Princess Mako (R), the eldest daughter of Prince Akishino and Princess Kiko, and her fiancee Kei Komuro (L), smile during a press conference to announce their engagement at the Akasaka East Residence in Tokyo on September 3, 2017. Emperor Akihito's eldest granddaughter Princess Mako and her fiancé -- a commoner -- announced their engagement on September 3, which will cost the princess her royal status in a move that highlights the male-dominated nature of Japan's monarchy. / AFP PHOTO / POOL / Shizuo Kambayashi (Photo credit should read SHIZUO KAMBAYASHI/AFP/Getty Images) YOKOHAMA, JAPAN - JANUARY 08: Women wearing kimonos gesture at the camera as they leave after attending a Coming of Age ceremony on January 8, 2018 in Yokohama, Japan. Coming of Age Day is a Japanese holiday held every January to celebrate people who have reached 20 - the official age of adulthood in Japan. Yokohama city, with almost 37,000 people turning 20 this year, is holding one of the largest events in the country. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images,) HIROSHIMA, JAPAN - JULY 15: (CHINA OUT, SOUTH KOREA OUT) Self-Defense Force members continue searching operation on July 15, 2018 in Hiroshima, Japan. More than 100 people were treated for heatstroke as scorching summer heat baked western Japan prefectures hit by recent torrential deluges. (Photo by The Asahi Shimbun via Getty Images) A pedestrian walks past a screen flashing news on the execution of Shoko Asahara, the leader of the Aum Shinrikyo cult, in Tokyo on July 6, 2018. - Shoko Asahara, the leader of the Aum Shinrikyo cult that carried out a deadly sarin attack on Tokyo's subway in 1995, was executed on July 6, two decades after the group's shocking crime. (Photo by Toshifumi KITAMURA / AFP) (Photo credit should read TOSHIFUMI KITAMURA/AFP/Getty Images) (CNN) — Six members of a Japanese doomsday cult held responsible for the deaths of dozens of people have been executed, according to Japan’s justice minister. The group’s leader Shoko Asahara – real name Chizuo Matsumoto – was executed earlier in July, along with six other members of the cult, which was responsible for a sarin gas attack on a Tokyo subway in 1995. Other members of Aum Shinrikyo who had been sentenced to death were hanged Thursday morning, Justice Minister Yoko Kawakami told reporters. The Tokyo attack was part of a murder spree throughout the country that left 29 people dead. The subway attack itself killed 13 people and injured more than 6,000 others. Kawakami said that the “extremely heinous” crimes of the cult had been “carefully organized and planned,” and that attacks of this magnitude “should never happen again.” Called the attack “indiscriminate terrorism against the public that shocked the world,” she said it “shook society with fear, (that) a chemical weapon like sarin was used.” One of those executed Thursday, Kazuaki Okazaki, was one of the first people to join the cult and was instrumental in growing the group’s membership. He was implicated in some of the group’s earliest killings – of a lawyer and his family, as well as a follower who tried to leave the cult in 1989. Another cult member, Yasuo Hayashi, was directly involved in the Tokyo sarin gas attack and other attacks in central Japan, according to state broadcaster NHK. Kyodo News/Kyodo News Stills/Kyodo News via Getty Images Aum Shinrikyo cult members, alongside group founder Shoko Asahara (4th from L), speak at a press conference in Tokyo to announce a plan to field candidates for the general election in this photo taken in January 1990. Three other Aum followers executed – Masato Yokoyama, Toru Toyoda and Kenichi Hirose – were also involved in the Tokyo attack, another sarin attack in central Japan and other murders committed by the group, as well as the production of weapons and deadly chemicals. Satoru Hashimoto was implicated in at least ten murders committed by the group, including the lawyer and his family, as well as the central Japan gas attack. Asahara’s death sentence was finalized in 2006, according to public broadcaster NHK, but trials of his co-conspirators dragged on for a further 12 years. The last appeals were exhausted in early 2018, paving the way for the executions of the cult leader and his followers. Executions in Japan are done in secret, with no advance warning given to the prisoner, their family or legal representatives, according to Amnesty International. Prisoners often only learn hours before that they are to be killed. In two terms as justice minister, starting in 2014, Kawakami has recommended the death penalty for 16 people, including the 13 Aum Shinrikyo members. Following the most recent hangings, there are 110 inmates on death row, 88 of whom are applying for retrial. At Thursday’s press conference, Kawakami said that she had “ordered the executions after repeated prudent reviews.” She said that her government had studied anti-capital punishment arguments, but that a country’s system of punishment should be based on public sentiment. She said that Japanese public opinion accepted the death penalty for crimes of this magnitude, and that the elimination of the practice would not appropriate in Japan. JIJI PRESS/AFP/AFP/Getty Images Shoko Asahara, head of the doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo, is transferred from Tokyo police headquarters to Tokyo District Court for questioning in July 1995. Doomsday beliefs Asahara founded Aum Shinrikyo in 1984 and quickly attracted thousands of disciples, combining forecasts of a coming apocalypse – which would come after the US attacked Japan, turning it into a nuclear wasteland – with traditional religious teachings and new age tactics. Many of Asahara’s followers were highly educated scientists and engineers, who helped bring in huge amounts of money to the cult’s coffers. As the cult grew, the families of members began to raise the alarm, and complaints of brainwashing and abuse within Aum Shinrikyo became more common. Despite this, few would have predicted what was to come, and the cult shot to global notoriety with the March 1995 attack on the Tokyo subway, when members of Aum Shinrikyo released sarin gas on carriages full of commuters during rush hour. The attack killed 13 people and injured 5,500. Asahara and dozens of his followers were arrested in the months that followed, after police raids across the country. AFP/Getty Images A policeman passes before pictures of suspected former members of Japan's Aum Supreme Truth doomsday cult, including Makoto Hirata who was arrested in Tokyo on January 1, 2012 after almost 17 years on the run. 2012: Doomsday cult member surrenders to police in Japan Deadly cult Aum Shinrikyo’s killings began in November 1989, when lawyer Tsutsumi Sakamoto – who was working on a class action case against the cult – was brutally murdered along with his wife and child. The killing was eventually linked to the cult. Prosecutors said cult members entered the Sakamotos’ home as they slept, injected them with lethal doses of potassium chloride and strangled them. Sakamoto’s murder and the growing clamor from cult members’ families caused increased attention from the authorities, and Aum Shinrikyo began preparing for the end. At a sheep farm in rural Western Australia and other properties, cult scientists began testing sarin while others synthesized the VX nerve agent and launched a failed attempt to manufacture automatic rifles. On June 27, 1994, seven people were killed and more than 500 hospitalized after Aum Shinrikyo released sarin gas from a truck by driving slowly around an apartment complex in Matsumoto, Nagano prefecture. Another victim died in 2008. The Asahi Shimbun/The Asahi Shimbun/The Asahi Shimbun via Getty Images Shizue Takahashi, whose husband was killed by doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo's sarin nerve gas attack while on duty at Tokyo Metro Kasumigaseki Station, is seen at a memorial to the victims in 2018. Subway attack The Matsumoto attack was a warm up to the main event, which began almost eight months later on March 20, 1995, according to a report by the Federation of American Scientists. Five Aum Shinrikyo members boarded subway cars on three different lines in central Tokyo during rush hour, carrying plastic bags filled with sarin.<doc-sep>Aum Shinrikyo, often shortened to Aum, believed that the end of the world was coming and that those outside the cult would go to hell - unless they were killed by cult members.<doc-sep>Six more members of the cult behind the deadly 1995 sarin attack on Tokyo's subway have been executed. Japan's public broadcaster NHK and other outlets said all six Aum Shinrikyo cult members remaining on death row had been executed on Thursday morning. There was no immediate official confirmation. The executions come after authorities hanged "guru" Shoko Asahara and six of his followers earlier this month, after years on death row, and draw a line under years of legal wrangling and public soul-searching over the group and its crimes. The additional executions had been widely expected, and while Japan is one of the few developed nations to retain the death penalty, public support for it remains high despite international criticism. Local media said authorities wanted to execute all Aum members on death row before the country's emperor abdicates next year, which will start a new imperial era.<doc-sep>
Six members of the cult behind a deadly 1995 sarin attack on the Tokyo subway have been executed in Japan, weeks after the group's leader was hanged. Justice Minister Yoko Kamikawa confirmed that the six Aum Shinrikyo cult members remaining on death row had been executed this morning. "I ordered the executions after extremely careful consideration," she said at a press conference. The executions come after authorities hanged "guru" Shoko Asahara and six of his one-time followers earlier this month, after years on death row. The latest executions draw a line under years of legal wrangling and public soul-searching over the group and its crimes. But those affected by the Aum's crimes said it would be hard to simply move on. "With the 13 members executed, perhaps the case is closed from the point of view of criminal justice," Shizue Takahashi, whose husband was killed in the subway attack, told reporters. "(But) the damage done to the victims continues even after the executions. I find it very hard." The additional executions had been widely expected, and while Japan is one of the few developed nations to retain the death penalty, public support for it remains high despite international criticism. "I think we can't avoid capital punishment for those who have committed extremely heinous crimes," Kamikawa said. Local media said authorities wanted to execute all Aum members on death row before the country's emperor abdicates next year, which will start a new imperial era. As the Aum's crimes were committed within the Heisei era of the current emperor, authorities wanted the executions to be carried out before the new era begins, local media said. The Aum gained international infamy with the 1995 sarin attack on the Tokyo subway during rush hour, which killed 13 people and injured thousands more. Members of the group released the chemical in liquid form at five points through the subway network, and soon commuters began struggling to breathe, staggering from trains with their eyes watering. Others keeled over, foaming at the mouth, with blood streaming from their noses. The attack plunged the capital into chaos, and prompted a crackdown on the cult's headquarters in the foothills of Mount Fuji, where authorities discovered a plant capable of producing enough sarin to kill millions. Aum members have also been convicted of an additional sarin attack in the town of Matsumoto the year before the Tokyo attack, as well as the murder of an anti-cult lawyer and his family. The 13 cult members spent years on death row as prosecutors investigated their crimes, while some activists opposed the executions, fearing the members would be elevated to the status of martyrs. But victims of the group's attacks welcomed the 6 July execution of Asahara and six other Aum members. One man who was injured in the subway sarin attack told AFP he felt "the world had become slightly brighter" when he heard news of the executions. Asahara developed his cult in the 1980s, and at one point the wild-haired "guru" had at least 10,000 followers, including the doctors and engineers who produced the group's chemical agents. Despite the crackdown on the Aum, it was never formally banned. It officially disowned Asahara in 2000 and renamed itself Aleph, but experts say the former guru retained a strong influence before his execution. Asahara's execution set off a battle among his surviving family members for his remains, with his wife and several children who are in successor cults to the Aum seeking to obtain them. He was cremated days after his execution, and his youngest daughter, who has broken with the Aum's successor cults, said she would receive his ashes. Local media reported that the ashes would be scattered at sea to avoid creating a pilgrimage site for Asahara's followers. The hanging of Asahara and six other Aum members was Japan's largest simultaneous execution since 1911, when 11 people were put to death for plotting to assassinate the emperor.