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"The law in an emergency is to kill one's opponent in a single blow, for instance the way research was conducted on soman and sarin during World War II."

Shoko Asahara, born Chizuo Matsumoto, is the founder and former leader of Aum Shinrikyo, a Japanese terrorist cult responsible for the infamous Tokyo subway sarin gas attack of 1995.

Background
Matsumoto was the fourth son of a poor family of tatami mat makers in Kumamoto province, Japan. As an infant, he lost all sight in his left eye and two thirds from his right one due to infantile glaucoma. Because he was unable to follow the family trade, Matsumoto was enrolled as a full-time boarder in a school for the blind, when he was six years old, and he never lived again with his family. Since he was the only child with some sight left in the school, Matsumoto offered other children to guide them to a snack shop in exchange for money. This made him popular in the school. Matsumoto soon developed a fantasy about being the leader of a kingdom of intelligent robots, and told his schoolmates that his dream was to become Prime Minister of Japan one day. However, his application to study politics at Tokyo University was rejected in 1973. Matsumoto turned then to study acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine, which are usual occupations for the blind in Japan, and established a Chinese medicine shop outside Tokyo. In 1978, Matsumoto married his wife, Tomoko, and he went on to father either twelve children (officially) or fifteen (as claimed by Asahara's family). During this period, Matsumoto also studied Chinese astrology, eastern and western esotericism, and different religions including Taoism, Buddhism and Christianity. He let his hair and beard grow, and adopted the alias Shoko Asahara. Shoko means "an offering of incense" in Japanese, and Asahara is a surname that suggests an aristocratic background unlike the plebeian-sounding Matsumoto. In 1982, Asahara lost his herbalist license and was briefly imprisoned for selling drugs without a pharmacist license. He opened a yoga school and attempted to create his first cult-like group, the Heavenly Blessing Association, but it was a failure. Starting in 1984, Asahara made several pilgrimages to India, where he met Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama. Asahara claims that during these travels he achieved Enlightenment, met Shiva, and was trusted by the Dalai Lama with a "special mission" to preach "real Buddhism" in Japan. When asked about years later, the Dalai Lama confirmed that he had met "a strange Japanese man," but denied to have given any mission to him. Asahara returned definitely to Japan in 1987. He assumed the title sonshi (guru) and claimed that he had mastered meditation to the point of being able to defy gravity and lift himself in the air using the power of his mind alone. He advertised this feat through brochures printed by his own publishing house, but it had little impact at first, besides being featured in a number of occult-themed Japanese magazines.

Aum Shinrikyo, Murders and Incarceration
"Their strategy is to wear you down and take control of your mind. They promise you heaven, but they make you live in hell." -An unnamed defector

In 1987, Asahara legally changed his name and applied to register his new cult Aum Shinrikyo ("Aum Supreme Truth", henceforth "Aum"), as a religious association (there is no difference between religions and cults under Japanese law). This status was granted in 1989, exempting Aum's activities from taxation. One key to this success was Asahara's decision to target college students for conversion. The group avoided the conventionally religious, missionary language of other Japanese cults of the time, and used TV, manga and anime as propaganda tools. Aum was soon nicknamed "the religion of the elite" because most of its followers were young, wealthy and highly educated. Said followers gave all their belongings to the cult and cut all contact with their families and friends outside, devoting themselves to a rigorous and ascetic life in communes modeled after the Buddhist shukke of Medieval Japan.

Modus Operandi
"The subway poisoning seems to represent an aggressive, outward-reaching insanity, as if Koresh had somehow become melded with the Tylenol Killer." -TIME Magazine

Profile
Asahara was subjected to a psychiatric evaluation after his arrest, which was never released. Dr. Kris Mohandie's profile of Asahara for the Investigation Discovery's program Most Evil states as follows:

Known Victims
Note: All attacks attributed to Asahara were committed by proxy.

Confirmed

 * February 1989: An unnamed cult member
 * November 4, 1989, Yokohama: The Sakamoto family
 * Tsutsumi Sakamoto, 33
 * Satoko Sakamoto, 29
 * Tatsuhiko Sakamoto, 2
 * April 1990: Several botulinum toxin attacks
 * Two US naval bases
 * Narita airport
 * The National Diet
 * The Imperial Palace
 * The headquarters of an unnamed rival cult
 * 1993:
 * June-August, Tokyo:
 * The attack on Crown Prince Naruhito's wedding
 * Two attacks near Aum's HQ
 * Two attacks on the National Diet
 * Two attacks on the Imperial Palace
 * Two attacks on the Tokyo Tower
 * Unspecified date: Yoshinori Kobayashi, 40
 * Late 1993-Early 1994: Einosuke Akiya, 62
 * 1994:
 * January: Kotaro Ochida
 * May 9: Taro Takimoto
 * June 27-28: The Matsumoto sarin gas attack
 * Yutaka Kobayashi, 23
 * Yasumoto, 29
 * Six unnamed people killed
 * 200-500 unnamed people injured
 * September: Shoko Egawa
 * November-December: Three unnamed men
 * 1995:
 * January: An unnamed man
 * February:
 * Ryuho Okawa, 38
 * Kiyoshi Kariya, 68
 * March 20: The Tokyo subway attack
 * Twelve unnamed people killed
 * 4000+ unnamed people injured
 * May 5: The second attack on Shinjuku subway station
 * May 16:
 * Unnamed secretary
 * Yukio Aoshima, 63

Possible

 * March 30, 1995, Tokyo: Takaji Kunimatsu

On Criminal Minds
Asahara and some of his followers appeared in The Tribe (using stock footage) when the BAU discussed that the unsubs had surrendered their individual personalities to a group and adopted a shared mentality. In particular, they appeared when Morgan mentioned that the group might share a religious faith.

The Tokyo subway sarin gas attack served as a major inspiration for the plot of The Witness, in which a Los Angeles bus is attacked with sarin on the 20th anniversary of the Tokyo attack. Besides the Tokyo attack, Asahara and Aum are both referenced directly (though not by name) because the BAU briefly considers them suspects in the Los Angeles attack. It is mentioned that Asahara is currently blind, wheelchairbound and in death row in Japan; and that Aum has split in two rival cults that have denounced both Asahara and have presence in southern California. Although neither Asahara nor Aum are responsable for the bus attack in the episode, it is revealed that the real perpetrator is also a cultist with an anti-government agenda, like Asahara, and that the bus attack is a prelude to a larger sarin gas attack against government personnel. This second attack fails partly because of a conflict between the mastermind of the attack and the agent tasked to carry it out, loosely mirroring the Tokyo subway attack and its aftermath.

In addition, Aum and the Tokyo subway sarin gas attack might have served as partial inspirations for The Forever People (a cult that practiced yoga and whose members wore identical white outfits, just like Aum's members), and Chad Brown's intended bacteriological attack against the DC subway in Amplification, respectively.