JAPAN: Tokyo Remains on Edge One Year After Subway Sarin Attack

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Mar 17 1996 (IPS) - Life has never been the same for Japanese office worker Yuki Hateyama since she watched fellow passengers collapse during last year’s deadly nerve gas attack on Tokyo’s subway system.

“I couldn’t commute for days after the attack. I was so frightened. A year has passed since then but I still commute in dread,” she says.

Japan’s image as one of the world’s few countries immune to terrorism was shattered by the sarin gas attack on Mar 20, 1995, which police blamed on members of the Aum Shinrikyo religious cult, whose leader Shoko Asahara is now on trial.

The attack, which killed 11 passengers and sent thousands to the hospital, sent shock waves across the nation, particularly since it was carried out in the subways, which millions of Japanese take on their way to work everyday.

Although with less frequency, subway announcements continue to remind passengers to watch out for “strange parcels”, asking them not to touch the objects and to immediately report any strange activity.

Crime experts say the sarin gas attack has destroyed Japan’s innocence so deeply that things will never be the same any more.

“Even today compared to most countries, Japan is safe from general crime and from terrorist attacks like those seen in the United States or some Third World countries,” says Keiji Oda, head of the newly-opened Asia chapter of the Alliance of Guardian Angels Inc., a safety patrol group active in the United States.

“But the sarin attack is an important warning for the future. The Japanese must be careful,” he adds.

The presence of the red bereted young men who have begun to patrol the streets and subways of Tokyo is just one of the results of last year’s nerve gas incident.

Oda says they are here to develop an alertness among the average Japanese against crime and terrorist attacks from groups like Aum Shinrikyo.

“People here take their safety for granted. That’s very dangerous in Japan which must be prepared for crime like any other country,” he said.

Despite its low crime rates and its outwardly orderly society, Japan also has its share of conventional militant groups, but they have been steadily losing ground.

The Chukakuha (Middle Core Faction) is Japan’s largest ultra- left group composed of radical university students who oppose the imperial system and the establishment.

The group, which the police say carries out a number of violent attacks every year, remains active despite a steady decline in membership and funds.

Fear of Chukakuha has prompted the police to beef up security around members of the Japanese imperial family. Rockets are fired regularly at the imperial palace by the group’s members, the police says.

When Crown Prince Hironomiya and Empress Michiko were married in June 1993, they were not allowed to travel in an open car, as is the custom, because of fears of a terrorist attack by the group.

Chukakuha is also heavily involved in a land dispute between the government and farmers who do not want to sell their land for the extension of Narita airport.

A few decades ago the Japanese saw a more deadly kind of militancy in the country.

Japan’s now defunct Red Army, notorious for its links with other militant groups around the world, unleashed a campaign of terror in the country in the early 1970s.

The group was behind the well-publicised bombing of Mitsubishi Company in 1974, which killed many innocent people, and the hijacking of a Japan Airlines flight in Bangladesh in 1970.

Koji Takazawa, who wrote a book based on interviews with an exiled member of the Red Army, says Japan’s post-war affluence has helped the country drift away from the terrorism that plagues other countries.

“But that doesn’t mean that terrorism is dead here,” he said. According to him the sarin attack has raised the ugly prospect of more such terrorism acts in Japan.”

“There will not be a resurgence in groups such as the Red Army. University students are not dreaming of a revolution that will change the world for the better like their counterparts did before them,” Takazawa said.

“But what is frightening is that the obvious lack of spiritual satisfaction in Japan is likely to lead to new kind of terrorism which the Japanese are not safe from,” Takazawa said, adding that the Japan security forces are simply not prepared to deal with this kind of “terrorism”.