One of the most notorious religious terrorists was not an over-excited Muslim, but a nearly blind, sci-fi-influenced Buddhist called Shoko Asahara.
Back in the 1980s he founded his own doomsday cult. Then in 1995, influenced by the “Helter Skelter” polarisation strategy of Charles Manson, he got his followers to carry out a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway. The hope was that this would cause enough chaos to collapse society and usher in a new age of Buddhistic Nirvana.
The attack killed 12 people and caused suffering to many more, including me, as I was trying to use the subway on that very day to get to a job interview.
Some few years ago Asahara was finally executed.
But before all this, during an earlier visit to Tokyo, I had seen the famous terrorist in the flesh.
It was a Winter’s day or early spring, and the snow was piled up, even in the busy Shibuya area of the city. It was here that I saw him without knowing who he was. He was standing on top of a truck, campaigning in some Tokyo election. As he harangued passers-by through a PA system, his supporters, dressed in white judo suits and wearing plastic elephant hats, smiled and handed out pamphlets extolling the benefits of voting for what later turned out to be an apocalyptic Buddhist sect with a surfeit of highly skilled chemists.
I was delighted by what looked like a colourful local variety of democracy, and, having my low-tech camera with me, decided that it was worth a few shots.
As I took my shots, Aum Shinrikyo staff smiled and waved at me. I of course smiled and waved back. It seemed only polite.
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