My First Steps in Religious Fieldwork: Exploring Aum Shinrikyō in 1995

This paper is an homage to professor Massimo Raveri and the vivid impact he had on my research more than thirty years ago. After a brief introduction about how I developed my interest in New-new religions in Japan, I present the English translation of my first publication on the subject “Asahara Shōkō and the Aum Shinrikyō: The Teaching of the Supreme Truth” published in 1995 soon after the Sarin attack.

Communities of Absence: Emotions, Time, and Buddhism in the Creation of Belonging

This article argues that belonging can be characterized by absence. It explores this as experienced in two different geographical and historical contexts by two groups of actors: members of the early Tibetan diaspora in India (1959–1979) and former members of a religious group (Aum Shinrikyō) in Japan. The absence we conceptualize is double: it is not solely a spatial absence, but also a temporal absence in terms of the irreversibility of time. It is felt and articulated through emotions that play decisive roles in the constitution and sustaining of these communities. These communities as feeling communities are characterized by absence, but absence is simultaneously what makes them a community. This simultaneity allows our actors to create complex temporal frameworks by relating to reimagined pasts, different presents, and potential futures. Therefore, the article contributes to discussions of belonging by retheorizing the relationship between absence, emotions, and time.

The “Aum Incident” as a Catalyst for Societal Critique: An Analysis of Letters to the Editor of Asahi Shinbun on Aum Shinrikyō

This article analyses the discussion of Aum Shinrikyō in letters to the editor of one of the major Japanese newspapers, Asahi Shinbun, through the method of qualitative content analysis. The examination focuses on two aspects of the letters in order to uncover how Aum is understood and localised in a bigger context: first, how Aum itself is discussed, and second, what topics are brought up in relation to the group. The analysis reveals that Aum was rarely referred to as a cult or a false religion, but more often merely as a religion, which is subsequently associated with negative notions. The majority of letters, however, did not specify the nature of Aum at all. This is congruent with the topics covered in the letters, since the content of a large portion of them is not concerned with Aum directly but with a more abstract critique of society and authorities. Letters to the editor of Asahi Shinbun for a large part do not make use of sensationalist wording, all the while expressing a critical stance towards the movement, and additionally they focus on a critique of the dealings with Aum prior to and after the subway attack in 1995.

Monolithic Inferences

In the study of religion and terrorism, one of the most familiar incidents is the Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system in 1995. With the execution of Shoko Asahara and his close associates in the summer of 2018, it would appear that the last chapter in this tragic tale has finally been written. I would argue, however, that there are still lessons to be learned from this event. In the present article, I describe the complexity of the epistemic situation in which I found myself when I finally met AUM Shinrikyo in the spring of 1995. In addition to misunderstandings arising from monolithic inferences regarding AUM’s membership, I came to feel that certain anomalous items of information were swept under the rug—information that hinted at a more complex array of factors influencing AUM Shinrikyo and the subway attack.