ABSTRACT
A frequently recounted story about the Japanese new religious movement Aum Shinrikyo tells of how villagers at Kamikuishiki (the village area around Aum’s main commune in Yamanashi prefecture, north-west of Tokyo) saw a group of Aum members wearing laboratory coats and masks, rushing out of a building (known as Satyam 7, the term Satyam being derived from Sanskrit, the classical language of Hindu and Buddhist texts, from which Aum drew inspiration) that was later discovered to be where Aum had constructed a clandestine laboratory for the manufacture of chemical weapons. Those fleeing had been working in the laboratory when an experiment went badly wrong (a not uncommon event in Aum, where numerous of their attempts to make sarin and other chemical or biological agents, failed), and were frantically escaping the noxious vapours of a toxic gas they were trying to make. Subsequently, too, further indications of failed experiments that threatened severe harm to their perpetrators (including the near-death of one devotee, Niimi Tomomitsu, who became exposed to sarin, collapsed and was only rescued by a rapid injection of an antidote) and to their environment (e.g. vegetation around the commune was destroyed due to toxic leaks, a fact that alerted the authorities to probable indiscretions going on within Aum’s facilities) came to light.
