The Tokyo Subway Sarin Attacks 1995 – Part 2

Conflicted: A History Podcast

Zach Cornwell

Education, History, Society & Culture

4.8 • 610 Ratings

🗓️ 16 January 2026

⏱️ 110 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

As the Japanese police prepare for a raid on the Aum Shinrikyo compound, cult leader Shoko Asahara launches a desperate chemical weapons attack in downtown Tokyo. During the height of Monday morning rush hour, Aum terrorists target five commuter trains with sarin gas, killing 13 people and scarring the psyche of an entire nation. In the aftermath, survivors struggle to pick up the pieces of their lives and adapt to new realities. SOURCES: Amarasingam, A. (2017, April 5). A history of sarin as a weapon. The Atlantic. Brackett, D. W. Holy Terror: Armageddon in Tokyo. 1996. 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 “Former ER Doctor Recalls Fear Treating Victims in 1995 Tokyo Sarin Attack.” The Japan Times, March 18, 2025.. 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. Williams, Richard. 2003. “Marathon Man.” The Guardian, May 16, 2003. “Woman bedridden since AUM cult’s 1995 sarin gas attack on Tokyo subway dies at 56.” The Mainichi (English), 20 Mar. 2020, “30 Years After Sarin Attack — Lessons Learned / Brother Kept Diary For Sister Caught in Sarin Attack, Chronicling Her 25-Year Struggle With Illness” The Japan News, 19 Mar. 2025, Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	At Warwick Business School, we don't just teach business, we put you at the centre of it.
0:05.0	At our London hub in The Shard, you'll be surrounded by global players, bold thinkers and key decision makers.
0:12.0	Talked by industry leaders, you'll step out of the office and into an environment that's closer to the boardroom than a classroom,
0:20.0	where every conversation and connection counts.
0:23.0	Discover our executive education, MBA, and DBA programs now by searching WBS, London.
0:31.5	Hello and welcome to Conflicted, the history podcast where we talk about the struggles that shaped us,
0:36.6	the tough questions that they pose, and why we should care about any of it.
0:40.2	Conflicted is a member of the Evergreen Podcast Network. And as always, I'm your host, Zach Cornwell.
0:45.8	You are listening to the final installment of a two-part series on the 1995 Tokyo Subway Seren attacks.
0:52.5	If you haven't listened to Part 1 yet, I definitely recommend you do that before jumping into this one.
0:57.1	Last time, we covered some very important concepts, people, and events. And without all that context, you might start to feel like I did the first time I stepped onto a Tokyo subway platform.
1:06.6	Confused, overwhelmed, and very, very lost. But before we arrive at the final stop on our journey,
1:12.4	let's take a few quick minutes to recap the major beats of the previous episode, so we have all
1:16.4	those details fresh in our minds. In part one, we spent most of our time exploring the enigmatic
1:21.7	origins of the cult at the center of this story, Om Shinrikyo. Our story began in 1986, at the height of Japan's bubble
1:29.6	economy. Thanks to a feverish period of economic growth and astronomical real estate speculation,
1:35.2	the little island that could became the second largest economy in the world. And for a brief
1:39.2	shining moment in time, the Japanese were living large, dropping pallets of cash on every conceivable luxury.
1:45.1	But underneath that gold leaf facade, many Japanese people, especially young people,
1:50.0	were feeling disenchanted with the money-obsessed, career-oriented culture.
1:54.0	And to put a human face to that aimless Anui, we met a man named Dr. Ikuo Hayashi.
1:59.4	Employed as a cardiac surgeon at a prestigious Tokyo hospital, Dr. Hayashi had plenty of money
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Zach Cornwell, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Zach Cornwell and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.