New Religious Cults in Japan: Part Four - The Media's Failure in the Aum Shinrikyo Case

J. Sean Curtin (Fellow, GLOCOM)

A full list of articles in this series can be found here.

Japan paid a heavy price for the failure of its police force to properly investigate the pre-March 1995 murders, kidnappings and other serious crimes committed by the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult. However, while the police must take primary responsibility for the Aum debacle, it would be unfair to lay the blame solely on their shoulders. Other key elements of Japanese society such as the media also neglected their duty, contributing to the unimpeded rise of the terrorist cult.

Today newspapers are full of criticism about Aum, the lengthy legal proceeding against its leaders and the complaints of its victims about the lack of government compensation. However, before Aum attacked the Tokyo subway system with deadly sarin nerve gas on 20 March 1995, the mainstream press was largely silent about the sinister activities of the killer cult. Only a few brave investigative journalists had attempted to expose its dark nature, while the vast majority of Japan's conservative press chose to ignore the terrible crimes that were strong associated with the group prior to the Tokyo attack.

Journalists claim that at the time it was a taboo for the media to scrutinize religious organizations like Aum for fear of being accused of "religious persecution." While such concerns were undoubtedly important, they should have been overridden by one of the fundamental duties of a free media which is to expose serious wrong doing in every corner of society.

In the late eighties Aum did come under fire from some elements in the media which detailed the cult's sinister activities. In 1989, the Sunday Mainichi ran a series of articles under the banner "Aum Shinrikyo no Kyouki," which translates as "the madness of Aum Shinrikyo." The Sunday Mainichi described the criminal background of Aum guru Shoko Asahara and highlighted the numerous grave accusations that swirled around his group. The anti-Aum lawyer Tsutsumi Sakamoto was a primary source for these stories.

However, after the sudden disappearance of Sakamoto and his family, most journalists were scared off writing about the cult. They correctly assumed that Aum had murdered the family and were deeply worried for own safety. The failure of the police to properly investigate the disappearance of the Sakamotos made journalists believe that they could be next in line if they upset the cult. After Aum murder the Sakamotos, the Sunday Mainichi stopped its stories about the cult.

By ceasing to aggressively investigate Aum, Japanese journalism abandoned one of its prime functions. In a free and democratic society, it is the responsibility of the press to expose wrong doing at every level of society. If the media neglects to tell the public about suspected grave crimes, it fails in its duty to the people. Society inevitably suffers as a consequence.

Despite the fact that many in the media believed that Aum was a highly dangerous group, nobody dared write about it. While police failures lie at the heart of the Aum tragedy, the media must also share some of the blame for not scrutinizing the notorious sect.

Taro Maki was deeply involved in the early anti-Aum articles run by the Sunday Mainichi until the murder of the Sakamoto family scared him off the story. In a recent Asahi-Shimbun opinion article published on 19 February 2004, he openly acknowledges the past and present failings of the media. He wrote, "I have grave doubts about the independence of the news media today. With newspapers in particular, I see little evidence of investigative reporting. What I do see is an overwhelming abundance of reports that are patently Establishment-oriented. Society is full of what I call 'Aum-like' phenomena-something rotten and criminal lurking beneath a veneer of decency and respectability. But newspapers simply ignore clues to such conditions in society."

Maki's damming analysis indicates that the Japanese media still have a long way to go before they adequately fulfill their duty to properly inform the public of what is actually occurring within society and to expose serious criminal activity or suspected misdeeds when they happen. Until the media faces up to its responsibility, Japanese society will remain vulnerable to Aum-like threats.

A full list of articles in this series can be found here.