Aleph (Japanese: アレフ, Hepburn: Arefu), formerly Aum Shinrikyo (オウム真理教, Oumu Shinrikyō), is a Japanese doomsday cult, founded by Shoko Asahara in 1984. It carried out the deadly Tokyo subway sarin attack in 1995 and was found to have been responsible for another smaller sarin attack the previous year.
The group has never confessed; they claim that those who carried out attacks did so secretly, without being known to other executives and ordinary believers. Asahara broadcast his singing, insisting on his innocence through a radio broadcast relayed from Russia and directed toward Japan.
On 6 July 2018, after exhausting all appeals, Asahara and six followers were executed as a punishment for the 1995 attacks and other crimes, and the remaining six on death row were executed on 26 July.
At 12:10 am, on New Year's Day 2019, at least nine people were injured (one seriously) when a car was deliberately driven into crowds celebrating the new year on Takeshita Street in Tokyo. Local police reported the arrest of Kazuhiro Kusakabe, the suspected driver, who allegedly admitted to intentionally ramming his vehicle into crowds to protest his opposition to the death penalty, specifically in retaliation for the execution of the aforementioned Aum cult members.
Aum Shinrikyo, which split into Aleph and Hikari no Wa in 2007, had already been formally designated a terrorist organization by several countries.
Shinrikyo Aum is a syncretic belief system that draws upon Asahara's idiosyncratic interpretations of elements of early Indian Buddhism and Tibetan Buddhism, as well as Hinduism, taking Shiva as the main image of worship and incorporating millennialist ideas from Christianity, Yoga, and the writings of Nostradamus. Its founder, Chizuo Matsumoto, claimed that he sought to restore "original Buddhism" but employed Christian millenarian rhetoric. In 1992, Matsumoto, who had changed his name to Shoko Asahara, published a foundational book, declaring himself to be "Christ", Japan's only fully enlightened master, as well as identifying himself as the "Lamb of God".
Asahara's purported mission was to take upon himself the sins of the world, and he claimed he could transfer spiritual power to his followers and ultimately take away their sins and bad deeds.
Asahara outlined a doomsday prophecy, which included a third world war instigated by the United States. Asahara "saw dark conspiracies everywhere promulgated by Jews, Freemasons, the Dutch, the British royal family, and rival Japanese religions"
Asahara "interpreted the Tibetan Buddhist concept of phowa in order to claim that by killing someone contrary to the group's aims, they were preventing them from accumulating bad karma and thus saving them"
Humanity would end, except for the elite few who joined Aum. Aum's mission was not only to spread the word of salvation, but also to survive these End Times. Asahara predicted that Armageddon would occur in 1997.