Conflicted: A History Podcast
Untangling history’s greatest controversies. Every month, we take a hard look at the historical conflicts that raise difficult questions, stoke controversy, and send our moral compasses spinning.
The Tokyo Subway Sarin Attacks 1995 – Part 2
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,
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