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Quick answers
What happened on 20 March 1995?
Aum Shinrikyo members released sarin on five Tokyo subway trains during the morning rush toward Kasumigaseki. Thirteen people were later counted as official dead (twelve at first; one added after a 2008 survey). Thousands sought medical care. This page does not describe the release method.
Who was convicted?
Asahara Shoko (Matsumoto Chizuo) and a group of senior members were convicted. Asahara’s death sentence became final in 2006; he was executed on 6 July 2018 with other Aum convicts. About 190 members were found guilty in related cases. Status is convicted, not unsolved.
Was this a war?
No. It was a domestic criminal and terrorism case against a civilian transport system. It belongs in an investigations family, not in a wars file.
What was Aum Shinrikyo?
A Japanese new religious movement founded in the 1980s by Matsumoto Chizuo, who took the name Asahara. It mixed Buddhist and Hindu language with apocalyptic teaching and, in its criminal core, organised murders and two sarin attacks. After 2000 the main successor body used the name Aleph.
What was the Matsumoto case?
On 27 June 1994, sarin was used in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, killing eight people. Once linked to Aum, it became the prior chemical crime in the same investigation family as 20 March 1995.
What laws changed?
Aum’s religious-corporation status was revoked. The Religious Corporations Act was revised in 1995. The 1999 Act on the Control of Organizations Which Have Committed Acts of Indiscriminate Mass Murder created ongoing surveillance of successor groups.
The story is a rush-hour crime on a civilian metro, investigated by police and tried in ordinary Japanese courts.
The wider story is a group already responsible for earlier murders and for Matsumoto, brought to book after the capital was hit.
Beats
- A group already in the file
By early 1995 Aum was under suspicion for Matsumoto and for the Sakamoto murders. English later called the subway attack a bolt from the blue. Japanese investigators did not.
- Monday, 20 March
Five trains, one government station cluster, a chemical agent already named in the 1994 case. Hospitals and stations filled. The death count began at twelve.
- Raids at Kamikuishiki
From 22 March police entered Aum sites. The investigation became a national manhunt and a documentary spectacle on Japanese television.
- Asahara arrested, 16 May
The founder’s arrest closed the “guru at large” phase. Charging and trial work then lasted years, not weeks.
- Sentence, wait, execution
Death sentences in the 2000s, finality in 2006 for Asahara, hangings in July 2018 after the last related appeal. The legal story is long on purpose.
The story ends in convictions and executions, not in an unknown perpetrator.
Public-record encyclopedia. Not legal advice. Not a how-to. Graphic detail is withheld. Wars belong in a separate atlas.