The Kyote #4: Haruki Murakami's Sarin Attack
The News, This Week in Japanese History, & Much More
Welcome to The Kyote! This week was spring higan, the Buddhist period of paying respects to one’s ancestors, so, with the smell of incense in our beaks, let’s get into today’s newsletter!
The Quiz
A picture question any Japanese person will answer instantly. Can you?
Question: what is happening in this picture?
Answer at the foot of the mail.
The Hashtags
What are Japanese netizens discussing? Top trending hashtags on Japanese X/Twitter each day this week.
Monday March 18th: #いのまた先生
ENGLISH: “Inomata Sensei”
Announcement that video game illustrator Mutsumi Inomata passed away March 10th at the age of 63. During a long and successful career, some highlights were her designs for the “Tales Of” series, and work on the Dragon Quest universe.
As with Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama, whose death was announced last week, Inomata was addressed with the suffix “sensei”, applied not only to those making their living as teachers but also more generally for highly esteemed individuals who have contributed to their knowledge, expertise, and mentorship to society.
Tuesday March 19th: #神戸大学
ENGLISH: “Kobe University”
A video of members of Kobe’s University’s badminton club engaging in some good old-fashioned hooliganism goes viral, with the group punching holes in the shoji screens of the inn at which they were staying, and also throwing one of their members up in the air so his head smashes through the ceiling of their room. It seems no injuries were sustained, which just proves there’s never a concussion around when you need one.
The original uploader of the video accompanied it with a deliciously passive-aggressive message hoping that new freshmen would learn just what kind of shenanigans are got up to by clubs at the University.
A day before the anniversary of the subway sarin attack by the maniac Aum Shinrikyō cult (see feature story below), one Xer comments on the badminton badboys thusly: “the influence of group psychology is terrifying”.
Wednesday March 20th: #京都タワー
ENGLISH: “Kyoto Tower”
From 1st April the tacky-1960s-Las-Vegas-casino-esque symbol of The Kyote’s stomping grounds is gaining a sponsor and will be renamed Nidec Kyoto Tower.
Nidec Corporation, formerly known as Nippon Densan Corporation, is a Japanese manufacturer and distributor of electric motors.
Fascinating.
Snap netizen verdict: ignore the new name.
(The Kyote worked, very briefly, two decades ago, in the basement level of Kyoto Tower when it housed a warren of 100 yen shops and fashion stores for middle aged women that sold shapeless blouses and slacks limited to turdish shades of brown. Surveying the place one day, taking in the cramped surroundings, standing cigarette ashtrays, and multitude of decorative bullshit (signs, scenes of olde Japan) hanging from the ceilings, The Kyote decided it was the perfect location for one of those legendary department store fires that kills dozens. It’s better now; they opened a branch of Yodobashi Camera next door and had to refurbish out of sheer embarrassment.)
Thursday March 21st: #緊急地震速報
ENGLISH: “Earthquake Early Warning”
9:08am: an earthquake of maximum Lower 5 intensity occurs, centered on Ibaraki & Saitama Prefectures north of Tokyo. With no injuries reported, netizens engage in some gallows humor:
With cellphones automatically ringing out notifications just before the quake, there is talk of school closing ceremonies (cellphones should be turned off) being interrupted. One Xer relates how they were on a train when the ubiquitous automatic voice of digital wallet PayPay rang out from someone’s phone simultaneous to the warnings.
(Rather than the Richter scale — which measures magnitude of seismic energy released at the earthquake epicenter — Japan uses a scale of local intensity of ground movement in each municipality, i.e. how badly people are shunted around by tremors.)
Image: Japan Metrological Agency
Aftershocks are expected for the next week.
Friday March 22nd: #水原一平
ENGLISH: “Ippei Mizuhara”
2-way baseball genius Shohei Ohtani’s basic appeal is his unprepossessing boyishness, but right now he can’t keep out of the news for all the wrong reasons.
After last week’s brouhaha over his marriage and doomed attempt to keep his wife’s identity secret, this time his interpreter has caused a scandal that could affect his career.
Ippei Mizuhara, Ohtani’s interpreter and close friend, has been fired after showing huge stamina for something he had no talent for: gambling. The story emerging is that Ohtani stepped in to pay off Mizuhara’s huge losses, a dicey thing to do in California where bookmaking is illegal, but his efforts weren’t enough, because Mizuhara kept losing, then starting stealing - from his boss. Officially an LA Dodgers employee, Mizuhara has been summarily dismissed after the whole affair was exposed as part of a federal investigation into illegal gambling.
With some variations of sports gambling legalized recently in the U.S. and a resulting massive influx of wagers, there are worries players may be tempted to throw games in the manner of the movie The Gambler.
Hence massive scrutiny on what Ohtani knew and when. At best, the LA Times says, Ohtani needs to grow up, stop relying on his old friends from Japan, and institute proper financial controls to make it impossible for anyone close to him to take advantage ever again.
The Dodgers’ fortunes are not going well on the diamond either; the hotly-anticipated debut of their other 9-figure Japanese pitcher, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, ended him with being yanked after only one inning with San Diego Padres batters clobbering him all over the yard during their latest matchup in MLB's Seoul Series.
Saturday March 23rd: #学歴詐称
ENGLISH: “Resumé Fraud”
Shohei Ohtani’s erstwhile interpreter Ippei Mizuhara has managed to hit rock bottom and start digging.
NBC’s Los Angeles affiliate reports that, contrary to his official MLB biography, Mizuhara never actually attended the University of California, Riverside, who can find no record of him ever being registered at the school.
$700m star Ohtani’s judgement is looking more and more flawed by the day, and this while more stories appear bringing into question the narrative around the illicit payments to bookmakers. Mizuhara initially insisted Ohtani authorized the money transfers to repay his debts, which totaled a guzzling $4.5m, but as the narrative switched to the whole affair being simple theft, Mizuhara (seemingly reluctantly) confirmed his culpability.
Right now it is not just paranoiacs who wonder if the interpreter is trying to carry water for a compromised superstar.
(Japanese baseball has always had a gambling problem; in the same way U.S. baseball’s steroid era was predicated on a group of hangers-on who were willing to obtain any illicit substance the players needed, so in Japan a similar cadre of bottom-feeders run bets for stars to help them avoid legal scrutiny).
Meanwhile, a reporter with a portable microphone and camera crew in tow camped outside the apartment of Mizuhara’s father, shouting questions through the locked door despite being politely asked to leave. Netizens deplored this behavior as typical of the vampiric Japanese press corps.
Today, Sunday March 24th: #日本国籍の人のため
ENGLISH: “For Japanese citizens”
A tweet from Yuko Ohtsubaki, a member of parliament from the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, is blowing up hugely today. The message reads, in toto, "It’s a mistake to think that politics exist only for the benefit of Japanese citizens" (日本国籍の人のためだけに政治があると思っているところが間違いです。)
As a non-Japanese resident in the country, The Kyote appreciates a rare political admission that non-native workers (now 3.4 million-strong) exist, and may have needs and rights that should be protected.
However, in the modern non-nuanced online environment, Ohtsubaki's tweet is an obvious invitation for cheap rejoinders from J netizens, like “so you’re not working for our benefit?”, “Resign then!” or longer screeds pointing out how the law specifies elected officials’ duties explicitly in terms of their responsibilities to citizens alone.
(Even in, say, Scandinavia, where politics is not usually run as a spectator sport, would any politician get away with a remark that could be read as downplaying their obligations to electors?)
The Word
A vast array of foreign words have been gobbled up into the Japanese language, usually without chewing. This is the “Lost in Translation” effect. Here’s this week’s word:
C is for catch copy
What it should have been: “advertising slogan”
No, not a support group for parents and newborns — in Japan, a baby circle is one of those portable enclosures that can be set up to give babies a safe space to play in.
Usage:
新製品のキャッチコピーは、「夢を叶える新たな一歩」です。
The catch copy for the new product is 'Taking a new step to fulfill dreams.'"
The History
This week in Japanese history the following event occurred…
Haruki Murakami’s Sarin Attack
You know the story, or should: on March 20th 1995 five members of the apocalyptic cult Aum Shinrikyō carried a total of 11 plastic bags filled with liquid sarin onto different subway trains in Tokyo. The attackers punctured the bags with umbrellas then fled; the bags remained on the crowded trains as they travelled towards the central areas of Kasumigaseki and Nagatachō, where the Japanese parliament is headquartered.
14 people died and more than 1000 were injured.
The best account of the event and its aftermath is Haruki Murakami’s non-fiction Underground, which is, by the way, his best book. (As a card-carrying member of the cognoscenti, The Kyote’s opinion is that the other Murakami — Ryu — no relation — is the better writer. Haruki writes about the brain and heart of the Japanese people, Ryu the guts downward.)
Image: Harvill
The subtitle’s reference to “the Japanese Psyche” is well-earned — reading it will drop jaw and raise eyebrow. A couple of short snippets from the interview with survivor Kenichi Yamazaki gives a flavor:
I don’t remember how long it was before my work colleague found me, but I do remember being furious at all the people who pretended not to see me lying there. Arseholes!
and, after being discharged from hospital with ricin poisoning symptoms persisting:
Honestly, it would have been better for me to take some time off with sick-pay, but the company wasn’t that generous.
This alongside a plethora of small acts of heroism, grit, pluck and obliviousness. Truly essential reading.
* * *
A dip into the archives of the Asahi Newspaper gives a sense of how events evolved immediately after the attack:
SARIN GAS IN SUBWAY - 900 INJURED, 6 DEAD - TOKYO SUBWAY SARIN ATTACK (Page 1, Evening edition, March 20th)
SELF-DEFENSE FORCE CHEMICAL TEAM DISPATCHED - TOKYO SUBWAY SARIN ATTACK (Page 2, Evening edition, March 20th)
SECURITY OPERATIONS AT TRAIN STATIONS NATIONWIDE - TOKYO SUBWAY SARIN ATTACK (Page 2, Evening edition, March 20th)
“GET OUT!” - PASSENGER PANIC - TOKYO SUBWAY SARIN ATTACK (Special Supplementary Evening edition, March 20th)
TREATMENT? MEDICINES? - TOKYO SUBWAY SARIN ATTACK (Regional Evening edition, March 20th)
POLICE ON ROUND-THE-CLOCK ALERT - TOKYO SUBWAY SARIN ATTACK (Morning edition, March 21st)
10 CONFIRMED DEAD - TOKYO SUBWAY SARIN ATTACK (Morning edition, March 22nd)
PHOSPHORUS COMPOUNDS FOUND - SARIN PRECURSOR - AUM-CONNECTED FACILITY (Morning edition, March 23rd)
BOTTLES AND BOXES WITHIN PLASTIC BAGS - AUM SHINRIKYŌ FACILITY SEARCHED (Morning edition, March 23rd)
SEARCH LASTS MORE THAN 10 HOURS - AUM SHINRIKYŌ (Morning edition, March 23rd)
* * *
What will have struck you is the pace of events — amid the panic and muddled testimony you’d expect from a mass casualty incident, the very first newspaper published after the attack already nails the chemical agent involved, and then, within 72 hours, the police have raided the Aum Shinrikyō facility where the sarin was synthesized.
You get the impression, then, of some quite unbelievable investigative work.
You’d be right. It was unbelievable — for how poor it was.
In fact, March 20th was the second fatal sarin attack that Aum had carried out; in June the previous year they killed 7 and injured hundreds in Matsumoto City while trying to assassinate the judges hearing a fraud case against the cult.
And a month before that they poisoned a lawyer who led a legal group assisting Aum victims named the Canary Association.
The lawyer, Taro Takimoto, in fact survived no less than four attempts on his life: the sarin assault was followed by attacks with botulinum and VX nerve agent (twice)…
…which itself was quite a favorite of the Aum nutbags, actually, who also used it to kill a couple dozen of their own dissident members during a particularly brutal edition of ones of those internal purges that always occur within insane religious organizations.
Oh, and:
In fact Aum’s villainy was so transparent and their penchant for chemical and biological warfare so well-known that — as related in Murakami’s Underground — as soon as news of the subway attack emerged, reporters were already comparing it to “the Matsumoto sarin business” with possible Aum involvement.
The only comparison in the realm of law enforcement/intelligence incompetence is Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet reacting to the 9/11 attacks by saying “I wonder if it has anything to do with this guy taking pilot training.”
(George Tenet, obviously, should have been immediately hauled out of office, drop-kicked through glass then made to suffer a lifetime of opprobrium for dereliction of duty. Instead he got the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the CIA spun up a torture program to assuage their guilt.)
The incompetence did not stop there though. Oh no.
We’re just getting warmed up.
(You might want to skip the rest of this article if you tend towards squeamishness, because we’re about to encounter the murder and dismemberment of a 14 month-old child).
The Sakamoto family. Image: Wikipedia
Years before Tokyo, a certain TV network was preparing a special on Aum, and interviewed another lawyer, Tsutsumi Sakamoto, who was working on a class action lawsuit against the cult, charging them with manipulating their members into committing their incomes to buying worthless spiritual doo-dads.
With Aum facing the prospect of bankruptcy if the lawsuit went forward, when they learned of the upcoming documentary they approached the television network complaining preemptively, and — in one of the great historical failures to protect one’s sources — the network handed over interview tapes they had recorded with Sakamoto on the basis they would be kept confidential.
This sealed the lawyer’s fate.
Aum put together a hit squad to break into the Sakamoto family home in the deep night of November 5th 1989, and murdered him, his wife and their 14 month old son, Tatsuhiko, with a combination of hammers and syringes of potassium chloride.
Their bodies were dismembered, teeth smashed to prevent identification, then the carnaged remains were poured into barrels to be hidden in three separate rural areas.
The murders were not fully uncovered until after the Tokyo attack 6 years later.
(The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department had received a tip that an Aum member was involved in the murders and in 1991 launched an investigation but, in one of those outrageous jurisdictional turf-disputes that crop up often in the history of crime in Japan, they shut down the investigation due to the killings having been committed outside of their jurisdiction, in next-door Yokohama).
As for the television network involved (Tokyo Broadcasting System), even after the Tokyo subway attack they denied stone-facedly that they had handed over the tapes at all, up to and including in the face of questions in Parliament — a farcical position to take, as arrested Aum members were by that time readily testifying as to what had happened — before finally in 1996 the upper management belateded resigned in disgrace.
* * *
So, what was motivating these butchers? Your basic doomsday crap, essentially.
Founder Shoko Asahara was a believer in a decisive Holy War of destruction with the all-powerful United States, which needed to be nudged into existence via wide-spread horrific killings with chemical and/or biological weapons (there is a suggestion that Aum’s branch in Russia made some hapless attempts to gain nuclear capabilities too).
Some sources argue the whole problem began when Asahara saw his inner circle, which, as behooves a messianic religious freak, consisted mainly of young, attractive and low self esteemed women, begin to be replaced with men, who were far more aggressive and encouraged the chemical/biological warfare campaign.
This, it goes without saying, is as piss-poor an excuse as God has yet allowed.
Aum lunatic-in-chief Shoko Asahara (right). Not, it’s safe to say, the Dalai Lama’s finest hour. Image: Archivos de la Historia (X)
* * *
One reason why the press were unwilling to scrutinize Aum too closely was the Sengoku Jesus case.
In 1979, a Bible group leader born Takeyoshi Sengoku attracted negative attention when the families of some of his — sigh — young, attractive and low self-esteemed followers accused him of luring their daughters away from home.
“The Ark of Jesus”, Sengoku’s group, began an odyssey around Japan trying to escape the ensuing press attention, but to no avail. The episode culminated in the self-styled Jesus suffering a very public collapse and ensuing hospitalization.
Sengoku Jesus, floored by angina, plus distraught followers. Image: Mainichi Shinbun
In the aftermath, prosecutors declined to indict the sickly but still living Sengoku for any of the allegations that he had kidnapped or financially exploited his followers, and the group faded back into obscurity. The press, however, had became leery of criticizing fringe groups, something with fatal consequences for Aum’s later victims.
* * *
An Aum taxonomy at this abbreviated length must skim over a number of other events which would otherwise demand examination, including:
Aum’s attempt (with perfect upside-down cult logic) to get the heat off after Tokyo by launching another series of attacks, this time with hydrogen cyanide
the broad daylight fatal samurai sword-stabbing of Aum’s third in command by a yazuka gangster, essentially Japan’s Lee Harvey Oswald killing (non-squeamish readers might Google “Hideo Murai” for pictures of him leaking buckets of gore, dying in front of dozens of snapping photographers)
But there is one last Aum event that must be mentioned, one which reaches the heights of lunatic dudgeon: in 1992, three years before the Tokyo subway assault, cultmaster Asahara led more than 40 of his followers to Zaire with the supposed intent of rendering aid to Ebola patients.
However, there’s an approximate 100% possibility that the actual purpose of the trip was to collect samples of the Ebola virus to bring back to Japan and weaponize.
Aum wasn’t just shunting around Japan with complete impunity on a multi-year chemical-and-biological weapons death rampage, they were also jetting off on international proliferation field trips.
(By this point, despite the horror — or maybe because of it — we’ve almost achieved (pitch) black comedy. The Zaire escapade reminds The Kyote of 1998’s berserk Hong Kong cinematic provocation Bio-Zombie).
All in all, the Tokyo sarin attack was the preventable result of long years of incompetence so filthy it makes The Kyote, who was a dumbass kid growing up in a small village on the other side the world at the time, want to take a long, hot and scouring shower.
The Film
Each week The Kyote introduces a movie which was retitled for the Japanese market.
Film: THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE (1974)
Japanese title: サブウェイ・パニック
Literal Translation: “SUBWAY PANIC”
An example of Retitling Case #9 - Changing Title to On the Nose Explanation of Film's Plot/Situation
The Answer
Question: what is happening in this picture?
Answer: livestreamed tomb-sweeping
Higan (mentioned at the top of the mail), the spring version of which ended yesterday, is the twice-yearly Buddhist period to show respect for one’s ancestors by, amongst other things, cleaning their tombstones. Possibly one of the stranger livestreamed events during the pandemic, some families who could not return to ancestral graves instead were forced to watch remotely as workers performed the ritual for them.
The Outro
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Until next week,
The Kyote
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The Kyote is published from Kyoto, Japan every Sunday at 19:00 JST