The Tokyo Subway Sarin Attacks 1995 – Part 1

Conflicted: A History Podcast

Zach Cornwell

Education, History, Society & Culture

4.8 • 610 Ratings

🗓️ 5 December 2025

⏱️ 122 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On March 20th, 1995, the Tokyo subway system was flooded with sarin nerve gas in a coordinated terrorist attack by the religious cult Aum Shinrikyō. Led by the charismatic new-age guru, Shoko Asahara, the well-funded and technologically ambitious Aum organization manufactured and deployed chemical weapons in an attempt to bring about the end of the world. In the chaos that followed, 13 people were killed, thousands were injured, and the international community shuddered at the possibility of future attacks by fringe political groups. SOURCES: Amarasingam, A. (2017, April 5). A history of sarin as a weapon. The Atlantic. Cotton, Simon. “Nerve Agents: What Are They and How Do They Work?” American Scientist, vol. 106, no. 3, 2018, pp. 138–40. Danzig, Richard; Sageman, Marc; Leighton, Terrance; Hough, Lloyd; Yuki, Hidemi; Kotani, Rui; Hosford, Zachary M.. Aum Shinrikyo: Insights Into How Terrorists Develop Biological and Chemical Weapons . Center for a New American Security. 2011. Gunaratna, Rohan. “Aum Shinrikyo’s Rise, Fall and Revival.” Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses, vol. 10, no. 8, 2018, pp. 1–6. Harmon, Christopher C. “How Terrorist Groups End: Studies of the Twentieth Century.” Strategic Studies Quarterly, vol. 4, no. 3, 2010, pp. 43–84. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26269787. “IHT: A Safe and Sure System — Until Now.” The New York Times, 21 Mar. 1995. Jones, Seth G., and Martin C. Libicki. “Policing and Japan’s Aum Shinrikyo.” How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qa’ida, RAND Corporation, 2008, pp. 45–62. Kaplan, David E. (1996) “Aum’s Shoko Asahara and the Cult at the End of the World”. WIRED. Lifton, Robert Jay. Destroying the World to Save It: Aum Shinrikyo, Apocalyptic Violence, and the New Global Terrorism. 1999. Murakami, Haruki. Underground: The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche. Translated by Alfred Birnbaum and Philip Gabriel. 2001. Murphy, P. (2014, June 21). Matsumoto: Aum’s sarin guinea pig. The Japan Times. Reader, Ian. Religious Violence in Contemporary Japan: The Case of Aum Shinrikyo. 2000. Tucker, Jonathan B. “Chemical/Biological Terrorism: Coping with a New Threat.” Politics and the Life Sciences, vol. 15, no. 2, 1996, pp. 167–83. Ushiyama, Rin. “Shock and Anger: Societal Responses to the Tokyo Subway Attack.” Aum Shinrikyō and Religious Terrorism in Japanese Collective Memory., The British Academy, 2023, pp. 52–80. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to Conflicted, the history podcast where we talk about the struggles that
0:04.8	shaped us, the tough questions that they pose, and why we should care about any of it.
0:09.0	Conflicted is a member of the Evergreen Podcast Network, and as always, I'm your host, Zach
0:13.6	Cornwell. Over the years, we have visited all sorts of fascinating time periods on this show,
0:18.9	some of them very deep in the distant past.
0:21.3	From the racetracks of Byzantium to the jungles of Vietnam, there are amazing stories
0:25.8	tucked in just about every corner of humanity's long and troubled timeline.
0:29.4	But today's episode concerns a much more recent event.
0:32.6	In fact, for many of you listening, it falls well within living memory.
0:36.3	This time on conflicted, we are
0:37.9	traveling back to that strange and misunderstood era, the 1990s. For an aging millennial, like
0:44.3	myself, the 90s seemed like they were only yesterday. A simpler time when phones had buttons,
0:49.7	Vin Diesel had hair, and podcast was just a made-up word. But time marches on, and it marches fast.
0:55.9	As much as I hate to say it, the 90s were almost 30 years ago, which makes them, from a certain
1:01.0	point of view, history. Well, the line separating history from current events is often a fuzzy
1:06.6	one, but generally, 20 or 30 years is considered enough time to view the past with a reasonable
1:11.6	degree of clarity.
1:12.9	The dust has settled.
1:14.2	The passions have cooled.
1:15.5	And the government records have been unsealed.
1:17.6	So, if you'll indulge me, let's hop in our time machines and zap back to the height of a very
1:22.1	turbulent decade.
	...

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