Sarin factory and body disposal site…30 years after the sarin gas attack on the subway, the site of Aum Shinrikyo’s “former base” now

Once upon a time, there was a fanatical cult group plotting to overthrow the state at the foot of majestic Mt. The “6th Satyan,” where the guru of the group that has caused numerous incidents was hiding until the very end, and the “7th Satyan,” a chemical manufacturing plant, and other related facilities that attracted a lot of attention after the Sarin gas attack on the subway, but now there is not even a trace of them left. –The “No. 6 Satyan” was a chemical factory.

Aum Shinrikyo, a religious group that shook Japan in the 1990s. The “Sakamoto Lawyer Family Murder Case,” which developed out of discussions between the cult and the family of a believer over an ordained believer, and an election campaign in which the group sang and danced while wearing an elephant mascot and masks of the cult’s founder, Shoko Asahara, were reported daily in the wide-ranging news shows and weekly magazines of the time. At that time, several cult facilities were built in Kamikuishiki Village (present-day Fujikawaguchiko Town, Minamitsuru-gun, Yamanashi Prefecture), and they were called “Satyan. The appearance of wearing electrode cords called “headgear” on their heads and living in groups dressed in white also accentuated the strangeness of the group.

This year marks the 30th anniversary since the sarin produced at the factory was used in the “Sarin gas attack on the subway” that occurred on March 20, 1995. As the incident is fading away, what is happening to the former Aum Shinrikyo base now? In anticipation of this milestone, we took another look at the site.

A memorial stands on the former site of the body disposal site.

Satyan No. 7, where the chemical weapon Sarin was refined, and Satyan No. 6, where Asahara, the founder of the church, lived in hiding, were all demolished after 1996. Among the former sites, we first visited the site centering on the “No. 2 Satyan,” where the bodies of lynching murderers and other victims were disposed of. It is now a vast park and a cenotaph has been erected.

Few people visited the park, but flowers were laid at the cenotaph. Upon closer inspection, I found that they were artificial flowers made of plastic, and some of the petals had deteriorated and fallen off. In the area where the monument was erected, there used to be a body disposal machine that worked like a giant microwave oven, and it was the site where believers who were inconvenient to the cult were “poached.

Currently, local dairy farmers and others come and go in front of the site. There were other “Satyan No. 3” and “Satyan No. 5” at the same site, but now there were only overgrown weeds, and traces of the place, except for the cenotaph, were hardly recognizable.