The Supreme Court of Japan ordered Asahara's remains to be released to his second daughter, which was affirmed by the Tokyo District Court in 2024
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
- #wikipedia
- #event

Figure timeline
Shoko Asahara , born Chizuo Matsumoto , was a Japanese cult leader and domestic terrorist who founded and led the doomsday cult known as Aum Shinrikyo. He was convicted of masterminding the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway which killed 14 people and injured thousands more, and was also involved in several other assassinations and terrorist attacks. Asahara was sentenced to death in 2004,…
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
culture · Founder of Aum Shinrikyo (1955–2018) · terrorist · writer · serial killer · cult leader · singer · also Shōkō Asahara, Shoko Asahara, Chizuo Matsumoto, Matsumoto Chizuo, Asahara Shoko, Asahara Shōkō
Born 2 March 1955 · Died 6 July 2018 · Q311669
18 published statements · 0 followers
See & hear
2 photos
Media from Wikimedia Commons, hotlinked at the source under its own licence — see each file for author and terms.
Live now
Pulling headlines from trusted outlets — this usually takes a few seconds
Checking the wires…
Feed scan
These are live links, not archived citations — they only join the timeline once a collect run verifies and archives them.
Live pulse
Most recent outstanding titles, awards, and quotes
The Supreme Court of Japan ordered Asahara's remains to be released to his second daughter, which was affirmed by the Tokyo District Court in 2024
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Died 2018-07-06.
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Makoto Hirata surrendered himself to the police and was arrested on suspicion of being involved in the 1995 abduction of Kiyoshi Kariya, a non-member who had died during an Aum kidnapping and interrogation
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Asahara wanted the group to be self-sufficient in manufacturing copies of the Soviet Union's main infantry weapon, the AK-74
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Asahara acknowledged that in January 1994 he had ordered the killing of a sect member, Kotaro Ochida, a pharmacist at an Aum hospital
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Hideo Murai, the head of Aum's Ministry of Science, was stabbed to death outside the cult's Tokyo headquarters amidst a crowd of about 100 reporters, in front of cameras
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Takaji Kunimatsu, chief of the National Police Agency, was shot four times near his house in Tokyo and was seriously wounded
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Hiroyuki Nagaoka, an important member of the Aum Victims' Society, a civil organization that protested against the sect's activities, was assassinated in the same way
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
On a street in Osaka by Tomomitsu Niimi and another Aum member, who sprinkled the nerve agent on his neck
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Aum began to use wiretapping to get NTT uniforms/equipment, and created a manual for wiretapping
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Several Aum Shinrikyo members, including Hideo Murai, chief scientist, Satoro Hashimoto, a martial arts master, Tomomasa Nakagawa and Kazuaki Okazaki drove to Yokohama, where Sakamoto lived
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
And attracted a considerable number of graduates from Japan's elite universities, being dubbed a "religion for the elite"
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Starting off as a yoga and meditation class known as Oumu Shinsen no Kai (オウム神仙の会, "Aum Immortal Mountain Wizard Association")
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Asahara made several pilgrimages to India, where he met the 14th Dalai Lama
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Matsumoto was convicted of practicing pharmacy without a license and selling unregulated drugs, for which he was fined ¥200,000, equivalent to about ¥270,000 in 2023
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
And applied to Faculty of Law of University of Tokyo, but was rejected
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
The fourth son of a large, poor family of tatami-mat-makers in Kumamoto Prefecture
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Born 1955-03-02.
Text from Wikipedia, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Connections