Chapter 8: A Cult of Terror in Japan Continued
Excerpt from Lost Decade/Found Decade: The Transformation of Postwar Japan from 1989 to 2009 By Daniel Ambrose Retrieved via Netsite Archive
Guest post by @ajm888 with assistance from Mr. Harris Syed and @Plateosaurus
Shoko Asahara being transported to Hachioji Branch of the Tokyo District Court (Source: Getty and BBC)
The Assassination of Shoko Asahara
On June 5th 1995, the international press was assembled along Koshu-Kaido Ave outside the Tokyo District Court Hachioji Annex. Security was tight, the police expected armed members of Aum Shinrikyo to attack, they had riot police and the SAP (Special Armed Police) ready to repel any attack. But with the Aum organization essentially in a state of near total disintegration as most non-fantaical members had left after March and April. Many fanatics were arrested after April 15th. A small handful remained in the wind.
The Russian and American governments had declared Aum Shinrikyo a terrorist organization and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government was going to revoke its religious status even going to the Supreme Court of Japan as no one had revoked religous status since before World War II. But that was still off for later in 1995[1]. The world wanted to see Shoko Asahara’s first day in court.
It was decided by senior government officials that the press would be allowed to swarm the “perp walk” as Asahara was being led down a gauntlet of cameras that the media had been allowed to set up. This would be big news so the Japanese government had wanted this arraignment to be sort of a pageant parade showing the guilt of Asahara and they would allow all the eyes of the world on the Hachioji Court Annex[2] and the case.They planned for the case to go perfectly. But Asahara would not even enter the building.
The gauntlet was set up with random media outlets getting their spot assigned by lottery. This was a result of complaints by the international press not getting hardly any spots before. So the Tokyo Police Metropolitan Department, wanting to look good as did the Tokyo prosecutor’s office, made a lottery system that would allow the press positions along the “gauntlet”. It allowed a wide variety of Japanese and international networks to mingle. Televisia and TV Asahi cameramen were next to each other, reporters from France 2 and ABC (Australia) were chatting, CNN and ARD were making sure they could connect with their head office, and even Biwako Broadcasting Co. had gotten in the lottery by sheer luck so they had a clip of Asahara walking into court for the next morning’s morning news show.
At 9:15 AM, Shoko Asahara left the Shinjuku police station, he was escorted by a massive convoy of police with military support ready along with the recently publicly revealed Special Assault Police unit was on the way to Hachioji. The whole convoy was watched by helicopters and monitored closely. It arrived at 10:30.
Upon leaving the van, Asahara was swarmed by reporters from various Japanese and international newspapers. The news broadcasters were going to ask questions closer to their cameras. It was chaos as some of the more mobile camera units were able to keep up as they kept Asahara at a brisk pace. Twenty meters from the door Asahara and his police escort were stopped by the sheer number of reporters that were asking questions. It was in this blockage Asahara suddenly grimaced and let out a sharp pained gasp.
Standing in front of Asahara was a man with a press badge from a local newspaper from Tottori, the man was in a brown suit and wore glasses, he was slightly taller than Asahara. Asahara was still letting out these pained noises, no one one knew what they were for a few seconds until the knife appeared. The assassin went from stabbing Asahara in the stomach to hitting him in the neck, face and chest. Suddenly, police officers were trying their best but this man seemed to have a lot of strength in his stabbing of Asahara. The assassin made no noise other than grunting and straining noises. The first knife the assassin used, was a gyuto knife, was an all purpose chef’s knife for cutting flesh of fish and beef. The stabbing motions and cuts the killer was making seemed to be as if made by a man with experience in use of a knife. A cop after a few blows by his police baton to the assassin’s arm was able to get the knife loose and sent it into the crowd. The assassin quickly then pulled his second knife, a nakiri, a type of Japanese cleaver, small but effective for chopping vegetables. With the nakiri, the assassin began chopping at Asahara’s neck, arterial spray hit reporters, police, and the crowd that was curious to watch the terrorist enter the courthouse[3]. The police after two minutes were able to pull the assassin from Asahara’s body. Chizuo Matsumoto who renamed himself Shoko Asahara was pronounced dead at Tokyo Medical University Hachioji Medical Center forty minutes later.
The CNN, Biwako Broadcasting, RTE, RAI, VTR, TF1, TV2 (Denmark), KBS, ABC (Australia), NTV, ITV, and Televisa reporters and cameramen were the closest to the assassination those networks had the lead over their peers. Biwako and CNN had the best views of the assassination with the killing happening right in front of their locations. Though it once again caused people in the UK to think they had footage when it was Biwako Broadcasting Company (BBC), leading to an alleged meltdown of a senior member of BBC News management[4]. CNN would, with some edits, show the assassination on not just their channel but CBS[5]. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation would run a special piece on the assassination on their version of 60 Minutes[6]. Many other broadcasters ran specials on the public assassination of Shoko Asahara which many in Japan compared to the killing of Lee Harvey Oswald after he murdered President John F. Kennedy in 1963.
After his feverish attack, the assassin calmly gave up as the adrenaline and excitement wore off. The assassin stayed quiet apart from telling the police to look in his hotel. Eyewitness reports of the assassin from the time state he was in the Hachioji police station, staying quiet and shaking. He entered a zen like state. Though the initial media reports stated he was cackling like a mad man, he was sobbing, or just incoherently mumbling[7]. Later reports stated he was silent only telling police to go to his hotel room.
In the hotel room of the reporter's identity they found a drunk man tied up and gagged. This was the reporter that the assassin had borrowed his identity. The reporter, Takejiro Chiziwa, was with the Nihonkai Shimbun, a regional newspaper based in Tottori[8]. They then found the identity of the assassin, left in the rooms were passport, driver’s license, insurance card, government ID badge from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, family pictures of a man that was not Takejiro Chizawa, but head of the Tottori office and Chugoku deputy regional director of the MAFF, Kenichi Hoshino[9].
Who was Kenichi Hoshino?
Kenichi Hoshino was born outside of Tottori in 1944. His father had avoided military draft due to his job as a postal worker, the elder Hoshino was 42 when his son was born. Kenichi’s father after the war opened a small izakaya in Tottori.
His childhood was dealing with the post-war wreckage and rebuilding of Japan. As a 16 year student he was supportive of the Miike Mitsui Miners in their strike, he opposed the American-backed Security Treaty, was supportive of the Space Race, and despite the atomic horrors unleashed on nearby Hiroshima he supported nuclear power. He would go to Tottori university. At university he dealt with classism directed at him as his father and family were Burakumin, a low born class of people in Japan often viewed negatively for a large swath of their history. Despite efforts of the Burakumin Liberation League (BKD) and others discrimination still existed at that time. But Kenichi persisted, graduating from Tottori University with degrees in agricultural engineering he went to Osaka for degrees in administration and government.
Kenichi Hoshino would join the government bureaucracy. He was recruited right from university for the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Fisheries would not be added until 1978. He was a slow climber at first being shifted around the whole of Japan. He often received the ire of local farmers when he suggested alternative pesticides, tried to warn farmers the risk of chemical run off, and stated that forcing Japanese people to buy rice from Japan only would be taxing on poorer families. He voiced his disdain for Tanaka, Nakasone, Takeshita, and others
“Hoshino found a way to fight his fights, quietly but still with a passion. He was like that in the bureaucracy of the MAFF.” said Chojiro Shiraki, a Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries bureaucrat who was Hoshino’s apprentice and later a senior aide to Hoshino in the Tottori Agricultural Administration Office of the Chugoku-Shikoku Agricultural Administration Bureau.
“My Senpai, Hoshino-san was a pain to some, he would help many others in his assigned department, wherever they put him. Eventually he came back to Tottori. It was here he had his fights, well, disagreements with Takeshita and Shin Kanemaru in the neighboring Shimane Prefecture. He also knew the Abe Family, but seldom clashed with them.” Shiraki said in an interview.
“Hoshino-san was for all purposes a normal Japanese bureaucrat, who you may see visiting a farm, a forest, maybe doing a report on the Tottori Sand Dunes. But his home life was normal, his wife did some jobs to help pay the bills, his kids he was devoted to. But on rare occasions he would show us his talent for cooking. He was a masterful amatuer, as he said.” Shiraki states.
“I was a pain in the ass. I know they weren’t happy with my pushing for American and other foreign rice as they depend on local farmers for their votes. But I kept at it, I was known as a hard case but they still promoted me slowly. Finally after the end of the economic miracle I really started climbing… Then my wife gets cancer.” Hoshino told an interviewer from the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation). “The doctors say they can help her and they do but the cancer had spread too far by that point. She died in September of 1993. She at least got to see Takako Doi become Prime Minister in 1993. Makiko was everything to me. She was a passionate woman who could say things better than I ever could. To see her just wither away… It gnaws at my bones still.” Hoshino was reported to have been crying at this point.
Makiko Hoshino had given birth to two sons in the 1960s with Hoshino, he later revealed that the couple had a third child, a daughter but they had given the girl to Hoshino’s younger brother, Souta. The two sons were Kiyoshi and Daiki.
“Makiko loved my nephews, while she loved the daughter she gave birth to, my wife and I loved our daughter Keiko.” Souta Hoshino told reporters. “Makiko’s death hit Kenichi hard. He really was adrift. Then Daiki found Ayaka. Daiki was in college at the time and met Ayaka at a karaoke party”. They eventually would marry in early 1994. And in early September 1994 they would tell Kenichi that Ayaka was pregnant. Things seemed to be turning around for Kenichi. Then…
Kobe, Japan after January 17th, 1995. A city in ruins. CREDIT: GETTY IMAGE
Kiyoshi was working for a shipping company in Kobe and was likely asleep when the Great Hanshin Earthquake hit on January 17th, 1995. His home was an older style house design to counter typhoons, not built to earthquake safety standards. Also Kobe had not had a major earthquake hit the city in 400 years. Kiyoshi’s home twisted and buckled and fell on top of him. An autopsy was not sure if he died from the collapse, gas leaks or the fires. His corpse was found partially burned.
This disaster hit Kenichi Hoshino hard. To him a son should not die before the father. That felt unnatural. “Kenichi would pour himself into helping his youngest son and his daughter in-law with their future. Using some old connections from college, Kenichi got his surviving son an interview slot at the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries on April 15th, 1995. He would at least try to give his son an edge.” Chojiro Shiraki said this to interviewers from the Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) in 2015.
It is unknown if Daiki Hoshino made it to the interview. The interview was scheduled at 11:00 AM. He was on the 10:17 train that arrived at Kasumigaseki. A survivor from the collapsed subway station said he heard Hosino crying for a few minutes before he went silent.
Ayaka was informed of this and Kenichi had to go to Tokyo and identify his son. “I don’t think he said a thing other than asking for directions the whole time.” Souta Hoshino said in a CNN Japan interview in 2015, “Ayaka was hysterical and Kenichi had to be strong. Kenichi always had an anger in him and it is never good when he is quiet that long. I know my brother, silence in him is something, something that is building. Then when Ayaka gave birth, it was a difficult pregnancy.”
“My daughter-in law died from complications due to childbirth. I still believe she died because Daiki died. I saw my granddaughter, Moriko. I was happy some part of Daiki was alive, but the fact that this monster Asahara took my child from me, took Ayaka from her parents, and denied Moriko from knowing her parents. I was angry…” Hoshino said in his NHK interview in 2015.
Hoshino began talking about how he was worried how Asahara would get off from the crime. “They’ll drop the case because they’ll get scared they don’t have enough evidence for that 99% conviction rate! Or worse they’ll charge him with a lesser crime they can get him on!” That is what I remember Hoshino saying when he got blind drunk one day before going on grief leave.” Chojiro Shiraki remembered.
“I knew he’d get off, I knew it. Or the trial would take a decade and he’d be out on bail or something because he was blind. I mean Kakuei Tanaka stayed out of prison from October 1983 until his death in 1993![10] He was still a major powerbroker despite being found fucking guilty!” Hoshino told interviewers in 2015, “If anyone could get away with it it was Asahara! Man was a master manipulator and if the courts fell for Tanaka’s bullshit they’d fall for Asahara’s woe is me, nonsense.”
Witnesses saw Hoshino become more deranged, angry, hurt and also close to an old friend. Takejiro Chiziwa, a college friend from his days at Tottori University. Close friends that both families seemed uneasy about their eerie close resemblance.
“There was a reason for the resemblance, something that only I and my parents knew, Chizawa is our sibling. We were a poor family back then, unable to feed so many mouths, so my parents gave Chizawa up for adoption back then[11]. Kenichi's older brother Aoki. “By 1954 we could afford Souta but in 1947? We were lucky to get our business off the ground.”
Takejiro Chiziwa was not used to being a part of the story, “We caught up and I was bragging about how I was going to be on the Asahara “perp walk” for the paper’s reporting on the event. I must admit, I was beaming. I did not know Hoshino was plotting. He told me he had lost his sons and I drank with him. I did not expect to see him in Tokyo the day before the arraignment.”
“I already had the knives, I liked to cook. But I really don’t remember too much of my planning.” Hoshino recalled.
The day before the arraignment, Hoshino arrived in Tokyo with a suitcase with two knives. A gyuto knife as the primary and the nakiri knife as the backup. As soon as Hoshino saw Asahara, he rushed to stab him to death.
“I remember bits and pieces of that day but I am not sure of everything I did. I just remember arriving in Tokyo and taking Chiziwa out to drink. I don’t remember killing Asahara, all I remember is what I saw on TV. I know it sounds insane but I have no memory of it.”
The Trial and Fame of Kenichi Hoshino
“The thing I remember from the pre-trial was how the prosecution went from a certain win to them losing all confidence.” Attorney Tomiji Koda would recall defending his client Kenichi Hoshino, “Proving insanity in Japan is difficult but my client’s lack of memory of the incident and his change in attitude at the police station proved to me that he had a mental break. So I made sure to request a psychological examination. While typically they think he is a normal member of society when such a tragedy occured and so much happened, he had a psychological break. I used a previous incident of Hoshino’s. As a teen he’d beaten up a bunch of bullies after his grandfather’s death. Prosecutor’s in Japan do not want to be a losing prosecutor and even if they could find holes in my defense most of the judges, the prosecutors themselves, and court staff knew victims from the Tokyo Central Court. They dropped the case. They found he had suffered temporary insanity and while he could have been held liable under Japanese law, prosecutors did not want to touch this case and lose as Hoshino was a sympathetic defendant. The judges would have felt some sympathy for him. I asked one of the judges some years later and he said, “It is hard not to feel sympathy for Hoshino.” Koda stated.
“I bet they wish they would put me in prison. I lost my job as no way would the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries want me working there. After getting off in late 1996, my attorney suggested that I was not responsible for my actions, that the government was responsible as they had failed to stop Aum from these attacks and the media had helped spread the group’s message and enabled them to go after opponents. As we would see the lawsuit of that lawyer’s family against Tokyo Broadcasting Systems (TBS)[12] and I would open my big mouth and expose many open secrets I knew. Embezzlement, corruption, a vote in the country is worth two in the city, and the ties to organized crime and many politicians and businesses, just to name a few.”
Hoshino would conduct his first post-trial interview with actor, musician, comedian, director, and TV personality Takeshi Kitano. The interview at one point got heated when Hoshino scolded Takeshi, “People like you enabled Asahara and his cronies to get as big as he did. If the press was more interested in an actual story and not a funny story about a weird cult lead by a blind guy who probably suffered from Minamata disease who preached the end of the world maybe thousands would not be maimed by sarin nerve agent, and thousands would not be disabled from the April 15th attacks! You’re made the decision to not be newsmen! But to have this freakshow you call informative entertainment television!” Hoshino would leave the interview in a huff.
No one thought the assassin of Shoko Asahara would become a regular on Japanese TV talking about either cults, corruption, or one time on the Tottori Sand dunes but something about Hoshino resonated with the people of Japan. He was an everyman in a sense; he was not famous, he had suffered more than most, and he was frustrated. The very fact that Asahara was responsible for the worst terrorist attacks in Japanese history brought plenty of controversy to not just Aum Shinrikyo but Takeshi Kitano, the media, and the govenment; and Hoshino was seen as a hero in the eyes of many Japanese.
Legacy and Worldwide Impact
Kenichi Hoshino’s assasination of Shoko Asahara would be a major event in Japanese history. Much like the televised killing of Japan Socialist Party leader Inejiro Asanuma by ultranationalist Otoya Yamaguchi in 1960 this was recorded on numerous cameras, and was broadcast live or rebroadcast later in the day to the rest of the world. The assassination was considered a hard ending for Aum. The changes that his killing brought about cannot be understated in the decades since it happened. Now when a high profile suspect in Japan is brought in they are required to wear a stab vest, they are brought in by the back of the courthouse, and security is much tighter.
Many members of Aum’s “cabinet” who were captured and arrested were given life sentences as a minimum, while 18 members were given death sentences, including most involved in the brutal Sakamoto family murders. The trials spanned over a decade as many cult members would be tried across Japan, most would go to jail for only a year or two for minor crimes, the 18 who faced the death penalty were connected to abuse cases, the Tokyo Sarin attack, the 4/15 attacks, the Matsumoto attacks, and numerous murders that the cult committed. Some of the trials went fast as the defendant had confessed to their crimes, others refused to confess. They would become known as the Tokyo Trials and to this day, they remain the most famous trials in Japanese history. Only two major Aum Shinrikyo attackers remain at large, Akira Yamagata, the mastermind of the 4/15 attacks; and Hideo Murai, a perpetrator of the Sakamoto family murders and the number two man at the Cult’s Ministry of Science and Technology and later it’s minister.The missing Yamagata and Murai in particular launched numerous Internet conspiracy boards of alleged sightings of the men from places like Anaheim Disneyland to Cape Town, South Africa. There were serious investigations with the two being on the FBI’s most wanted list and Interpol putting a Red Notice on both men. As of 2012, they were not found[13].
The impact on Japanese media of this killing was noticeable with plots in detective shows having a victim’s father (and on occasion mother or son) kill the suspect in a public manner. The first such recreation outside of detective shows happened with 15 April, a 2002 NHK miniseries on 4/15 and the subsequent assassination of Shoko Asahara. Kenichi Hoshino in the series was played by actor Ken Tanaka, who had met with Hoshino to get permission for Hoshino himself and understand what Hoshino remembers. “He is an interesting character. He was like anyone else you’d see on the nightly commuter train. And then some event happened that made him this way.” said Tanaka in a press release in 2002 for the miniseries. Footage of 15 April would also be used in A Year of Terror, a PBS miniseries in 2006 that showed the attacks in Tokyo and the American response to the Sword of Liberty’s Washington DC bombing and other attacks by exteremist groups around the world[14].
The killing also had a huge impact on anime and manga in the 1990s. For instance, a chapter and episode of Gosho Aoyama’s mystery series Detective Conan[15] had the titular character investigate the case of a cult leader killed by the brother of a terrorist attack victim. However, there was another murder that was happening during the assassination that was committed by a reporter present at the incident. In Satoshi Kon’s surreal psychological thriller Perfect Blue[16], Rumi stabs a photographer to death for taking nude photos of idol turned actress Mima Kawagoe in a manner similar to Kenichi Hoshino killing Shoko Asahara. Kon stated on the 10th anniversary of the film's release that he told his animation staff to watch the Asahara assassination as a reference point for how Rumi would kill the photographer. "Cowboy Funk", an episode of the space western Cowboy Bebop[17], had bounty hunters Spike Spiegel and Andy kill a Shoko Asahara-esque leader of an Aum Shinrikyo inspired terrorist organization in retaliation for a deadly bombing on Mars that claimed hundreds inside a high-rise building. Similarly, Studio Gainax's Neon Genesis Evangelion included it's own references to 4/15 and the Asahara assassination with the Angel Ramiel blowing up a government building in Tokyo-3 followed by Shinji Ikari fatally stabbing after severely weakening him with the EVA-02 Unit's gun[18]. The shonen action series One Piece and Rurouni Kenshin[19] had a few allusions to the event such as Himura Kenshin going after a cult leader conducting a campaign of terror against the Meiji government or Monkey D. Luffy and the Straw Hat Pirates fighting a group of religious fanatics from an island. Additionally, an expy of Aum Shinrikyo would also be featured in the 2000s superhero series Birdy the Mighty, an adaptation of a manga series that ran from 1985 to 1988 with George Gomez, the main antagonist, leading a terrorist cult committing attacks throughout Japan and the world only to be killed by Birdy with her alien knife. Even the children’s anime franchises Doraemon and Sazae-san had their titular characters deliver public service announcements on national television urging viewers to donate to the victims of the 4/15 attacks.
On the tokusatsu side of things, several Super Sentai series, Kamen Rider, Ultraman and other shows of the genre from the decade would use the plot of a cult triggering an ancient evil, a monster, aliens, or other various evils. They also had the hero who defeated these evils not be the main heroes of the show but a side character who was meant as a Hoshino-esque everyman.
Outside of Japan, the attacks and assassination of Shoko Asahara would also have a large influence on American media given the country’s familiarity with militant cults. In comics, Marvel’s Punisher would take out the terrorist organization God’s Will and stabbed their leader with the assistance of a cop after they detonated a truck filled with deadly explosives in New York City killing thousands of innocent people while DC and Vertigo’s John Constantine fought a deranged group of cannibalistic, murderous cultists who bombed various locations in London and achieved a goal to summon a powerful demon. Such storylines were not limited to trenchcoat anti-heroes either as the Big Two’s most famous superheroes such as the Justice League and the Avengers fought supervillains modeled after Aum Shinrikyo and received help from average citizens wanting to destroy these cults even if it meant enacting brutal justice. The Aum Shinrikyo attacks and Asahara assassination along with fhe Sword of Liberty's campaign of terror also inspired the depiction of Gilead in the 2001-2006 HBO adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale[20] in which the fundamentalist terrorist group the Sons of Jacob used a truck to blow up the Pentagon along with sarin attacks in the Washington DC subway and Offred (real name Kate Osbourne) fatally stabbing Commander Fred Waterford with a knife. Meanwhile, the attacks and assassination would be most famously used in CBS’s Law and Order as a plot device in in a 1997 season opening two part episode, where a right-wing doomsday Christian cult known as New Dawn posioned a New York City subway car and then later detonated a massive bomb near New York City Hall. The manhunt for the cult leader finds Isaiah Goodman (played by William Sadler) caught in a high-profile arrest by the NYPD. In the first part, the detectives after Goodman’s arrest have to deal with his babbling and Goodman’s take on the end times only to be killed by a woman who lost her son (played by Ann Dowd). In the second part, Jack and his Associate District Attorney have to deal with Fiona Franks (played by Lesley Ann Warren), a teacher and cornerstone of the community, and her attorney Glenn Masters (played by Christopher McDonald) after they’re revealed to be members of New Dawn as well as the other leading members of the cult. Franks is discovered being the number two in the cult after Goodman being chiefly responsible for security, indoctrination, and propaganda. It is discovered that Franks had persuaded a major news network (NNC as a nod to CNN) to break confidentiality on a lawyer that was going to sue the cult for financial fraud and emotional damages. The New Dawn cultists killed the attorney that was suing them. Franks is found guilty and Masters loses his law license and is arrested by federal agents for tax fraud and using the US Mail to send fraudulent checks. Despite New Dawn being taken down as District Attorney Adam Schiff (played by Steven Hill) warns, “Some other shaman, religious leader, strongman, or some nut is going to come along and promise to find a solution to the ills of the world and it often leads to violence. I saw it with Hitler and Stalin, we saw it in Texas, Tokyo, and Washington with those cult leaders. And we saw it here in New York with Goodman. There will be other Goodmans sadly, their stories will be different, but what they sell is all the same. Bloodshed and misery.” Right as the episode ends Schiff gets a call that Franks was killed at Rykers by a prisoner who lost a brother in the subway attack. The episode was given numerous Primetime Emmy nominations and won three for Outstanding Supporting Actor (Steven Hill), Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series.
Aside from Law and Order, many other Western films and television shows used the Asahara assassination angle in their stories, even if they didn’t deal with religious extremism. For instance, an episode of NYPD Blue had an Italian mob boss (played by Alex Rocco), kill his rival (played by Gianni Russo) and the son of the slain mob boss stabs the surviving boss in a public press conference witnessed by the main characters, (the son was played by Jason Cerbone). Several action or crime films used the Asahara assaination as a way to kill off a powerful Mafia character or crime boss. Even a low budget attempt to make a film based on the terror of Asahara and his end that was filmed in Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto. In 2004, the American film studio TriStar Pictures and the Japanese film company Toho made a film based on the Shoko Asahara assassination and the 4/15 Attacks titled Melancholy directed by Yoji Yamada with Hiroshi Abe as Asahara, Ken Watanabe as Hoshino, Tatsuya Nakadai as Prime Minister Murayama, Masato Ibu as Police Inspector Nakagawa, Kiichi Nakai as JGSDF Major Takeo Fushida, Akira Onodera as Ichiro Ozawa, Issey Ogata as Yoshiro Mori, Dennis Quaid as President Al Gore, Corbin Bernsen as FBI Agent Franklin Moreland, John Karlen as Secretary of State Brzezinski, Kaori Momoi as Makiko Hoshino and many more[21].
In literature, Japanese author Toyoko Yamazaki[22] would use the April 15 Attacks and the Asahara assassination to write a novel inspired by the events, titled A Time of Terror (Kyofu no Toki), first serialized in conservative magazine Shukan Shincho. The novel followed reporter Isamu Anzai, a reporter with a newspaper based on the Mainichi Shimbun, in the mid-1980s starting to follow a new “self help group” as it begins during the years after the Plaza Accords and the “Bubble Years” in Japan. The political corruption is noticed, the aftermath of the National Air Lines 123 scandal (mentioned in her previous novel The Sun Never Sets (Shizumanu Taiyō), which was inspired by the JAL 123 Miracle crash and the subsequent scandal)[23]. The cult here is called the Oracles of the Divine. They had their first offices in Shinjuku, Tokyo and would set up their headquarters near Mount Haku along the border of Gifu and Ishikawa[24]. Yamazaki shows the cult led by Divine Kusanagi (Born Fumio Miyazawa), a blind man from Minamata, Kumamoto. The seeming lack of interest by the police and government and the cheerleading by the media disturbs Isamu. “How is it when there are these family members saying they can’t see their loved ones or that lawyer and his family went missing in Chiba, we didn’t cover it? Why are we protecting this bizarre group?!” One character Isamu Anzai encounters in the novel several times is Home Affairs Ministry bureaucrat Hiroshi Nakamura. The cult finally commits their attacks (Gassing the Osaka Subway and bombing Japan's banking center Marunouchi, and the US Yokosuka Naval base) and as Kusanagi is being taken to the court house Anzai sees Nakamura murder Kusanagi after he lost his son in the attacks. The novel also dealt with the political and economic situation in Japan in the era with characters based on leading political figures of the time. The novel was serialized between 2002 to 2005 and released fully in 2005. A film adaptation would be released two years later by Toho and a series based on the novel will be released in 2012 for TV Asahi. In 2008, author Haruki Murakami would publish his latest novel 1Q85 which took place in an alternate 1985 that dealt with a woman from a reality similar to ours going into this world she calls 1Q85 due to differences like the police having semi-automatic pistols instead of revolvers and an extremist group who had a standoff with the police in the Hida Mountains she does not remember. In one scene from the novel, a salesman stabs the leader of the extremist group after his daughter was killed in a deadly bombing in Hiroshima instigated by them.
In music several heavy metal and industrial rock groups from North America, Europe, Australasia and Japan used footage of the assasination in their videos, cover art, and even parodies. One band had a member stabbing the lead singer with a guitar, both dressed similarly to Asahara and Hoshino. Even Japanese hip-hop and alternative rock would reference the assassination with songs such as Hoshino Hideo (Hoshino the Hero) and Toushi Kaishuu (Payback) though J-pop largely stayed away from singing about the assassination to keep their clean image.
While the political changes brought about in Japan were not as much caused by the assasination of Asahara but the Aum Shinrikyo attacks, some political changes were expedited by the assasination and not just after the government passed very strict laws that banned chemical weapons and ammonium nitrate[25]. Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama would resign from office a month after the Japan Socialist Party came in third in the July 1995 House of Councilors election. Murayama resigned a day after the fiftieth anniversary of the Japanese surrender in World War II after giving a controversial speech which apologized for Japanese actions in World War II. He was replaced by his deputy in the coalition (Socailist-LDP), Yohei Kono, though Kono’s term was brief as he would deal with a wrench in US-Japan relations with the rape of a 12 year old girl by three American servicemen which enraged the Okinawan populace resulting in the three servicemen tried and convicted in Japanese court, but the anti-American sentiment amongst the locals remained. Then there was a violent robbery at a JUSCO supermarket[26] in Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture resulting in three dead female employees, each shot in the head. But at the end of October, two attacks occurred. One by Aum remnants was after the final game of the Nippon Professional Baseball Japan Series[27] at the Chiba Marine Stadium when the Chiba Lotte Marines beat the Hiroshima Toyo Carp[28], the explosives were small and only resulted in injuries but no actual deaths. The other incident was an ANA 747 hijacking by a mentally disturbed bank employee with a screwdriver and “plastic explosives” in June. The Special Armed Police (SAP) responded and after negotiations failed and he injured several passengers and crew, lethal force was authorized[29], no indication the hijacker was affiliated with the cult. Also later in June 1995 were members of a smaller cult arrested in Sukagawa, Fukushima Prefecture with the most odd thing about this cult was it was led by a woman[30]. In November 1995, Prime Minister Kono would face an internal party coup against him led by Ryutaro Hashimoto resulting in Kono losing in the leadership contest. And behind the scenes as the grim task of clearing debris from the devastated Kasumigaseki was underway, a plan to rebuild the devastated district would begin, it would later be discovered as one of the largest embezzlement, price rigging, contract rigging, and corruption schemes in Japanese history, that plan was the Kasumigaseki Redevelopment Fund. But the laws were being changed to reform the National Police Agency as a truly national investigative agency instead of the administrative one it had been before. There was also a multi-partisan attempt to alter the constitution of Japan. The process would begin in fall of 1995 but finish a year later with Articles 9 and 96 altered[31].
At the same time there was an ongoing backlash towards Buddhism, as well as new religious movements since Aum Shinrikyo was influenced by the religion and was a non-Shinto religious organization[32]. Already there had been several incidents where Buddhists or members of new religious movements were met with death threats or were beaten and attacked in the streets for Aum’s attacks along with vandalism directed at Buddhist and new religious temples. The increasing hostility towards new religious movements by the Japanese public led to the government taking a stricter stance against these groups which included mass surveillance and in some cases their religious status being revoked to much controversy among some segments of the Japanese public that were anti-Aum Shinrikyo and pro-Hoshino Wave but didn’t oppose the new religious groups. The backlash from 4/15 and the Asahara assassination was so prevalent that Buddhist and new religious organizations had to release statements denouncing or distancing themselves from Aum Shinrikyo.
The assassination’s biggest impact in Japan was that Hoshino in talking to the press, unleashed many secrets of the bureaucracy in which money was embezzled, how the LDP had managed to have a stranglehold on power that was unchecked since the 1950s and the government’s failure in keeping an eye on Aum Shinrikyo or similar organizations. And even if people didn’t totally believe his claims it did spur the media to investigate many of these allegations and discover even if Hoshino wasn’t totally correct he was not totally wrong. This changed the media of Japan who were reluctant for a long time to go after politicians. Some of it was due to the larger papers backing the LDP and not wanting to lose sources. Another reason was simply that the papers were scared of being wrong and being sued. But mostly as Hoshino stated, Japanese politics, bureaucracy, business, media, and organized crime often worked in a uniform manner to push forward Japan Inc. Hoshino’s anti-establishment and anti-corporate activism would soon lead to an entire social movement named after him known as the Hoshino Reform Wave[33] which sought to punish politicians, business owners, newspaper magnates and even some celebrities for their lack of accountability, potential ties to the Yakuza or inability to stop if not sympathy for certain extremist organizations such as Aum Shinrikyo and the uyoku dantai[34]. The Wave swept every corner of Japanese society with many prominent figures either resigning, losing their seats in the National Diet or getting arrested for ties to criminal organizations. This reform wave amplified the calls for further reforms after the massive waves of political scandals in the 1980s (the Recruit Scandal was the biggest scandal led to more scandals[35]) brought significant political reforms but it did not go far enough. Another major side-effect of the Wave was the passage of the 1995 Police Reform Act which allowed the National Police Agency to not only reform itself but crack down on organized crime and white collar crime as well as uyoku dantai groups with strong ties to the Yakuza[36]. If there was one politician who was especially a victim of the Hoshino Wave it was then LDP General Secretary Yoshiro Mori; who during the 4/9 attacks had been with one Yakuza boss prior to that boss being killed, on the 4/15 attacks was golfing with the head of Japan’s largest criminal organization the Yamaguchi-gumi[37] and did not leave his game after hearing news of the attack, the failure to clap and improper bow he did at the public funeral for the victims of 4/15, and his numerous gaffes (In a joke about his 1969 campaign for the Diet, “When I was greeting farmers from my car, they all went into their homes. I felt like I had AIDS." or “All the murders come out when blackouts happen in America.”[38]). Mori’s influence in the party dwindled due to these actions and gaffes and left him open for rivals to attack him politically, both in the LDP and by the opposition. Eventually, Mori would step down from his position with Hiroshi Mitsuka succeeding him as General Secretary of the LDP though he would later become the Minister of Construction during the Premierships of Yohei Kono and Ryutaro Hashimoto.
All in all, the assassination of Shoko Asahara was a visceral event that would impact many aspects of Japanese life just as the attacks that Asahara masterminded did too. The shocking fact is, the killer of the most hated man in the country was a guy you’d see at a Lawson’s[39] or 7/11, on the commuter train, at the bar with his subordinates, or at the office. It made many people realize not all criminals were unfixable and that sometimes crime was forced upon people by the failure of the state’s inability to act. As for Kenichi Hoshino himself, he was involved in raising his granddaughter Moriko despite initial hesitation from Ayaka’s parents. He is most of the time a happy grandfather that spoils Moriko when he can but still has to be a parent. “I’d give everything for all my family to be here with me and Moriko, but Moriko makes me happy enough. I have had to explain how I make money to her and what I did. But she understands and she does not think I brought shame on the family.” Hoshino told British broadcaster BBC in 2010.
“In tragedy, all we have is each other, but that helps get us through it.” Hoshino stated.
[1] In our world Aum Shinrikyo did not lose its religious incorporation rights in the broad sense, it was split up by members and the Supreme Court of Japan defended the group’s rights. Here it will be different and Aum will lose these rights due to their much worse spree of terrorism. Additionally, the post-Aum Shinrikyo
[2] While the High Court Annex no longer exists in Hachioji, the facility was moved next to the Japan Self-Defense Force base in Tachikawa.
[3] Remember stabbing somebody and then chopping them causes a lot of splatter. I expect some comedians joking about it like a morose Galagher.
[4] Auntie Beebs not getting the drop while Biwako Broadcasting getting lucky again.
[5] CNN and CBS are in the same boat so the footage would be available to CBS.
[6] I will say Australia’s 60 Minutes exists as it started probably before POD (February 1979 for 60 Minutes Australia)
[7] 24 hour news cycle, it is chaos.
[8] Tottori is the capital city of Tottori Prefecture, the newspaper is real.
[9] He is an original-to-TTL character who affects Hensonverse history in a significant way akin to Yuri Kovalenko.
[10] He was able to walk for so long because he had the largest political faction in his party. He helped PM Nakasone early during his Premiership.
[11] Adoption for larger families was a way to ensure children could get a chance at a future in post-World War II Japan
[12] As explained before, they (TBS) betrayed the confidentiality of a source so they could get a good story from Aum. This lead to the Sakamoto family murders.
[13] In 2014, Akira Yamagata was found by authorities in the Philippines. He was arrested on the site of his construction job after a fight with his boss. Local police had a new “aged up” picture of him in the station and matched fingerprints of him to those on file. Hideo Murai on the other hand was found but never faced justice for his actions. He was murdered in Sao Paulo in 2017 by a mugger. The Military Police of Sao Paulo found no evidence the attacker knew he was Hideo Murai. The mugger was never found.
[14] In the case of the Sword of Liberty, the Gore administration will crack down very hard on not just this group for it’s involvement in Washington and Jackson but other Militant White Nationalist Organizations (MWNOs) with SOL and others being designated as terrorist organizations along with the radical Islamist Al-Qaeda and Aum Shinrikyo making it illegal to be a member of or provide support for them. There will also be a nationwide backlash against white nationalist ideologies such as Christian Identity, neo-Nazism and the Ku Klan Klan since the SOL shares these beliefs.
15] Detective Conan was still dubbed by Funimation and failed to find an audience in the States due to having mature subject matter interspersed with slapstick comedy and a teen turned child investigating mysteries. It also aired on NGAGE instead of Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim.
[16] The film is mostly similar to OTL aside from the incident above.
[17] The episode in TTL has the Teddy Bomber look very different and he goes under another name along with allusions to 4/15. As for the show itself, the ending is more or less the same; it ends up airing on Cartoon City specifically it's adult animation block Adult Swim as part of the network's expansion into anime alongside The Legend of Galactic Heroes and other programs. It also ends up being as successful as OTL and still gets a critically acclaimed dub with the OTL voice cast.
18] Will air on Neptune’s NGAGE and unlike Detective Conan become a huge hit for the block in the same vein as Sailor Moon for Vaultoons or Magic Knight Rayearth for Sunburst.
[19] Recall in @Otakuninja2006’s Meanwhile, on Neptune post that One Piece aired on the 3-Headed Squid block of Neptune and was very successful thanks to having far less edits than OTL’s 4Kids version and a dub done by Funimation with a different voice cast. As for Rurouni Kenshin, it still airs on Toonami but with the third season being syndicated and an uncut version on NGAGE much like One Piece. It will be a huge hit for the network alongside the likes of Dragon Ball Z, The Justice League and Gundam (both the 1979-80 original and Zeta respectively).
[20] The 1990 film adaptation was butterflied ITTL because studios rejected it for its material and the fact that it was made eleven years after the POD. Here, the effects of the Aum Shinrikyo and Sword of Liberty attacks along with post-Anita Hill third wave feminism sparked a renewed interest in the novel leading HBO to adapt it. The HBO series will resemble the OTL Hulu show in most respects aside from some character names and a few other details.
[21] The film will garner plenty of critical acclaim for it’s performances, screenplay and score earning it numerous nominations and accolades from Japan and the West respectively.
[22] Toyoko Yamazaki was already a popular author long before POD. Her most famous work in Japan and internationally is probably Shiroi Kyotō or The White Tower. The novel is a medical novel that deals with two doctors in a fictional medical university hospital. She had also written other novels but The White Tower is her most popular novel being adapted to film and television many times since publication in 1965.
[23] Unlike the original-to-TTL A Time of Terror/Kyofu no Takei, Shizumanu Taiyo is mostly based on OTL’s novel and film including Ken Watanabe in the lead role but with the JAL 123 Miracle Crash instead of the disaster from our world.
[24] One of the three Holy Mountains of Japan along with Mount Tate (in Toyama), and of course Mount Fuji. The Cult HQ was moved in the novel so it was not at the foot of Fuji like Aum Shinrikyo’s.
[25] Very similar to OTL’s Chemical Weapons Prohibition Law with some slight modifications.
[26] JUSCO/AEON is one of Japan’s oldest supermarket chains so naturally it was included in the post. The JUSCO incident is inspired by a real robbery that occurred in Hachioji at the end of July, but with the massive police presence in that city they picked a different city to rob. Robbers are never found in OTL or ITTL.
[27] IOTL it was the Tokyo Yakult Swallows and Orix BlueWave that were in the 1995 Japan Series. First and second-order butterflies affecting North American and Japanese sports to an extent resulted in different teams going to the Japan Series.
[28] NPB’s Japan Series is essentially the Japanese equivalent of the MLB’s World Series.
[29] Based on an OTL incident that happened in June here it happens in October. The SAT (then known as SAP at the time) was able to talk down the suspect in our world. However due to butterfly flaps the suspect stabbed more people with the screwdriver. None is killed in OTL in ITTL the suspect is.
[30] The woman in question is Sachiko Eto AKA The Drumstick Killer. A serial killer and cult leader responsible for six murders in Sukugawa between 1994 and 1995. A self proclaimed guru who is alleged to have psychic abilities. Ordered several cult members killed in rituals involving taiko sticks. Discovered when a cultist and victim escaped. She was sentenced to death in OTL and likely the same in ITTL. Multiple murders is a fast track for execution in Japan. She was hanged in 2012.
[31] For those unfamiliar, Article 9 is a clause in the post-war Japanese constitution that prohibits Japan from declaring on another nation while Article 96 is one for ratifying new amendments. Given recent events and Aum Shinrikyo’s presence in the USR, the Japanese government decides to partially repeal Article 9 to allow Japan to declare war on behalf of an ally after they had altered Article 96 to make such changes possible.
[32] Buddhism for the record is the most popular religion in Japan outside of Shinto. The religion first arrived in the Land of the Rising Sun through China and Korea in the 6th century though it took the Soga clan and others to make it as widespread as it is in Japan today and it’s going to face a slight decline in total adherents in the 1990s since Aum Shinrikyo appropriated elements of the religion for their nefarious deeds. As for new religious movements, let’s just that groups like Ryuho Okawa’s Happy Science will be seen unfavorably by most Japanese for very obvious reasons.
[33] Think of the Reform Wave as the Japanese equlvanent to the post-Anita Hill third wave feminism or the Ark Waves of @gap80’s Kentucky Fried Politics which sought to go after people that may or may not have done did sexual assault just as the Wave is going after specific influential figures for possible corruption and sympathy for extremist groups or the Yakuza.
[34] The latter is a term used to describe Japanese ultranationalists with xenophobic and jinogistic views who support the military-dominated regime of 1936-1945 and deny their various war crimes such as the Nanking Massacre or the barbaric experimentation of Unit 751 the Bataan Death March though some are pro-American while others dislike foreigners in general and not just Koreans or Chinese. Uyoku dantai are a common sight around major rail stations and shrines in Japanese cities proclaiming their message from sound vans covered in patriotic imagery and Japanese flags (particularly the Rising Sun flag). A majority of Japanese people ignore their messages, but a sizable minority do listen. Remember these idiots hold an anniversary of Otoya Yamaguchi’s suicide in Hibiya Hall where he murdered Inejiro Asanuma, every year. In Western terms, they’re essentially the Japanese equivalents of neo-Nazis or Stalin apologists in Europe and North America along with the internet offshoot the netto uyoku being one for the alt-right. With the Hoshino Reform Wave, the uyoku dantai won’t escape unscathed since some of these groups historically have ties to the Yakuza and there will be an effort by pro-Wave groups and the Keisatsu to convict members of the uyoku dantai for potential criminal activities.
[35] One of the biggest political scandals in modern Japanese history akin to Watergate for American politics. The scandal involved the Recruit Company, a human resources group which had a new subsidiary in the form of Recruit Cosmos with the chairman of Recruit and the company officers offering politicians from the LDP, Komeito, and Socialist parties shares in said company before it went public. Prime Ministers Nakasone and Takeshita had shares, as did many leading LDP politicians, businessmen, and bureaucrats. This would be first discovered by the Asahi Shimbun (Morning Sun Newspaper) though the bosses at Asahi quashed it and the Shimbun Akahata (Newspaper Red Banner) would publish the story leading to it becoming a major story. Takeshita’s senior aide would commit suicide and lead to further scandals being outed like Takeshita using the Yakuza to stop a uyoku dantai group who were doing a praise killing campaign during the LDP presidential election. The chairmen of NTT, Yomiuri Shimbun (Reading-Selling Newspaper), and The Nikkei newspapers resigned. Recruit did recover in OTL and likely ITTL and now owns job hunting websites Indeed and Glassdoor.
[36] In OTL, the Keisatsu-cho/National Police Agency is a much more administrative agency. They more coordinate police investigations and are not as active part of investigations involving prefectural level police agencies. Often the Commissioner General of the NPA is from the police bureaucracy. They also have never shared more than fifty files on the Yakuza from their police computers since they joined international policing computer networks. In the Hensonverse, the police of Japan are forced to change due to their inaction, and the FBI, MI5, the Australian Federal Police, Korea’s National Police, and many other police agencies in helping reform the NPA are very insistent on opening those files. The Japanese police leadership cave into these demands, resulting in the Japanese opening their files on the Yakuza regardless of the political mess it could create especially since some have ties to business, media, and politics but the Hoshino Reform Wave will sway public support in favor of locking up high-profile and low-ranking yakuza and stricter enforcement of anti-tattoo laws. Though some anti-tattoo laws may be weaker so foreigners with tattoos and people with tattoos are not denied service if they are not connected to the Yakuza.
[37] Inspired by a picture of Mori in OTL’s year 2000 that political magazine Shukan Gendai (Modern Weekly) took of Mori with a high level yakuza and when the American submarine USS Greeneville and the fishing ship Ehime Maru collided in February 2001, Mori as PM was golfing at the time when informed of the collision off of Hawaii, he did not stop his game.
[38] The gaffes come from our reality, or reworded in this case.
[39] A popular convenience store chain owned by (at the time) Daiei Inc. Lawson’s history is a weird one. It started in the United States (specifically Ohio) as a small number of stores, expanded to a large number stores then Daiei enters and arrangement with Consolidated Foods (who owned Lawson’s in the 1970s) with the remaining American Lawson’s locations closing or were sold to Circle K in the 1980s while the Japanese branch rapidly expanded. In OTL, Lawson’s has 18,000 locations as of 2021 and with some locations in Hawaii, they’re slowly planning to return to the United States. In short, Lawson’s was one of those American brands that lost popularity in its home country but became popular in Japan. In OTL’s 2001 Mitsubishi became a majority owner and then in 2017, Lawson is under Mitsubishi as a subsidiary. Daiei is one of the infamous “Zombie Companies” (they can pay interest on debt but not the debt itself) of the 1990s. This led to the sale of Lawson’s. Daiei was bailed out in 2002, since it had 90,000 employees at the time. It was deemed too big to fail.
Excerpt from Lost Decade/Found Decade: The Transformation of Postwar Japan from 1989 to 2009 By Daniel Ambrose Retrieved via Netsite Archive
Guest post by @ajm888 with assistance from Mr. Harris Syed and @Plateosaurus
Shoko Asahara being transported to Hachioji Branch of the Tokyo District Court (Source: Getty and BBC)
The Assassination of Shoko Asahara
On June 5th 1995, the international press was assembled along Koshu-Kaido Ave outside the Tokyo District Court Hachioji Annex. Security was tight, the police expected armed members of Aum Shinrikyo to attack, they had riot police and the SAP (Special Armed Police) ready to repel any attack. But with the Aum organization essentially in a state of near total disintegration as most non-fantaical members had left after March and April. Many fanatics were arrested after April 15th. A small handful remained in the wind.
The Russian and American governments had declared Aum Shinrikyo a terrorist organization and the Tokyo Metropolitan Government was going to revoke its religious status even going to the Supreme Court of Japan as no one had revoked religous status since before World War II. But that was still off for later in 1995[1]. The world wanted to see Shoko Asahara’s first day in court.
It was decided by senior government officials that the press would be allowed to swarm the “perp walk” as Asahara was being led down a gauntlet of cameras that the media had been allowed to set up. This would be big news so the Japanese government had wanted this arraignment to be sort of a pageant parade showing the guilt of Asahara and they would allow all the eyes of the world on the Hachioji Court Annex[2] and the case.They planned for the case to go perfectly. But Asahara would not even enter the building.
The gauntlet was set up with random media outlets getting their spot assigned by lottery. This was a result of complaints by the international press not getting hardly any spots before. So the Tokyo Police Metropolitan Department, wanting to look good as did the Tokyo prosecutor’s office, made a lottery system that would allow the press positions along the “gauntlet”. It allowed a wide variety of Japanese and international networks to mingle. Televisia and TV Asahi cameramen were next to each other, reporters from France 2 and ABC (Australia) were chatting, CNN and ARD were making sure they could connect with their head office, and even Biwako Broadcasting Co. had gotten in the lottery by sheer luck so they had a clip of Asahara walking into court for the next morning’s morning news show.
At 9:15 AM, Shoko Asahara left the Shinjuku police station, he was escorted by a massive convoy of police with military support ready along with the recently publicly revealed Special Assault Police unit was on the way to Hachioji. The whole convoy was watched by helicopters and monitored closely. It arrived at 10:30.
Upon leaving the van, Asahara was swarmed by reporters from various Japanese and international newspapers. The news broadcasters were going to ask questions closer to their cameras. It was chaos as some of the more mobile camera units were able to keep up as they kept Asahara at a brisk pace. Twenty meters from the door Asahara and his police escort were stopped by the sheer number of reporters that were asking questions. It was in this blockage Asahara suddenly grimaced and let out a sharp pained gasp.
Standing in front of Asahara was a man with a press badge from a local newspaper from Tottori, the man was in a brown suit and wore glasses, he was slightly taller than Asahara. Asahara was still letting out these pained noises, no one one knew what they were for a few seconds until the knife appeared. The assassin went from stabbing Asahara in the stomach to hitting him in the neck, face and chest. Suddenly, police officers were trying their best but this man seemed to have a lot of strength in his stabbing of Asahara. The assassin made no noise other than grunting and straining noises. The first knife the assassin used, was a gyuto knife, was an all purpose chef’s knife for cutting flesh of fish and beef. The stabbing motions and cuts the killer was making seemed to be as if made by a man with experience in use of a knife. A cop after a few blows by his police baton to the assassin’s arm was able to get the knife loose and sent it into the crowd. The assassin quickly then pulled his second knife, a nakiri, a type of Japanese cleaver, small but effective for chopping vegetables. With the nakiri, the assassin began chopping at Asahara’s neck, arterial spray hit reporters, police, and the crowd that was curious to watch the terrorist enter the courthouse[3]. The police after two minutes were able to pull the assassin from Asahara’s body. Chizuo Matsumoto who renamed himself Shoko Asahara was pronounced dead at Tokyo Medical University Hachioji Medical Center forty minutes later.
The CNN, Biwako Broadcasting, RTE, RAI, VTR, TF1, TV2 (Denmark), KBS, ABC (Australia), NTV, ITV, and Televisa reporters and cameramen were the closest to the assassination those networks had the lead over their peers. Biwako and CNN had the best views of the assassination with the killing happening right in front of their locations. Though it once again caused people in the UK to think they had footage when it was Biwako Broadcasting Company (BBC), leading to an alleged meltdown of a senior member of BBC News management[4]. CNN would, with some edits, show the assassination on not just their channel but CBS[5]. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation would run a special piece on the assassination on their version of 60 Minutes[6]. Many other broadcasters ran specials on the public assassination of Shoko Asahara which many in Japan compared to the killing of Lee Harvey Oswald after he murdered President John F. Kennedy in 1963.
After his feverish attack, the assassin calmly gave up as the adrenaline and excitement wore off. The assassin stayed quiet apart from telling the police to look in his hotel. Eyewitness reports of the assassin from the time state he was in the Hachioji police station, staying quiet and shaking. He entered a zen like state. Though the initial media reports stated he was cackling like a mad man, he was sobbing, or just incoherently mumbling[7]. Later reports stated he was silent only telling police to go to his hotel room.
In the hotel room of the reporter's identity they found a drunk man tied up and gagged. This was the reporter that the assassin had borrowed his identity. The reporter, Takejiro Chiziwa, was with the Nihonkai Shimbun, a regional newspaper based in Tottori[8]. They then found the identity of the assassin, left in the rooms were passport, driver’s license, insurance card, government ID badge from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, family pictures of a man that was not Takejiro Chizawa, but head of the Tottori office and Chugoku deputy regional director of the MAFF, Kenichi Hoshino[9].
Who was Kenichi Hoshino?
Kenichi Hoshino was born outside of Tottori in 1944. His father had avoided military draft due to his job as a postal worker, the elder Hoshino was 42 when his son was born. Kenichi’s father after the war opened a small izakaya in Tottori.
His childhood was dealing with the post-war wreckage and rebuilding of Japan. As a 16 year student he was supportive of the Miike Mitsui Miners in their strike, he opposed the American-backed Security Treaty, was supportive of the Space Race, and despite the atomic horrors unleashed on nearby Hiroshima he supported nuclear power. He would go to Tottori university. At university he dealt with classism directed at him as his father and family were Burakumin, a low born class of people in Japan often viewed negatively for a large swath of their history. Despite efforts of the Burakumin Liberation League (BKD) and others discrimination still existed at that time. But Kenichi persisted, graduating from Tottori University with degrees in agricultural engineering he went to Osaka for degrees in administration and government.
Kenichi Hoshino would join the government bureaucracy. He was recruited right from university for the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Fisheries would not be added until 1978. He was a slow climber at first being shifted around the whole of Japan. He often received the ire of local farmers when he suggested alternative pesticides, tried to warn farmers the risk of chemical run off, and stated that forcing Japanese people to buy rice from Japan only would be taxing on poorer families. He voiced his disdain for Tanaka, Nakasone, Takeshita, and others
“Hoshino found a way to fight his fights, quietly but still with a passion. He was like that in the bureaucracy of the MAFF.” said Chojiro Shiraki, a Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries bureaucrat who was Hoshino’s apprentice and later a senior aide to Hoshino in the Tottori Agricultural Administration Office of the Chugoku-Shikoku Agricultural Administration Bureau.
“My Senpai, Hoshino-san was a pain to some, he would help many others in his assigned department, wherever they put him. Eventually he came back to Tottori. It was here he had his fights, well, disagreements with Takeshita and Shin Kanemaru in the neighboring Shimane Prefecture. He also knew the Abe Family, but seldom clashed with them.” Shiraki said in an interview.
“Hoshino-san was for all purposes a normal Japanese bureaucrat, who you may see visiting a farm, a forest, maybe doing a report on the Tottori Sand Dunes. But his home life was normal, his wife did some jobs to help pay the bills, his kids he was devoted to. But on rare occasions he would show us his talent for cooking. He was a masterful amatuer, as he said.” Shiraki states.
“I was a pain in the ass. I know they weren’t happy with my pushing for American and other foreign rice as they depend on local farmers for their votes. But I kept at it, I was known as a hard case but they still promoted me slowly. Finally after the end of the economic miracle I really started climbing… Then my wife gets cancer.” Hoshino told an interviewer from the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation). “The doctors say they can help her and they do but the cancer had spread too far by that point. She died in September of 1993. She at least got to see Takako Doi become Prime Minister in 1993. Makiko was everything to me. She was a passionate woman who could say things better than I ever could. To see her just wither away… It gnaws at my bones still.” Hoshino was reported to have been crying at this point.
Makiko Hoshino had given birth to two sons in the 1960s with Hoshino, he later revealed that the couple had a third child, a daughter but they had given the girl to Hoshino’s younger brother, Souta. The two sons were Kiyoshi and Daiki.
“Makiko loved my nephews, while she loved the daughter she gave birth to, my wife and I loved our daughter Keiko.” Souta Hoshino told reporters. “Makiko’s death hit Kenichi hard. He really was adrift. Then Daiki found Ayaka. Daiki was in college at the time and met Ayaka at a karaoke party”. They eventually would marry in early 1994. And in early September 1994 they would tell Kenichi that Ayaka was pregnant. Things seemed to be turning around for Kenichi. Then…
Kobe, Japan after January 17th, 1995. A city in ruins. CREDIT: GETTY IMAGE
Kiyoshi was working for a shipping company in Kobe and was likely asleep when the Great Hanshin Earthquake hit on January 17th, 1995. His home was an older style house design to counter typhoons, not built to earthquake safety standards. Also Kobe had not had a major earthquake hit the city in 400 years. Kiyoshi’s home twisted and buckled and fell on top of him. An autopsy was not sure if he died from the collapse, gas leaks or the fires. His corpse was found partially burned.
This disaster hit Kenichi Hoshino hard. To him a son should not die before the father. That felt unnatural. “Kenichi would pour himself into helping his youngest son and his daughter in-law with their future. Using some old connections from college, Kenichi got his surviving son an interview slot at the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries on April 15th, 1995. He would at least try to give his son an edge.” Chojiro Shiraki said this to interviewers from the Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK) in 2015.
It is unknown if Daiki Hoshino made it to the interview. The interview was scheduled at 11:00 AM. He was on the 10:17 train that arrived at Kasumigaseki. A survivor from the collapsed subway station said he heard Hosino crying for a few minutes before he went silent.
Ayaka was informed of this and Kenichi had to go to Tokyo and identify his son. “I don’t think he said a thing other than asking for directions the whole time.” Souta Hoshino said in a CNN Japan interview in 2015, “Ayaka was hysterical and Kenichi had to be strong. Kenichi always had an anger in him and it is never good when he is quiet that long. I know my brother, silence in him is something, something that is building. Then when Ayaka gave birth, it was a difficult pregnancy.”
“My daughter-in law died from complications due to childbirth. I still believe she died because Daiki died. I saw my granddaughter, Moriko. I was happy some part of Daiki was alive, but the fact that this monster Asahara took my child from me, took Ayaka from her parents, and denied Moriko from knowing her parents. I was angry…” Hoshino said in his NHK interview in 2015.
Hoshino began talking about how he was worried how Asahara would get off from the crime. “They’ll drop the case because they’ll get scared they don’t have enough evidence for that 99% conviction rate! Or worse they’ll charge him with a lesser crime they can get him on!” That is what I remember Hoshino saying when he got blind drunk one day before going on grief leave.” Chojiro Shiraki remembered.
“I knew he’d get off, I knew it. Or the trial would take a decade and he’d be out on bail or something because he was blind. I mean Kakuei Tanaka stayed out of prison from October 1983 until his death in 1993![10] He was still a major powerbroker despite being found fucking guilty!” Hoshino told interviewers in 2015, “If anyone could get away with it it was Asahara! Man was a master manipulator and if the courts fell for Tanaka’s bullshit they’d fall for Asahara’s woe is me, nonsense.”
Witnesses saw Hoshino become more deranged, angry, hurt and also close to an old friend. Takejiro Chiziwa, a college friend from his days at Tottori University. Close friends that both families seemed uneasy about their eerie close resemblance.
“There was a reason for the resemblance, something that only I and my parents knew, Chizawa is our sibling. We were a poor family back then, unable to feed so many mouths, so my parents gave Chizawa up for adoption back then[11]. Kenichi's older brother Aoki. “By 1954 we could afford Souta but in 1947? We were lucky to get our business off the ground.”
Takejiro Chiziwa was not used to being a part of the story, “We caught up and I was bragging about how I was going to be on the Asahara “perp walk” for the paper’s reporting on the event. I must admit, I was beaming. I did not know Hoshino was plotting. He told me he had lost his sons and I drank with him. I did not expect to see him in Tokyo the day before the arraignment.”
“I already had the knives, I liked to cook. But I really don’t remember too much of my planning.” Hoshino recalled.
The day before the arraignment, Hoshino arrived in Tokyo with a suitcase with two knives. A gyuto knife as the primary and the nakiri knife as the backup. As soon as Hoshino saw Asahara, he rushed to stab him to death.
“I remember bits and pieces of that day but I am not sure of everything I did. I just remember arriving in Tokyo and taking Chiziwa out to drink. I don’t remember killing Asahara, all I remember is what I saw on TV. I know it sounds insane but I have no memory of it.”
The Trial and Fame of Kenichi Hoshino
“The thing I remember from the pre-trial was how the prosecution went from a certain win to them losing all confidence.” Attorney Tomiji Koda would recall defending his client Kenichi Hoshino, “Proving insanity in Japan is difficult but my client’s lack of memory of the incident and his change in attitude at the police station proved to me that he had a mental break. So I made sure to request a psychological examination. While typically they think he is a normal member of society when such a tragedy occured and so much happened, he had a psychological break. I used a previous incident of Hoshino’s. As a teen he’d beaten up a bunch of bullies after his grandfather’s death. Prosecutor’s in Japan do not want to be a losing prosecutor and even if they could find holes in my defense most of the judges, the prosecutors themselves, and court staff knew victims from the Tokyo Central Court. They dropped the case. They found he had suffered temporary insanity and while he could have been held liable under Japanese law, prosecutors did not want to touch this case and lose as Hoshino was a sympathetic defendant. The judges would have felt some sympathy for him. I asked one of the judges some years later and he said, “It is hard not to feel sympathy for Hoshino.” Koda stated.
“I bet they wish they would put me in prison. I lost my job as no way would the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries want me working there. After getting off in late 1996, my attorney suggested that I was not responsible for my actions, that the government was responsible as they had failed to stop Aum from these attacks and the media had helped spread the group’s message and enabled them to go after opponents. As we would see the lawsuit of that lawyer’s family against Tokyo Broadcasting Systems (TBS)[12] and I would open my big mouth and expose many open secrets I knew. Embezzlement, corruption, a vote in the country is worth two in the city, and the ties to organized crime and many politicians and businesses, just to name a few.”
Hoshino would conduct his first post-trial interview with actor, musician, comedian, director, and TV personality Takeshi Kitano. The interview at one point got heated when Hoshino scolded Takeshi, “People like you enabled Asahara and his cronies to get as big as he did. If the press was more interested in an actual story and not a funny story about a weird cult lead by a blind guy who probably suffered from Minamata disease who preached the end of the world maybe thousands would not be maimed by sarin nerve agent, and thousands would not be disabled from the April 15th attacks! You’re made the decision to not be newsmen! But to have this freakshow you call informative entertainment television!” Hoshino would leave the interview in a huff.
No one thought the assassin of Shoko Asahara would become a regular on Japanese TV talking about either cults, corruption, or one time on the Tottori Sand dunes but something about Hoshino resonated with the people of Japan. He was an everyman in a sense; he was not famous, he had suffered more than most, and he was frustrated. The very fact that Asahara was responsible for the worst terrorist attacks in Japanese history brought plenty of controversy to not just Aum Shinrikyo but Takeshi Kitano, the media, and the govenment; and Hoshino was seen as a hero in the eyes of many Japanese.
Legacy and Worldwide Impact
Kenichi Hoshino’s assasination of Shoko Asahara would be a major event in Japanese history. Much like the televised killing of Japan Socialist Party leader Inejiro Asanuma by ultranationalist Otoya Yamaguchi in 1960 this was recorded on numerous cameras, and was broadcast live or rebroadcast later in the day to the rest of the world. The assassination was considered a hard ending for Aum. The changes that his killing brought about cannot be understated in the decades since it happened. Now when a high profile suspect in Japan is brought in they are required to wear a stab vest, they are brought in by the back of the courthouse, and security is much tighter.
Many members of Aum’s “cabinet” who were captured and arrested were given life sentences as a minimum, while 18 members were given death sentences, including most involved in the brutal Sakamoto family murders. The trials spanned over a decade as many cult members would be tried across Japan, most would go to jail for only a year or two for minor crimes, the 18 who faced the death penalty were connected to abuse cases, the Tokyo Sarin attack, the 4/15 attacks, the Matsumoto attacks, and numerous murders that the cult committed. Some of the trials went fast as the defendant had confessed to their crimes, others refused to confess. They would become known as the Tokyo Trials and to this day, they remain the most famous trials in Japanese history. Only two major Aum Shinrikyo attackers remain at large, Akira Yamagata, the mastermind of the 4/15 attacks; and Hideo Murai, a perpetrator of the Sakamoto family murders and the number two man at the Cult’s Ministry of Science and Technology and later it’s minister.The missing Yamagata and Murai in particular launched numerous Internet conspiracy boards of alleged sightings of the men from places like Anaheim Disneyland to Cape Town, South Africa. There were serious investigations with the two being on the FBI’s most wanted list and Interpol putting a Red Notice on both men. As of 2012, they were not found[13].
The impact on Japanese media of this killing was noticeable with plots in detective shows having a victim’s father (and on occasion mother or son) kill the suspect in a public manner. The first such recreation outside of detective shows happened with 15 April, a 2002 NHK miniseries on 4/15 and the subsequent assassination of Shoko Asahara. Kenichi Hoshino in the series was played by actor Ken Tanaka, who had met with Hoshino to get permission for Hoshino himself and understand what Hoshino remembers. “He is an interesting character. He was like anyone else you’d see on the nightly commuter train. And then some event happened that made him this way.” said Tanaka in a press release in 2002 for the miniseries. Footage of 15 April would also be used in A Year of Terror, a PBS miniseries in 2006 that showed the attacks in Tokyo and the American response to the Sword of Liberty’s Washington DC bombing and other attacks by exteremist groups around the world[14].
The killing also had a huge impact on anime and manga in the 1990s. For instance, a chapter and episode of Gosho Aoyama’s mystery series Detective Conan[15] had the titular character investigate the case of a cult leader killed by the brother of a terrorist attack victim. However, there was another murder that was happening during the assassination that was committed by a reporter present at the incident. In Satoshi Kon’s surreal psychological thriller Perfect Blue[16], Rumi stabs a photographer to death for taking nude photos of idol turned actress Mima Kawagoe in a manner similar to Kenichi Hoshino killing Shoko Asahara. Kon stated on the 10th anniversary of the film's release that he told his animation staff to watch the Asahara assassination as a reference point for how Rumi would kill the photographer. "Cowboy Funk", an episode of the space western Cowboy Bebop[17], had bounty hunters Spike Spiegel and Andy kill a Shoko Asahara-esque leader of an Aum Shinrikyo inspired terrorist organization in retaliation for a deadly bombing on Mars that claimed hundreds inside a high-rise building. Similarly, Studio Gainax's Neon Genesis Evangelion included it's own references to 4/15 and the Asahara assassination with the Angel Ramiel blowing up a government building in Tokyo-3 followed by Shinji Ikari fatally stabbing after severely weakening him with the EVA-02 Unit's gun[18]. The shonen action series One Piece and Rurouni Kenshin[19] had a few allusions to the event such as Himura Kenshin going after a cult leader conducting a campaign of terror against the Meiji government or Monkey D. Luffy and the Straw Hat Pirates fighting a group of religious fanatics from an island. Additionally, an expy of Aum Shinrikyo would also be featured in the 2000s superhero series Birdy the Mighty, an adaptation of a manga series that ran from 1985 to 1988 with George Gomez, the main antagonist, leading a terrorist cult committing attacks throughout Japan and the world only to be killed by Birdy with her alien knife. Even the children’s anime franchises Doraemon and Sazae-san had their titular characters deliver public service announcements on national television urging viewers to donate to the victims of the 4/15 attacks.
On the tokusatsu side of things, several Super Sentai series, Kamen Rider, Ultraman and other shows of the genre from the decade would use the plot of a cult triggering an ancient evil, a monster, aliens, or other various evils. They also had the hero who defeated these evils not be the main heroes of the show but a side character who was meant as a Hoshino-esque everyman.
Outside of Japan, the attacks and assassination of Shoko Asahara would also have a large influence on American media given the country’s familiarity with militant cults. In comics, Marvel’s Punisher would take out the terrorist organization God’s Will and stabbed their leader with the assistance of a cop after they detonated a truck filled with deadly explosives in New York City killing thousands of innocent people while DC and Vertigo’s John Constantine fought a deranged group of cannibalistic, murderous cultists who bombed various locations in London and achieved a goal to summon a powerful demon. Such storylines were not limited to trenchcoat anti-heroes either as the Big Two’s most famous superheroes such as the Justice League and the Avengers fought supervillains modeled after Aum Shinrikyo and received help from average citizens wanting to destroy these cults even if it meant enacting brutal justice. The Aum Shinrikyo attacks and Asahara assassination along with fhe Sword of Liberty's campaign of terror also inspired the depiction of Gilead in the 2001-2006 HBO adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale[20] in which the fundamentalist terrorist group the Sons of Jacob used a truck to blow up the Pentagon along with sarin attacks in the Washington DC subway and Offred (real name Kate Osbourne) fatally stabbing Commander Fred Waterford with a knife. Meanwhile, the attacks and assassination would be most famously used in CBS’s Law and Order as a plot device in in a 1997 season opening two part episode, where a right-wing doomsday Christian cult known as New Dawn posioned a New York City subway car and then later detonated a massive bomb near New York City Hall. The manhunt for the cult leader finds Isaiah Goodman (played by William Sadler) caught in a high-profile arrest by the NYPD. In the first part, the detectives after Goodman’s arrest have to deal with his babbling and Goodman’s take on the end times only to be killed by a woman who lost her son (played by Ann Dowd). In the second part, Jack and his Associate District Attorney have to deal with Fiona Franks (played by Lesley Ann Warren), a teacher and cornerstone of the community, and her attorney Glenn Masters (played by Christopher McDonald) after they’re revealed to be members of New Dawn as well as the other leading members of the cult. Franks is discovered being the number two in the cult after Goodman being chiefly responsible for security, indoctrination, and propaganda. It is discovered that Franks had persuaded a major news network (NNC as a nod to CNN) to break confidentiality on a lawyer that was going to sue the cult for financial fraud and emotional damages. The New Dawn cultists killed the attorney that was suing them. Franks is found guilty and Masters loses his law license and is arrested by federal agents for tax fraud and using the US Mail to send fraudulent checks. Despite New Dawn being taken down as District Attorney Adam Schiff (played by Steven Hill) warns, “Some other shaman, religious leader, strongman, or some nut is going to come along and promise to find a solution to the ills of the world and it often leads to violence. I saw it with Hitler and Stalin, we saw it in Texas, Tokyo, and Washington with those cult leaders. And we saw it here in New York with Goodman. There will be other Goodmans sadly, their stories will be different, but what they sell is all the same. Bloodshed and misery.” Right as the episode ends Schiff gets a call that Franks was killed at Rykers by a prisoner who lost a brother in the subway attack. The episode was given numerous Primetime Emmy nominations and won three for Outstanding Supporting Actor (Steven Hill), Outstanding Drama Series and Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series.
Aside from Law and Order, many other Western films and television shows used the Asahara assassination angle in their stories, even if they didn’t deal with religious extremism. For instance, an episode of NYPD Blue had an Italian mob boss (played by Alex Rocco), kill his rival (played by Gianni Russo) and the son of the slain mob boss stabs the surviving boss in a public press conference witnessed by the main characters, (the son was played by Jason Cerbone). Several action or crime films used the Asahara assaination as a way to kill off a powerful Mafia character or crime boss. Even a low budget attempt to make a film based on the terror of Asahara and his end that was filmed in Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto. In 2004, the American film studio TriStar Pictures and the Japanese film company Toho made a film based on the Shoko Asahara assassination and the 4/15 Attacks titled Melancholy directed by Yoji Yamada with Hiroshi Abe as Asahara, Ken Watanabe as Hoshino, Tatsuya Nakadai as Prime Minister Murayama, Masato Ibu as Police Inspector Nakagawa, Kiichi Nakai as JGSDF Major Takeo Fushida, Akira Onodera as Ichiro Ozawa, Issey Ogata as Yoshiro Mori, Dennis Quaid as President Al Gore, Corbin Bernsen as FBI Agent Franklin Moreland, John Karlen as Secretary of State Brzezinski, Kaori Momoi as Makiko Hoshino and many more[21].
In literature, Japanese author Toyoko Yamazaki[22] would use the April 15 Attacks and the Asahara assassination to write a novel inspired by the events, titled A Time of Terror (Kyofu no Toki), first serialized in conservative magazine Shukan Shincho. The novel followed reporter Isamu Anzai, a reporter with a newspaper based on the Mainichi Shimbun, in the mid-1980s starting to follow a new “self help group” as it begins during the years after the Plaza Accords and the “Bubble Years” in Japan. The political corruption is noticed, the aftermath of the National Air Lines 123 scandal (mentioned in her previous novel The Sun Never Sets (Shizumanu Taiyō), which was inspired by the JAL 123 Miracle crash and the subsequent scandal)[23]. The cult here is called the Oracles of the Divine. They had their first offices in Shinjuku, Tokyo and would set up their headquarters near Mount Haku along the border of Gifu and Ishikawa[24]. Yamazaki shows the cult led by Divine Kusanagi (Born Fumio Miyazawa), a blind man from Minamata, Kumamoto. The seeming lack of interest by the police and government and the cheerleading by the media disturbs Isamu. “How is it when there are these family members saying they can’t see their loved ones or that lawyer and his family went missing in Chiba, we didn’t cover it? Why are we protecting this bizarre group?!” One character Isamu Anzai encounters in the novel several times is Home Affairs Ministry bureaucrat Hiroshi Nakamura. The cult finally commits their attacks (Gassing the Osaka Subway and bombing Japan's banking center Marunouchi, and the US Yokosuka Naval base) and as Kusanagi is being taken to the court house Anzai sees Nakamura murder Kusanagi after he lost his son in the attacks. The novel also dealt with the political and economic situation in Japan in the era with characters based on leading political figures of the time. The novel was serialized between 2002 to 2005 and released fully in 2005. A film adaptation would be released two years later by Toho and a series based on the novel will be released in 2012 for TV Asahi. In 2008, author Haruki Murakami would publish his latest novel 1Q85 which took place in an alternate 1985 that dealt with a woman from a reality similar to ours going into this world she calls 1Q85 due to differences like the police having semi-automatic pistols instead of revolvers and an extremist group who had a standoff with the police in the Hida Mountains she does not remember. In one scene from the novel, a salesman stabs the leader of the extremist group after his daughter was killed in a deadly bombing in Hiroshima instigated by them.
In music several heavy metal and industrial rock groups from North America, Europe, Australasia and Japan used footage of the assasination in their videos, cover art, and even parodies. One band had a member stabbing the lead singer with a guitar, both dressed similarly to Asahara and Hoshino. Even Japanese hip-hop and alternative rock would reference the assassination with songs such as Hoshino Hideo (Hoshino the Hero) and Toushi Kaishuu (Payback) though J-pop largely stayed away from singing about the assassination to keep their clean image.
While the political changes brought about in Japan were not as much caused by the assasination of Asahara but the Aum Shinrikyo attacks, some political changes were expedited by the assasination and not just after the government passed very strict laws that banned chemical weapons and ammonium nitrate[25]. Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama would resign from office a month after the Japan Socialist Party came in third in the July 1995 House of Councilors election. Murayama resigned a day after the fiftieth anniversary of the Japanese surrender in World War II after giving a controversial speech which apologized for Japanese actions in World War II. He was replaced by his deputy in the coalition (Socailist-LDP), Yohei Kono, though Kono’s term was brief as he would deal with a wrench in US-Japan relations with the rape of a 12 year old girl by three American servicemen which enraged the Okinawan populace resulting in the three servicemen tried and convicted in Japanese court, but the anti-American sentiment amongst the locals remained. Then there was a violent robbery at a JUSCO supermarket[26] in Sagamihara, Kanagawa Prefecture resulting in three dead female employees, each shot in the head. But at the end of October, two attacks occurred. One by Aum remnants was after the final game of the Nippon Professional Baseball Japan Series[27] at the Chiba Marine Stadium when the Chiba Lotte Marines beat the Hiroshima Toyo Carp[28], the explosives were small and only resulted in injuries but no actual deaths. The other incident was an ANA 747 hijacking by a mentally disturbed bank employee with a screwdriver and “plastic explosives” in June. The Special Armed Police (SAP) responded and after negotiations failed and he injured several passengers and crew, lethal force was authorized[29], no indication the hijacker was affiliated with the cult. Also later in June 1995 were members of a smaller cult arrested in Sukagawa, Fukushima Prefecture with the most odd thing about this cult was it was led by a woman[30]. In November 1995, Prime Minister Kono would face an internal party coup against him led by Ryutaro Hashimoto resulting in Kono losing in the leadership contest. And behind the scenes as the grim task of clearing debris from the devastated Kasumigaseki was underway, a plan to rebuild the devastated district would begin, it would later be discovered as one of the largest embezzlement, price rigging, contract rigging, and corruption schemes in Japanese history, that plan was the Kasumigaseki Redevelopment Fund. But the laws were being changed to reform the National Police Agency as a truly national investigative agency instead of the administrative one it had been before. There was also a multi-partisan attempt to alter the constitution of Japan. The process would begin in fall of 1995 but finish a year later with Articles 9 and 96 altered[31].
At the same time there was an ongoing backlash towards Buddhism, as well as new religious movements since Aum Shinrikyo was influenced by the religion and was a non-Shinto religious organization[32]. Already there had been several incidents where Buddhists or members of new religious movements were met with death threats or were beaten and attacked in the streets for Aum’s attacks along with vandalism directed at Buddhist and new religious temples. The increasing hostility towards new religious movements by the Japanese public led to the government taking a stricter stance against these groups which included mass surveillance and in some cases their religious status being revoked to much controversy among some segments of the Japanese public that were anti-Aum Shinrikyo and pro-Hoshino Wave but didn’t oppose the new religious groups. The backlash from 4/15 and the Asahara assassination was so prevalent that Buddhist and new religious organizations had to release statements denouncing or distancing themselves from Aum Shinrikyo.
The assassination’s biggest impact in Japan was that Hoshino in talking to the press, unleashed many secrets of the bureaucracy in which money was embezzled, how the LDP had managed to have a stranglehold on power that was unchecked since the 1950s and the government’s failure in keeping an eye on Aum Shinrikyo or similar organizations. And even if people didn’t totally believe his claims it did spur the media to investigate many of these allegations and discover even if Hoshino wasn’t totally correct he was not totally wrong. This changed the media of Japan who were reluctant for a long time to go after politicians. Some of it was due to the larger papers backing the LDP and not wanting to lose sources. Another reason was simply that the papers were scared of being wrong and being sued. But mostly as Hoshino stated, Japanese politics, bureaucracy, business, media, and organized crime often worked in a uniform manner to push forward Japan Inc. Hoshino’s anti-establishment and anti-corporate activism would soon lead to an entire social movement named after him known as the Hoshino Reform Wave[33] which sought to punish politicians, business owners, newspaper magnates and even some celebrities for their lack of accountability, potential ties to the Yakuza or inability to stop if not sympathy for certain extremist organizations such as Aum Shinrikyo and the uyoku dantai[34]. The Wave swept every corner of Japanese society with many prominent figures either resigning, losing their seats in the National Diet or getting arrested for ties to criminal organizations. This reform wave amplified the calls for further reforms after the massive waves of political scandals in the 1980s (the Recruit Scandal was the biggest scandal led to more scandals[35]) brought significant political reforms but it did not go far enough. Another major side-effect of the Wave was the passage of the 1995 Police Reform Act which allowed the National Police Agency to not only reform itself but crack down on organized crime and white collar crime as well as uyoku dantai groups with strong ties to the Yakuza[36]. If there was one politician who was especially a victim of the Hoshino Wave it was then LDP General Secretary Yoshiro Mori; who during the 4/9 attacks had been with one Yakuza boss prior to that boss being killed, on the 4/15 attacks was golfing with the head of Japan’s largest criminal organization the Yamaguchi-gumi[37] and did not leave his game after hearing news of the attack, the failure to clap and improper bow he did at the public funeral for the victims of 4/15, and his numerous gaffes (In a joke about his 1969 campaign for the Diet, “When I was greeting farmers from my car, they all went into their homes. I felt like I had AIDS." or “All the murders come out when blackouts happen in America.”[38]). Mori’s influence in the party dwindled due to these actions and gaffes and left him open for rivals to attack him politically, both in the LDP and by the opposition. Eventually, Mori would step down from his position with Hiroshi Mitsuka succeeding him as General Secretary of the LDP though he would later become the Minister of Construction during the Premierships of Yohei Kono and Ryutaro Hashimoto.
All in all, the assassination of Shoko Asahara was a visceral event that would impact many aspects of Japanese life just as the attacks that Asahara masterminded did too. The shocking fact is, the killer of the most hated man in the country was a guy you’d see at a Lawson’s[39] or 7/11, on the commuter train, at the bar with his subordinates, or at the office. It made many people realize not all criminals were unfixable and that sometimes crime was forced upon people by the failure of the state’s inability to act. As for Kenichi Hoshino himself, he was involved in raising his granddaughter Moriko despite initial hesitation from Ayaka’s parents. He is most of the time a happy grandfather that spoils Moriko when he can but still has to be a parent. “I’d give everything for all my family to be here with me and Moriko, but Moriko makes me happy enough. I have had to explain how I make money to her and what I did. But she understands and she does not think I brought shame on the family.” Hoshino told British broadcaster BBC in 2010.
“In tragedy, all we have is each other, but that helps get us through it.” Hoshino stated.
[1] In our world Aum Shinrikyo did not lose its religious incorporation rights in the broad sense, it was split up by members and the Supreme Court of Japan defended the group’s rights. Here it will be different and Aum will lose these rights due to their much worse spree of terrorism. Additionally, the post-Aum Shinrikyo
[2] While the High Court Annex no longer exists in Hachioji, the facility was moved next to the Japan Self-Defense Force base in Tachikawa.
[3] Remember stabbing somebody and then chopping them causes a lot of splatter. I expect some comedians joking about it like a morose Galagher.
[4] Auntie Beebs not getting the drop while Biwako Broadcasting getting lucky again.
[5] CNN and CBS are in the same boat so the footage would be available to CBS.
[6] I will say Australia’s 60 Minutes exists as it started probably before POD (February 1979 for 60 Minutes Australia)
[7] 24 hour news cycle, it is chaos.
[8] Tottori is the capital city of Tottori Prefecture, the newspaper is real.
[9] He is an original-to-TTL character who affects Hensonverse history in a significant way akin to Yuri Kovalenko.
[10] He was able to walk for so long because he had the largest political faction in his party. He helped PM Nakasone early during his Premiership.
[11] Adoption for larger families was a way to ensure children could get a chance at a future in post-World War II Japan
[12] As explained before, they (TBS) betrayed the confidentiality of a source so they could get a good story from Aum. This lead to the Sakamoto family murders.
[13] In 2014, Akira Yamagata was found by authorities in the Philippines. He was arrested on the site of his construction job after a fight with his boss. Local police had a new “aged up” picture of him in the station and matched fingerprints of him to those on file. Hideo Murai on the other hand was found but never faced justice for his actions. He was murdered in Sao Paulo in 2017 by a mugger. The Military Police of Sao Paulo found no evidence the attacker knew he was Hideo Murai. The mugger was never found.
[14] In the case of the Sword of Liberty, the Gore administration will crack down very hard on not just this group for it’s involvement in Washington and Jackson but other Militant White Nationalist Organizations (MWNOs) with SOL and others being designated as terrorist organizations along with the radical Islamist Al-Qaeda and Aum Shinrikyo making it illegal to be a member of or provide support for them. There will also be a nationwide backlash against white nationalist ideologies such as Christian Identity, neo-Nazism and the Ku Klan Klan since the SOL shares these beliefs.
15] Detective Conan was still dubbed by Funimation and failed to find an audience in the States due to having mature subject matter interspersed with slapstick comedy and a teen turned child investigating mysteries. It also aired on NGAGE instead of Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim.
[16] The film is mostly similar to OTL aside from the incident above.
[17] The episode in TTL has the Teddy Bomber look very different and he goes under another name along with allusions to 4/15. As for the show itself, the ending is more or less the same; it ends up airing on Cartoon City specifically it's adult animation block Adult Swim as part of the network's expansion into anime alongside The Legend of Galactic Heroes and other programs. It also ends up being as successful as OTL and still gets a critically acclaimed dub with the OTL voice cast.
18] Will air on Neptune’s NGAGE and unlike Detective Conan become a huge hit for the block in the same vein as Sailor Moon for Vaultoons or Magic Knight Rayearth for Sunburst.
[19] Recall in @Otakuninja2006’s Meanwhile, on Neptune post that One Piece aired on the 3-Headed Squid block of Neptune and was very successful thanks to having far less edits than OTL’s 4Kids version and a dub done by Funimation with a different voice cast. As for Rurouni Kenshin, it still airs on Toonami but with the third season being syndicated and an uncut version on NGAGE much like One Piece. It will be a huge hit for the network alongside the likes of Dragon Ball Z, The Justice League and Gundam (both the 1979-80 original and Zeta respectively).
[20] The 1990 film adaptation was butterflied ITTL because studios rejected it for its material and the fact that it was made eleven years after the POD. Here, the effects of the Aum Shinrikyo and Sword of Liberty attacks along with post-Anita Hill third wave feminism sparked a renewed interest in the novel leading HBO to adapt it. The HBO series will resemble the OTL Hulu show in most respects aside from some character names and a few other details.
[21] The film will garner plenty of critical acclaim for it’s performances, screenplay and score earning it numerous nominations and accolades from Japan and the West respectively.
[22] Toyoko Yamazaki was already a popular author long before POD. Her most famous work in Japan and internationally is probably Shiroi Kyotō or The White Tower. The novel is a medical novel that deals with two doctors in a fictional medical university hospital. She had also written other novels but The White Tower is her most popular novel being adapted to film and television many times since publication in 1965.
[23] Unlike the original-to-TTL A Time of Terror/Kyofu no Takei, Shizumanu Taiyo is mostly based on OTL’s novel and film including Ken Watanabe in the lead role but with the JAL 123 Miracle Crash instead of the disaster from our world.
[24] One of the three Holy Mountains of Japan along with Mount Tate (in Toyama), and of course Mount Fuji. The Cult HQ was moved in the novel so it was not at the foot of Fuji like Aum Shinrikyo’s.
[25] Very similar to OTL’s Chemical Weapons Prohibition Law with some slight modifications.
[26] JUSCO/AEON is one of Japan’s oldest supermarket chains so naturally it was included in the post. The JUSCO incident is inspired by a real robbery that occurred in Hachioji at the end of July, but with the massive police presence in that city they picked a different city to rob. Robbers are never found in OTL or ITTL.
[27] IOTL it was the Tokyo Yakult Swallows and Orix BlueWave that were in the 1995 Japan Series. First and second-order butterflies affecting North American and Japanese sports to an extent resulted in different teams going to the Japan Series.
[28] NPB’s Japan Series is essentially the Japanese equivalent of the MLB’s World Series.
[29] Based on an OTL incident that happened in June here it happens in October. The SAT (then known as SAP at the time) was able to talk down the suspect in our world. However due to butterfly flaps the suspect stabbed more people with the screwdriver. None is killed in OTL in ITTL the suspect is.
[30] The woman in question is Sachiko Eto AKA The Drumstick Killer. A serial killer and cult leader responsible for six murders in Sukugawa between 1994 and 1995. A self proclaimed guru who is alleged to have psychic abilities. Ordered several cult members killed in rituals involving taiko sticks. Discovered when a cultist and victim escaped. She was sentenced to death in OTL and likely the same in ITTL. Multiple murders is a fast track for execution in Japan. She was hanged in 2012.
[31] For those unfamiliar, Article 9 is a clause in the post-war Japanese constitution that prohibits Japan from declaring on another nation while Article 96 is one for ratifying new amendments. Given recent events and Aum Shinrikyo’s presence in the USR, the Japanese government decides to partially repeal Article 9 to allow Japan to declare war on behalf of an ally after they had altered Article 96 to make such changes possible.
[32] Buddhism for the record is the most popular religion in Japan outside of Shinto. The religion first arrived in the Land of the Rising Sun through China and Korea in the 6th century though it took the Soga clan and others to make it as widespread as it is in Japan today and it’s going to face a slight decline in total adherents in the 1990s since Aum Shinrikyo appropriated elements of the religion for their nefarious deeds. As for new religious movements, let’s just that groups like Ryuho Okawa’s Happy Science will be seen unfavorably by most Japanese for very obvious reasons.
[33] Think of the Reform Wave as the Japanese equlvanent to the post-Anita Hill third wave feminism or the Ark Waves of @gap80’s Kentucky Fried Politics which sought to go after people that may or may not have done did sexual assault just as the Wave is going after specific influential figures for possible corruption and sympathy for extremist groups or the Yakuza.
[34] The latter is a term used to describe Japanese ultranationalists with xenophobic and jinogistic views who support the military-dominated regime of 1936-1945 and deny their various war crimes such as the Nanking Massacre or the barbaric experimentation of Unit 751 the Bataan Death March though some are pro-American while others dislike foreigners in general and not just Koreans or Chinese. Uyoku dantai are a common sight around major rail stations and shrines in Japanese cities proclaiming their message from sound vans covered in patriotic imagery and Japanese flags (particularly the Rising Sun flag). A majority of Japanese people ignore their messages, but a sizable minority do listen. Remember these idiots hold an anniversary of Otoya Yamaguchi’s suicide in Hibiya Hall where he murdered Inejiro Asanuma, every year. In Western terms, they’re essentially the Japanese equivalents of neo-Nazis or Stalin apologists in Europe and North America along with the internet offshoot the netto uyoku being one for the alt-right. With the Hoshino Reform Wave, the uyoku dantai won’t escape unscathed since some of these groups historically have ties to the Yakuza and there will be an effort by pro-Wave groups and the Keisatsu to convict members of the uyoku dantai for potential criminal activities.
[35] One of the biggest political scandals in modern Japanese history akin to Watergate for American politics. The scandal involved the Recruit Company, a human resources group which had a new subsidiary in the form of Recruit Cosmos with the chairman of Recruit and the company officers offering politicians from the LDP, Komeito, and Socialist parties shares in said company before it went public. Prime Ministers Nakasone and Takeshita had shares, as did many leading LDP politicians, businessmen, and bureaucrats. This would be first discovered by the Asahi Shimbun (Morning Sun Newspaper) though the bosses at Asahi quashed it and the Shimbun Akahata (Newspaper Red Banner) would publish the story leading to it becoming a major story. Takeshita’s senior aide would commit suicide and lead to further scandals being outed like Takeshita using the Yakuza to stop a uyoku dantai group who were doing a praise killing campaign during the LDP presidential election. The chairmen of NTT, Yomiuri Shimbun (Reading-Selling Newspaper), and The Nikkei newspapers resigned. Recruit did recover in OTL and likely ITTL and now owns job hunting websites Indeed and Glassdoor.
[36] In OTL, the Keisatsu-cho/National Police Agency is a much more administrative agency. They more coordinate police investigations and are not as active part of investigations involving prefectural level police agencies. Often the Commissioner General of the NPA is from the police bureaucracy. They also have never shared more than fifty files on the Yakuza from their police computers since they joined international policing computer networks. In the Hensonverse, the police of Japan are forced to change due to their inaction, and the FBI, MI5, the Australian Federal Police, Korea’s National Police, and many other police agencies in helping reform the NPA are very insistent on opening those files. The Japanese police leadership cave into these demands, resulting in the Japanese opening their files on the Yakuza regardless of the political mess it could create especially since some have ties to business, media, and politics but the Hoshino Reform Wave will sway public support in favor of locking up high-profile and low-ranking yakuza and stricter enforcement of anti-tattoo laws. Though some anti-tattoo laws may be weaker so foreigners with tattoos and people with tattoos are not denied service if they are not connected to the Yakuza.
[37] Inspired by a picture of Mori in OTL’s year 2000 that political magazine Shukan Gendai (Modern Weekly) took of Mori with a high level yakuza and when the American submarine USS Greeneville and the fishing ship Ehime Maru collided in February 2001, Mori as PM was golfing at the time when informed of the collision off of Hawaii, he did not stop his game.
[38] The gaffes come from our reality, or reworded in this case.
[39] A popular convenience store chain owned by (at the time) Daiei Inc. Lawson’s history is a weird one. It started in the United States (specifically Ohio) as a small number of stores, expanded to a large number stores then Daiei enters and arrangement with Consolidated Foods (who owned Lawson’s in the 1970s) with the remaining American Lawson’s locations closing or were sold to Circle K in the 1980s while the Japanese branch rapidly expanded. In OTL, Lawson’s has 18,000 locations as of 2021 and with some locations in Hawaii, they’re slowly planning to return to the United States. In short, Lawson’s was one of those American brands that lost popularity in its home country but became popular in Japan. In OTL’s 2001 Mitsubishi became a majority owner and then in 2017, Lawson is under Mitsubishi as a subsidiary. Daiei is one of the infamous “Zombie Companies” (they can pay interest on debt but not the debt itself) of the 1990s. This led to the sale of Lawson’s. Daiei was bailed out in 2002, since it had 90,000 employees at the time. It was deemed too big to fail.
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