at Sarin Gas on sheep in uh Bonjoarn station, uh a remote pastoral property in Western Australia Australia, killing twenty nine sheep. Because they had a chemical production facility in Australia. They now have a training facility in Russia. They have several locations, including compound at Mount Fuji.

SPEAKER_02 43:15

Oh no, shut this thing down.

SPEAKER_00 43:17

On the night of 27th of June 1994, the Colt carried out chemical weapons attack against civilians when they released Saren in the central Japanese city of Matsumoto, Nagano. Nagano was the site of one of the Olympics at one point, and you will know it as that city that has the big cool castle.

SPEAKER_02 43:35

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 43:36

Yeah, one of the intact castles. I think they use those ninja things.

SPEAKER_02 43:39

Did they have a pillar ghost?

SPEAKER_00 43:42

You know, if they had, the shit would have gone down. I don't think it's Nagano that has the pillar ghost. Yeah, um, that is a reference to an older episode that we'll yeah, when when uh we'll have to well, it's on our you'll see it. It's on our list if you're still. interested in learning uh about this type of thing uh that they in Japan they used to sometimes bury people inside of the pillars of bridges or stonework of of bridges and castles to protect the area protect the area and become kind of the kami of the area there's uh even a plaque outside of one of the bridges they kept trying to build it the river kept washing it away and then a lady volunteered in payment so that her sons could have wealth they buried her in the stones the stonework of the bridge and the bridge stands to this day there's a little plaque commemorating her as the kami of the bridge yep or yokai of the bridge no not she's the kami she's yeah it would have been kami uh another word for spirit that escapes me at the moment yeah with help of a converted refrigerator truck members of the cult cult released a cloud of sarin which floated near the homes of judges who were overseeing a lawsuit concerning a real concerning a real estate dispute which was predicted predicted to go against the cult this Matsumoto incident killed eight people and harmed five hundred more because that's the thing about like sarin gas it doesn't go away easily and it also hurts on contact it lights all your nerve endings up yeah police investigations focused only on the innocent local resident Yoshiuki Koono that area Yoshiuku Kuano um who was innocent and uh but he failed to implicate the cult at the time because he didn't know what the fuck was going on and he was just kind of in the area.

SPEAKER_02 45:31

Nobody did.

SPEAKER_00 45:33

At the end of 1944 the cult broke into the uh Hiroshima factory of Mitsubishi heavy industries in an attempt to steal technical documents on military weapons such as tanks and artillery because you might remember from World War II history that Mitsubishi makes engines for planes and shit.

SPEAKER_02 45:53

Can we can we just take a moment to talk about like somebody in that cult somebody involved in these missions at some point had to stop and look around for a second and go, are we the baddies?

SPEAKER_00 46:05

Yeah I think we might be the baddie are we the bad guys here? They so and I think that the because they were doing so much right they're doing stuff and I think that made them feel like they had momentum also with all of their locations around the world because there's also one in Monte Casino by the way they're in Europe too right they're everywhere. So I think sometimes when you have a person that's kind of waning and they start like doubting I think they just send them somewhere or maybe they kill them uh because that comes up yeah that's what I'm thinking because you know remember they torture people for even trying to escape. Yeah police made plans to simultaneously raid facilities across Japan in March 1995. Prosecutors alleged Asahara was tipped off about all of this remember because they had guys in the military. Yeah and they also had guys in the police and the military in Japan at this time they don't have a standing army they have the Japanese special defense force which is a little bit like a massive Coast Guard with an airborne division. You know like that's so like like they're they're they're soldiers but they're not soldiers. They're not geared for invasion. They're geared for protecting their shoreline which is all of Japan. Which is all of Japan right yeah in in America we have the National Guard. Prosecutors allege that he was tipped off and that he ordered the Tokyo subway attack to divert police. We're gonna get into that in just a moment. AM had also attempted to manufacture 1,000 assault rifles AK-47 style but only completed one. According to the testimony of Kenichi Hirose at the Tokyo District Court in year 2000, Asahara wanted the group to be self-sufficient manufacturing copies of the Soviet Union's main artillery weapon the AK-47. One rifle was smuggled into the Japan which is very difficult to do to be studied so that AM could reverse engineer and mass produce the AK-47 of course like AK AKs are legendarily easy to make uh but you do have to be a gunsmith so but they had engineers and stuff right they tried to do this but without any of the stamp dies and machinery they weren't really successful. They made some firearms they didn't really work Ulm also attacked and murdered many people who criticized Ulm or defected Jesus most of this knowledge about Ulm's activities would be discovered only after this next event and here's where we get into the big shit. What fuckery now it's a lot right I'm just like rattling off bad shit.

SPEAKER_02 48:41

Yeah in March 20 rapid fire.

SPEAKER_00 48:44

I know right because I didn't know all this I knew only about this part not about everything leading up or how wide their reach was in March 20th 1995 a group of people I think six in total or six different points went onto the sub Tokyo subway and had with them small bags of pure sarin gas or sarin liquid that would turn into gas. Dr. Ikono Hiyashi 48 years old was a medical doctor and MD. And we have some of his testimony where he said he really stalled because there was a lady and her child across from him on the subway. He had it wrapped up in a newspaper and he knew that they would die. Like he kept trying to like justify it to himself like maybe they'll get off on the next stop. But it's not really gonna matter because there's six more people at this point I'm gonna read like straight up off of just a Wikipedia site because there's so much information and this is all thoroughly documented. This there's only like three sites like three sources cited on the Wikipedia and one of them's the BBC. So like it's just news organizations and then like people who've written written a book about religious cults. So like this is thoroughly documented. On the morning of March 20th 1995 AMR members released a binary chemical weapon two part right most closely chemically similar to Sarin and a coordinated attack on five trains in the Tokyo subway system killing 13 commuters seriously injuring 54 affecting or making sick right because people got really ill 980 more. Oh that's the low end that's what this one book reports some estimated claims as much as 6,000 people were injured by the SARIN I actually believe that and the reason why is because it's a terrorist attack and so part of the people who are injured are not injured physically. They were in there it happened they'll have PTSD the rest of their lives. Yeah so I consider them a victim of this attack right it is difficult to obtain exact numbers since they were many victims were reluctant to come forward. Prosecutors And you blame them? No not at all right not at all it's like nobody talked shit about the mob for a long time.

SPEAKER_02 51:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:01

Prosecutors allege that Asahara tipped uh was tipped off by an insider who planned police raids on cult facilities uh and ordered an attack in central Tokyo to divert police attention we just talked about that a little while ago uh away from the group the attack evidently backfired police conducted huge simultaneous raids on cult compounds across the country over the next week full scale of alms activities were revealed for the first time at the cult's headquarters in Kami Kuishiki at the foot of Mount Fuji police found explosives chemical weapons and a Russian MI-171 V military helicopter how did you even get that in you flew it you paint it you paint it like a commercial helicopter you fly it in and maybe fly it into Hokkaido and then um from Kapchatka and then the balls on this guy. Yeah crazy right while the finding of biological warfare agents such as anthrax in Ebola cord cultures was reported those claims now appear to have been widely exaggerated.

SPEAKER_03 52:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 52:11

Because Ebola is not the in in the whole world there are a couple of handfuls of people that can weaponize anthrax that's how we knew who did it like back in the day in America or people believe they know who did it. Uh there were stockpiles of chemicals however that could be used for the production of enough sarin to kill four million people. Now granted that's like in a control right but a lot of fucking juice I saw a picture of this facility it's like a full chemical lab. Not in glass in steel like it is a pipeline facility.

SPEAKER_02 52:43

Oh my god yeah so oh my god yeah it's it's wild like because you you see it's a test lab at what point at what point how did no one go wait a second guys I think we're the bad guys right we're making sarengas because this is this is like 1980s level like super villain yeah type shit y'all working in an underground lab creating things that will kill people all because you believe that the end of the world's coming doom colts are the worst man and get get ready for the trauma.

SPEAKER_00 53:19

Oh dear so here's why uh for his trauma here's here's why he here's here's the war he foresaw coming he didn't foresee nuclear holocaust between the US and Russia which would have been rational in his childhood of the 1960s right because he was born in 55 he thought America and Japan were gonna go to war again and that nuclear holocaust between those two countries would happen. That didn't even make any goddamn sense what he's dumb that's the thing he's like he he's not right he he thinks that so in his time in his life he saw the rise of many movements like Yukio Mishima's uh Tatenokai that were built up around more or less boot in America but right becoming super Japanese again but also modernizing right so there was a lot of that going around there were other cults there was all kinds of stuff I don't know and and China had not yet really become China in the sense that Richard Nixon opens up trade but for the most part China remains to be fairly impoverished up until around this time period actually so he's not um he's not really seeing that I don't think because now he's insulated he's not seeing much of anything childhood glaucoma yeah he's yeah nice sorry gotta lighten the mood somehow yeah um because goddamn it's it's pretty grim it's pretty grim right police also found laboratories that to manufacture drugs such as LSD methamphetamine and crude forms of truce serum which doesn't it doesn't exist yeah that that no um that doesn't work yeah it in fact LSD is a pretty good true serum like just getting people really high fucking alcohol is a pretty good truth serum yeah yeah just getting people high and drunk works better than sodium pentholder so like the problem is you can never be sure because you've drugged someone that they're telling you yeah they're altered yeah they think they're telling you the truth what color's the sky green and also you're probably torturing them so they're gonna say whatever the fuck you want them to say that's how torture works why didn't work yeah you have to torture like nine people and then cross examine them ask any of the people that were tortured in England. Right didn't didn't fucking work in fact the best in German history he was an executioner he did it by separating people doing very mild stuff and then just cross examining all the what they said to try to find the commonality and then he would go back. Basically he did real police interrogation so like you know like it it it doesn't fucking work true serum is not really real it that's my opinion a safe containing millions of US dollars in cash and gold and cells um many still containing cells like prison cells many still containing prisoners during raids Alm issued statements claiming chemicals used for fertilizers now remember a lot of these guys don't know what the fuck they're talking about that's true of bombs fertilizer bombs you could claim that not sarin gas over the next y'all can't see it but I'm looking at Brian like he's crazy. Yeah over the next uh six weeks uh over 150 cult members were arrested in a variety for a variety of offenses the media were stationed outside take these bastards down for fucking jaywalking yeah anything for fuck's sake yeah they were stationed outside alms Tokyo headquarters I'm like invested now what's up I'm like invested now yeah right it's crazy it's super fucking nuts is nuts this is how my deep dive episodes always go that like I start off kind of goofy and silly and then it's like and here's fucking the end of the world um it's got aluminum in it yeah I got aluminum in it love that guy um so far he's another one that we've got some weird Echolalia shit. Fuck dude um over the next six weeks over the next six weeks yeah 150 members were arrested for various offenses the media were stationed outside of AMS Tokyo headquarters in Kamazawa Dory in Oyama for months after the attack and arrests waiting for action to get images of the Colts other members that's terribly written so sentence on the third yeah it's just I'm reading from a page because there was too much information for me to relay quickly without just reading it. Yeah no I get you I get you I so uh do that occasionally myself on the 30th of March 1995 Takei Kunamatsu chief of the National Police Agency was shot four times near his house in Tokyo and was seriously wounded. I would imagine if he was shot four times bulletproof armor baby works every time uh excellent while the uh many suspected involvement in the shooting the Sankei Shinboom reported that Hiroshi Nakamura is is suspected of the crime and nobody has been charged Nakamura would later confess to this crime I gotta say a lifetime of anime has prepared you for this episode. It has it has the the the weeb run strong on the 23rd of April 1995 Hideo Murai head of the alms head of alms Ministry of science because they were organized oh my wife's home I hear the snoring startled us both yeah we were like what the fuck yeah oh god it's almsrike no they're not around anymore thankfully they have morphed I would fucking imagine not if you got busted having shit to make bombs and sarin and sarin fucking gas fucking everything else prisoners in cells you are not you okay you can you dear populace are not permitted to keep prisoners yeah yeah yeah you don't have the legal authority like anyone like like you can do a brief citizen's arrest and that's it now you ready for how gangs are different in Japan than they are in America I am I am because gangs passingly familiar but pray go on organized crime is different in Japan. Yeah and always kind of has been yep not saying they're great saying sometimes they can be sometimes idle in uh uh hostess industry still fucked up but on the 23rd of April 1995 Hideo Murai the head of the uh album's ministry of science was stabbed to death outside the Colts Tokyo headquarters amidst a crowd of about a hundred reporters and nobody saw anything oh they they in front of cameras uh very very public the man responsible a Korean member of the Yamaguchi gumi oh shit yeah one of the largest the six Yamaguchi gumi is Japan's largest actually yakuza organization yeah these are the real fucking deal and you've done some shit on their turf yeah no this was that that was an open open declaration of war yeah you you bombed my neighborhood you you done fucked up A Ron Yeah yeah yeah so I'm gonna send a man with a tonto to rearrange your guts and you're the guy responsible yeah yeah so like yeah that's right period traced back to a loose labor union for dock workers in Kobe before World War uh so like yeah because that's how they handled shit back then um so I love this uh of the Yamaguchi gumi was arrested and eventually convicted of the murder his motive remains unknown that's what the article said I was like yeah I can't imagine you were leastaring grass in his fucking neighborhood are you crazy his motive hmm yeah um it was like welcome to feudalism let me help you out here yeah you you you pissed on his doorstep and he's here with a knife yeah that's sent one of his hitters to get you that's that's how this works his family was well taken care of that's how this works I was like yeah well we're gonna take care of you you know like that guy that's what's happening but in Japanese yeah or maybe he like owed them a bunch of money and it cleared them who knows yeah his personal motives we don't know why it happened we pretty much know we know yeah so uh you know I know they know every Leno everybody knows yeah sorry so uh on the evening of May 5th a burning paper bag was discovered in the toilet a toilet in Tokyo's busy Shinjuku station with a big one right upon examination it was revealed that it was filled full of hydrogen cyanide a device which had it not been extinguished in time would have released enough gas in the ventilation system of this station which is partially underground to kill 10,000 commuters. These guys are crazy on the 4th of July several undetonated cyanide devices were found at local other locations in the Tokyo subway.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:36

Now I don't think this is entirely chalked up to ineptitude I think people sometimes just get second I second thoughts yeah yeah I was gonna say this this was inside sabotage this was I don't want to do this.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:49

This is there's probably an arming device of some form. Yeah and uh and then they just like you they had they were alone they said the thing and then they decided not to yeah um this happens a lot with bombs people leave bombs outside of buildings that never go off yep second thoughts during this time numerous cult members were arrested for various offenses as we stated before but arrests of the most senior members on the charge of the subway gassing had not yet taken place. That's because they didn't know who they were yeah right they needed the to you gotta get the little guys to get the big guys to yeah and they had to cycle through all the information from the raids. Yep so computer stuff write files all that shit connect dots red strings board wall this is this is the coding montage section of the movie attacking keyboards there's a guy perched on a couch with long black hair and crazy eyes oh man uh in June an individual unrelated to AM had launched a copycat attack by hijacking all Nippon Airways flight 857 a Boeing 747 bound for uh Hokodate from Chi uh Tokyo the hijacker claimed to be an AM member in possession of sarin and plastic explosives but claims were ultimately found to be false.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:06

He just Why is there always a fucking copycat?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:09

Because they like the prestige with the camera. They don't actually like hurting people they like the attention. Asahara was finally found hiding in within a wall what? Yeah all H.H. Home style uh of a cult building known as the Six Satian uh in the Kamikushiki complex on the 16th of May and was arrested. He was hiding in the wall he had a little safe room or something.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:36

I don't think he was just in the wall I think he was we should do a murder hotel episode. Yeah I don't know which one of us is gonna do it.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:43

I well so I read a little bit about of it and apparently it like a lot of it might just be folklore?

SPEAKER_02 1:04:48

Yeah like newspaper bullshit from the from the day um and it he was like a killer definitely but maybe not as bad as I I know I know that Bailey did an episode uh murder mystery and makeup Monday if y'all don't know her please check out Bailey Mary Ba Bailey Sarian yeah please she's amazing she's hilarious she did an episode on H.H.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:08

Holmes yeah pretty good so did uh I think Kaz Rowe did one yeah which amazing also queer history person if you're into that Kaz Rowe is the shit. We are an itty bitty podcast shouting out all of these big podcasts yeah you should watch you you know you know you should definitely check her channel out she only has like fucking two million yeah regular subscribers nah fuck it get Bailey more subscribers yeah I like her on the same day shout out to horses also yes horses is a great channel on the day that's where I started many of my things um on the same day the cult mailed a parcel bomb to the office of Yu-Kio not that Yukiyo Yukihoshima the governor of Tokyo because they have uh prefects whoa uh blowing off the s fingers of the secretary's hand this has happened multiple times in history at different points where somebody mails a bomb and it gets The secretary, because secretaries, if you listen to this and you're a would-be dickhead, if you mail a bomb to your least favorite politician, one of their aides will open it. You will hurt some college kid or some secretary or an intern. They're not there to safety check shit. They're just there to cycle through fan mail and give a thing back to you. Because the person in question is very busy.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:25

So like And they're nine times out of ten will never ever ever see the thing that you sent them.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:30

Yeah. Because they'll be like, if it's a cool thank you, if it's a particular note or or a good like story, it gets passed on to them. Most of the time, it's a page that answers this in the name of the person because they're just super busy. And also, there's a hundred thousand other people sending them shit. Poor secretary. Asahara was uh uh initially charged with 23 counts of murder and 16 other offenses. The trial dubbed the trial of the century by the press ruled Asahara guilty of masterminding the attack and sentenced him to death because they do have the death penalty. And we will describe that penalty in just a moment. The indictment was appealed unsuccessfully. Several senior members accused of participation, such as Masayami uh Sukachiya. I told you earlier that we were going to talk about that that uh that uh chemist. That's the chemist. Oh shit. The head of the science department. Fuck that guy in particular.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:26

He also received the death sentences.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:28

I was about to say that man needs to be strung up by his toes.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:30

Yeah, there was a there was a full uh uh Well, he was strung up. Oh so yeah, they do uh strangulation there.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:38

Um I accidentally Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:41

They they for some reason got rid of the beheading thing, and uh they did never they don't do the firing squad and they don't do poison. They at the time they do a kind of like wall-based rig that strangles.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:54

I know exactly what this is. I in fact, I recently God, I watch way too many dramas. I recently watched a drama.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:00

Yeah, where it goes like down and and to the floor and shit.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:02

Yeah, there's people pulling on the other side of a wall. Yeah. So nobody has to look at the person.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:07

It's real wild.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:09

Yeah, it's it oof.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:10

That was just like, damn, give me the sword. Like, for real. Like, uh, oof, uh granted, fuck this guy. But also, like, yeah, 13 people in total, I think, were executed. So the reasons why a small circle of mostly senior Owl members committed atrocities at the extent of personal involvement by Asahara remain unclear. That's because they never get their hands dirty, ever. Although several theories have attempted to explain these events. In response to the prosecution's charge that Asahara ordered the subway attacks to distract authorities, the defense maintained that Asahara was not aware of the events.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:45

Horseshit!

SPEAKER_00 1:08:46

Yeah, pointing to his deteriorating health. Shortly after his arrest, Asahara abandoned his post as the organization's leader and maintained silence afterward.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:56

Bro said, I didn't see shit and then said, But I'm blind.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:59

Yeah, yeah. How could I have done it? He abandoned his post as the leader, uh, refusing to communicate even with lawyers and family members. And that's because his ego's been crushed. Yeah. He's a megalomaniac and his ego has been crushed.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:12

This is a temper fit.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:13

Yep. You you've shut down because you you can't maintain your illusion of grandeur anymore. After 1995, on June 21st, 1995, Ashahara acknowledged that in January 1994 he ordered the killing of a sect member, Kotoro Ochita, a pharmacist at an alm hospital. This is pretty normal for a lot of these cults. They have like hospitals and schools and shit. Ochita, who tried to escape from the sect compound, was held down and strangled by another AM member who allegedly told him that he too would be killed if he did not strangle Ochita.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:48

Oh my god!

SPEAKER_00 1:09:49

Really crazy shit. On 10 uh on the 10th of October 1995.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:54

This is some scythy shit.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:55

It is pretty bad. Yeah. Um Shinrikyu um was ordered stripped of its official status as a religious legal entity. Remember, it c it cannot continue. In fact, it was marked as a dangerous religious organization, which is shorthand for cult and also terrorist organization.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:13

As it should be.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:14

Because in Japanese history, sometimes religious organizations, such as a group of monks called the Iko Iki, get real fucking armsy and carry their nagadas in your city. And yeah. So like shit happened in the past.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:30

They have rules for this. Yeah. They have learned.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:32

Yeah, so like and then no Oda Nobunaga like wiped them all out. It was in a very bloody, yeah. Uh geez, Japanese history is very interesting and wild. So it was declared bankrupt by 1996. However, the group continues to operate under constitutional guarantee of freedom of religion, funded by a successful computer business. Who? Who? No, theirs. Oh. Um, they have show companies, um, and and donations and under strict survey donations, cult, under strict surveillance, 24-hour. Attempts to ban the group altogether and then under the 1952 Surversive Activities Prevention Law. They have one of those.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:16

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:17

Fuck around hard enough in Japan. Yeah, you go find out. Yeah, so uh, and we have one too here as well, uh, Aliens and Sedition Act. But they were rejected um by the Public Scrutiny Examination Commission in 1997. I think probably they were afraid to commit a precedent that would ban religions that just a politician didn't like. Yeah. Worst case scenario with law all the time, right? The group underwent several transformations in the ass. I'm just reading from Wikipedia. That's what I'm doing. This is crazy. But I have cross-checked a lot of this and it it's accurate, right? This is from BBC from a lot of other people. A group underwent several transformations in the aftermath of Asahara's arrest and trial for a brief time. Asahara's two preteen sons officially replaced him as guru. It regrouped. Yes. It regrouped under the new name Aleph. It's got a little Greek letter in February 2000.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:17

So now it's a frat house.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:19

It announced the change in doctrine, religious texts related to the controversial Vajrayana Buddhist doctrines and the Bible, because it was partly Christian-based, partly Buddhist-based, and partly his own bullshit.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:32

Mainly his own bullshit.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:33

Yeah, yeah. Oh my god. Were all removed. The group apologized to the victims of the Sarum Gas attack and established a special compensation fund. Provocative publications and activities that uh that alarm society are no longer published. This is where I'm gonna say something controversial. A lot of fringe religions do this when their leader dies. Right? Mormonism went through that.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:58

It's kind of a saving face thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:00

Yeah, yeah. Because now you have the community, and the community has some it's familiar and has some level of value to the people in it. Um, you don't want the bad shit, and the bad shit is the bad shit guy is gone, and usually their second in command is like worse. But that guy's gone too. They've all been strangled to death.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:18

Um so not to draw yet another parallel, but the LDS thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:23

Yeah, yeah. The the US cavalry comes in, busts the place up a little bit. Yep, and then we all get nice. Yeah, like that's uh and what happened to many, many other groups, uh religious or cultish or otherwise, is that like you step over the line, somebody gets real mad, and you get slapped the fuck down. Yeah, usually there's a rebranding of sorts. Yep, right? So Fumahiro, Joyu, I think, J-O-Y-U. I have never seen that combination, but it should be Joyu. One of the few senior letters uh leaders in the group under Astahara, who did not face serious charges, became the official head of the organization in 1999. Koki Ishii, a legislator who formed the Anti-OLM Committee in the National Diet nineteen ninety nine uh nineteen ninety-nine, was murdered in two thousand two. Over fifteen years, only three fugitives were being actively sought. On eleven fifty PM on thirty first of December, twenty eleven, Makoto Hirada surrendered himself to the police and was arrested on suspicion of being involved in the nineteen ninety-five abduction of Kyoshi Korea, a non member who had died during the AM kidnapping and interrogation.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:38

At least he gave himself up.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:40

Yeah. On the third of June 2012, police captured Naoko Kikuchi, the second fugitive acting on a tip from local residents. Acting on information uh from the capture of Kikuchi, including recent photographs, showed modified appearance, the last remaining fugitive. Katsuya Takahashi was captured on the 15th of June 2012. He said that he has been the driver in a Tokyo gas attack. He had been the driver in the Tokyo gas attack and was caught in Tokyo, having been on the run for 17 years.

SPEAKER_02 1:15:16

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:18

On the 6th of July 2018, Asahara and six other Um Shinryky Shinrykyo, I keep saying that wrong, um Shinrykyo members were executed by hanging. Japan's Justice Minister Yoko Kamikawa stated that the crimes plunged people not only in Japan but other countries as well, into deadly fear and shook the society to its core. Amnesty International criticized the use of the death penalty in the case. That's their official line. They criticized the death penalty to begin with. I believe that the writer of this argument, this article wanted to throw some shade. Amnesty International does not like the death penalty, bar none. It's not about this guy in particular. While executions are rare in Japan, they have public support according to the subsurveys. There were 13 numbers of members on death row at the time. So the the organization has split uh into a couple of different things. One was that one that we mentioned earlier, uh at the very top, which was the um the Greek letter organization. The other one split off and then went like functionally bankrupt further, and then now is no longer being watched because it's just debunked.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:36

Okay, bye.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:37

It has like two members, and they're not like knowledgeable members that could make any kind of weaponry. So we talked about earlier that they were in Australia, they were in Monte Casino, they were in Russia. The Russians crack down fucking hard. Because you can't get away with this shit in Russia. Like you cannot get away with this shit in Russia. That's what happens. There's an anti-ALM law. Um surveillance period of three years. Um, there's all this kind of stuff, right? Uh, in the same year, Russian member was arrested for plotting a bomb attack as part of a plan to rescue Asahara from police custody. The plan was led by Dmitry Sigitachev, who was arrested at Vremorsky Kri Krai. I don't know where that is, but in 2001, the Russian um members were reportedly planned to attack the Tokyo Imperial Palace with explosives in an effort to free Asahara from police custody. In 2003, Public Security Intelligence Ace Agency received permission to extend surveillance for another three years. They found evidence to suggest that they still referred Asahara, even though you know he's on death row. According to Religious News blog, um, authorities still considered the group a threat to society. It it just like they just kept going. I mean, they really did. The whole thing is so goddamn crazy.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:57

Your leader is in jail. Give it up.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:59

So the guy that took over Joe Yu's group, called itself Hikari Nowa, the circle of light, claims to be committed uh uniting science and religion and creating a new science of the human mind. That's that's the only way I can say that. The new science of the human mind and talk, you know, like oh god. It's just like having previously aimed to move the group away from its criminal history and towards its spiritual roots. It's giving Scientology now. Yes, because the spiritual roots are garbage, bro. You you you rewrote a kind of uh so like I only by the way feel confident in talking about this because like everyone else has. Because it's now 2026. Yeah, right? A lot of these people have just died. Yeah, like that's fucking nuts. Japan Times alleged that good looks and commitment to the cause demonstrated by A. Lef inspire a new generation of admirers. Dissatisfaction with society and low degrees of success in life make them identify with the cult and adore the cultists as if they were pop idols. Now, see, that's the first time I've read that sentence, but I made that joke earlier. Yeah, you're just exactly how they put themselves forward. Sometime after 2013, the public uh security intelligence agency took a photograph inside of Aleph's facilities. In this photograph, a bundle of papers is pierced with a knife on an altar-like object. The papers included photographs of PSIA employees and directors, police officers, and a lawyer, Taro Takamoto, who helped the followers leave Um Shinriky. At least at this point in time, Aleph has displayed portraits of Shoku Asahara and demanded followers dependence using videos of Asahara. You know, like on a dais. There's I've seen one of these photos that he's like yeah, he's up there, like a Buddha statue. It's really fucking crazy. 2016 Montenegro. I said Monte Casino, Montenegro, Monte Casino's a hill, not a country. Montenegro um expelled 58 foreigners suspecting of being uh associated with Um Sinrikyo.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:17

GTFO.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:18

Yeah, four of them, four of them were from Japan. 43 were Russian, seven from Belarus, which is just Russian kind of. They're a fucking puppet state for Russia. Three from Ukraine and one from Uzbekistan, which is crazy because most Uzbeks are Islamic. So it's like, yeah, I believe maybe I'm totally wrong about that. But normally if there's a stan on the end, right? So what? What? I'm not even gonna like really go into the rest of that. There's so much information. What? I could scroll this. I'm only through two-thirds of the page.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:48

That's insane.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:50

2019, Tokyo car attack. Alm sympathizer, Kozahiro, Kasukabe, told authorities he intentionally rammed into pedestrians, crowded into the narrow Takeshita Street in Harajuku district.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:03

Not Harajuku, no!

SPEAKER_00 1:21:04

Fucking yeah, dude, e-girls flying everywhere. Hatsuni Miku was crying. Uh no, but it's like it's like sad, dude. It's crazy. And you know why he did it?

SPEAKER_02 1:21:15

It was aliens.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:16

No, no. It was the anniversary of the execution. That's what happened. It was it was the anniversary of the execution. So it was like a love letter to Asahara.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:26

Fucking hate cults.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:27

Yeah. It remains unclear whether he was referencing the 2018 execution of the cult members directly or making a broader statement. The attack on New Year's Day left eight injured and a ninth person who was already directly injured by the driver.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:43

Good lord.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:43

I assume he sold the car. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:46

That's whoa.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:48

I want to at this point. Earlier I talked about, so we talked about cults, how they can could, you know, like not you you said it yourself, not all cults are crazy, right? Some cults are not all of them. Some cults are just kind of normal, right? Like they're or or kind of harmless. A lot of them are doomsday cults or suicide cults. Uh, but some of them turn into just like kind of plain Jane spiritualism, especially after the initial leader dies. But like there were there were spiritualist movements here in America that are still around in Florida, and they have like a little community. You can go there and get your palm red stuff. It's fine. It's a vacation attraction people really like. I thought it was so interesting that within the same country you've got like nine different cults that pop up. This is the worst one by far.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:32

Some of which are also very bad, and then some of which are uh the other biggest one, by the way, is the Moonies, the Korean Christian cult, which is now here in America. Yay, America. The original guy died, and then his kids took over. They're the ones that do those gun weddings.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:49

Oh, oh they're descended from the Moonies. That's weird.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:53

Yeah. Yeah. And we haven't kicked them out for some reason. Because we are very permissive to cults in this country.

SPEAKER_02 1:23:00

Um as evidenced by how many fucking cults.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:02

There's a lot of them. A lot of them here. So, and most of it's freedom of religion laws they can hide behind. Uh, but you can't hide behind child abuse. So here's what's changed. We like to wrap up a lot of the shows with like what changed on the positive. Yes. Right? The good stuff. Here's what here's what happened. Hey, these guys are on fucking lockdown. Every time they sneeze funny, they get raided. Right?

SPEAKER_02 1:23:24

Period.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:24

One of their branches has completely died. They're not even under 24 hour surveillance anymore because there's like four of them. So like they're just like, well, if if one, if there's a cult of four people, they're not allowed, they're illegal, so they're not allowed to um proselytize to anyone. So they're not growing. And if they're growing in secret, they're breaking the law so they can come and arrest them. And also, if they like murder somebody, because there's like four of them, they go, you're a murderer, go to jail. Yeah. But it's not necessarily you're a cult murderer, it's like you're a crazy dude that still worships this guy that died in 2013 or where whenever. So here's the other good part. Because of all of these cult things that happened with the Moonies, because the Moonies got in deep.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:10

They were really invested. That's why one of their prime ministers uh was thought to have been taking money. His name was Shinzo Abe, or Abe Shinzo, if you want to be more accurate. And a guy, just like the other guy, he got fucking knifed. The guy ran right up to him with a Tonto, ran him fucking straight through. Fucking woke up to Japan.

SPEAKER_03 1:24:30

Yeah. I was like, wow.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:32

I was like, because I don't know what it is about the Japanese people, but when they want to fucking send a message, just with a sword.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:39

You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 1:24:40

I mean, yeah. Pretty straightforward.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:42

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:43

There is there's it's like waking up with a with a horse head in your bed. There's no questioning that.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:47

Right.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:47

You fucked up, eh, Ron.

SPEAKER_00 1:24:49

Yeah. So what really good came, what the good that came out of this was that it galvanized the Japanese people against a lot of cults. There are a lot of Shinto cults, but only in the way that sometimes we say like the cult of Aphrodite.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:03

The cult in that sense, of the that it's like a minor branch of a larger religion. So there's like fire festivals and stuff around a couple of things which are uh have said been said to been exploitative, but for the most part, they're just another Shinto sect. Because all of this went down, it is now a thing in Japan that you are not really allowed to like hand out leaflets and shit about religion. So, like you are, but not and a lot of people do it from like a bus because that's how politicians advertise. They get on a bullhorn and they drive around.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:35

And also so you can get the fuck away.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:37

Yeah. So yeah, you you're not allowed to like harass people about shit. Most of these organizations were put on a watch list. I wanted to bring this up because if you pay attention to news from the world right now, Japan's going through it.

SPEAKER_02 1:25:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:54

Um, there is a a strong nationalist bent that has kind of been taking over around specifically around foreigners because we keep doing dumb shit in temples, and that gets firebranded. Like people are are, even though that's very, very rare in actuality, people are doing a lot of that. They have like a gossip column news now that is really psyching this up and making it seem like everybody's doing it.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:20

It's a big deal that it was done at all.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:23

Like, don't you you don't you don't you don't fucking do that.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:27

Yeah, don't don't hang off of Tory Gates. Don't don't don't fucking do pull-ups on Tory Gates. If I am in Japan and I see somebody doing a pull-up on Tory Gates, I'm gonna punch you rat in the cock. I mean, like, so hard. And I'm gonna do it from the back so you don't see it coming. Full Mike Tyson uppercut.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:44

Just oh yeah. Welcome to Kastrati.

SPEAKER_00 1:26:47

Yeah. Because that pisses me off so bad. Because the the Japanese people have had such a rough time with religion. Yeah. Uh with with hardline religions, like anything that has like a canon. Because Shinto doesn't have a canon. There's no like holy text outside of stories. Um Buddhism has like Koens and it has like sutras and and stuff like that, but it it doesn't have a text in the sense that this is the truth, the whole truth.

SPEAKER_03 1:27:15

This is the way.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:16

Yeah, it doesn't have that, right? Not really. So there's a lot of tension over this in Japan right now. And there was a guy that like kicked in a Shinto shrine and stole one of the and like took one of the artifacts out and then walked off, and they caught him on CC TV camera. And my God, did that cause an outright cry. I think he got slapped with a giant fine. But like well, it's when I say a Shinto shrine, I don't mean a big one. I mean like one of the the little local ones. Yeah, but still it's still a real dick move.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:47

Yeah, you don't fucking do that.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:49

And especially since it really enraged a lot of people who were already enraged about foreign interaction into Japan. The the building of the mosque caused a kind of out. Cry from like a lot of people in the country, and then there's a lot of other people in the country that are very much like opening and accepting of foreigners. They need the labor, quite frankly. Um, and they believe in freedom of religion. There are Christian churches in Japan, there are um, of course, all kinds of Buddhism. There's like three three different sects, major sects of Buddhism. Uh there's even a Japanese set called Nichiren. Uh really. Yeah, that there's like uh Zen, of course, is like from China, right? Like the guy, Sogen, was from uh was moving back and forth. Zen Buddhism. They're very, very split on this, and it's causing a lot of stuff. And I wanted to bring that up. If you're if you're watching the news and it seems like they're really fucking going crazy over this building a mosque situation, it's because of their history with cults. And they do view, by the way, um, like many, many, many Japanese people do view Christianity and and Islam and Judaism or really any highly canonized religion as being like a cult. Like they look at it and they go, like, I don't get it.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:03

They're not entirely wrong.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:05

No, they're not, especially when you consider that like most of Japanese people are functionally atheist.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:13

In the way that a lot of Jewish people are like culturally Jewish and and kind of mostly an atheist. It's it's very similar to that. Like, because Buddhism doesn't really have a god. So it's it's a weird dichotomy of situations where like, hey, every time somebody has like the truth, yeah, that this is the one way down, can we not? Right. So all right.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:36

Well, thank you, Brian, for educating me on this. Cause I had previous to today, I had no fucking idea that this had happened or existed at all. Fuck.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:48

That's crazy, right?

SPEAKER_02 1:29:50

That's so much. Like, seriously, how did these people not go? Wait, stop, pump the brakes for just a second. We're we're making gas to kill people. Guys, I think we're the bad guys. I think we need to stop. Oh my god.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:05

But he knows the way.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:07

This is not the way. This is not the way.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:09

Don't don't trust religious or otherwise, anyone who tells you that they're the only truth.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:15

I especially living. Because the thing is, like, you know, when you encounter a lot of religions that are like thousands of years old, a lot of it's like interpretation. Or it's someone wrote about this guy. Right? Like Jesus, like the uh New Testament's mostly Paul. The kind of sayings that are attributed to Muhammad. Muhammad recorded this, but he was reportedly illiterate. So we we can like that's what is that so like we can kind of assume that he the the idea is that it's divine inspiration, uh, but we can kind of assume that it has been transcribed, right? And we know that like the sayings of Muhammad are just attributed to him. There's no proof of this. So like, but they're good saying, it's like Proverbs, right? Yeah, so you can reform your own religion. You can be like, well, we don't they thought about things differently.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:06

Well, I mean, most religions have go through a reformation period.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:09

Right. Because when you're when you're 2,000, a thousand years old, you can go like, well, yeah, they believed in slavery, but we live in modern times.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:16

Right? Like you can you have the time is on your side. If this motherfucker is alive, like right now.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:23

No, no, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:24

Yeah, like they can say all kinds of crazy shit.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:26

Like reasons, like I joke, joke about being like in in in a fandom and call it a cult, but like reasons cults wouldn't work on me.

unknown 1:31:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:31:40

Me in particular.

SPEAKER_00 1:31:41

Just like my general kind of There's a cult right now in America that believes that um Native Americans are essentially lying, and that the native inhabitants of Yeah, the Native inhabitants of America were all from Africa. And then there's like um, there are people who believe that uh all humans come from aliens directly. Uh huh. Different kinds of aliens.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:06

Oh no.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:06

One of them oddly looks a lot like Aryans. They're all blonde, blue-eyed aliens.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:11

I'm not gonna lie. I my my guilty pleasure, like just to turn on and crochet and like giggle, is ancient aliens.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:21

It's so goddamn whack.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:23

It's so stupid. I love it.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:24

My let me go ahead and pause. Let's sign out and then I'll then I'll then I'll tell you about my favorite one. Because like it's gonna take too long. So thank you for listening to our deeply uh upsetting episode. Yeah. Sorry for if we made too many jokes, it's because it's deeply upsetting and it's the only way we know how to deal with this shit.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:42

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We gotta diffuse with a little bit of laughter, even if the situation is inappropriate. Ask me about my uncle's funeral at some point.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:51

I had I had the back section of that funeral parlor just rolling.

SPEAKER_00 1:32:55

You got to sometimes, because it's so dark and it's something that we face all the time. Cults pop up all the time, new ones. So, like, and they can get like Jim Jones.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:06

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:06

And all those guys can get so bad.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:08

Like the alpha male like epidemic.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:11

Oh, that how weird that shit is that bullshit. Did a a pimp was able to get a bunch of guys to just be like, well, he has good advice about working out. So does Arnold Schwarzenegger. He doesn't like extort women.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:22

I saw the best, the best comeback to somebody saying, Well, I'm an alpha male. Oh, is that like a furry thing?

SPEAKER_00 1:33:32

Yeah, that's pretty good.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:34

Now that said, I ain't got nothing against furries.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:37

Because some of y'all, y'all have some of the best artwork out there, like to learn how to like shade and shit. Fuck yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:42

Also, they understand what that term actually means.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:45

Yes, and then they get so angry.

SPEAKER_00 1:33:49

Yeah. Like, oh, oh, so you you mean that you eat last, that you make sure the elderly all get where they're supposed to be going, that you guard bodies until they're well and truly passed. When somebody's dying, you sit with the dog.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:03

None of you know what that actually means.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:05

Like, that's wolves are actually incredibly communal animals. Oh, Jesus Christ.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:09

Thank you, Brian, and thank you, dear, dear listener, for joining us for this episode.

SPEAKER_00 1:34:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:14

We'll catch you in the next one. And remember, next time, you're mine.