A new documentary revisits the Tokyo gas attack… | Little White Lies

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A new doc­u­men­tary revis­its the Tokyo gas attack 25 years on

29 Jun 2020

Words by Matt Turner

Two Asian men in formal attire, one wearing glasses, being interviewed by reporters holding microphones.
Two Asian men in formal attire, one wearing glasses, being interviewed by reporters holding microphones.
In Me and the Cult Leader, film­mak­er and sur­vivor Atsushi Saka­hara con­fronts both his own trau­ma and that of a nation.

On 20 March, 1995, mem­bers of Aum Shin­rikyo, a dooms­day cult found­ed in the late 1980s, released dead­ly sarin gas into the Tokyo sub­way sys­tem dur­ing rush hour. Thir­teen peo­ple died, and close to 6000 oth­ers expe­ri­enced per­sis­tent prob­lems as a result of expo­sure to the tox­ic substance.

Atsushi Saka­hara was one of those affect­ed, a sur­vivor who has spent the last two-and-a-half decades pub­li­cis­ing the phys­i­o­log­i­cal and psy­cho­log­i­cal effects of being caught in the attack. In his new film, Me and the Cult Leader, which has its world pre­mière at Sheffield Doc/Fest’s ongo­ing online edi­tion, he con­fronts his expe­ri­ence head on, spend­ing time with the cult’s long­time pub­lic rela­tions man­ag­er and cur­rent leader, Hiroshi Araki.

In the 25 years since the attack took place, Japan has not for­got­ten. The inci­dent has remained in the pub­lic con­scious­ness ever since, while the exe­cu­tion of the cult’s founder Shoko Asa­hara – who was hanged along­side 11 oth­er indi­vid­u­als involved with Aum dur­ing 2018 – saw a new surge of inter­na­tion­al atten­tion. In the inter­ven­ing peri­od, the cult and the shock­ing, still not entire­ly under­stood act of vio­lence it com­mit­ted has remained a sub­ject of fas­ci­na­tion for the Japan­ese media.

Ear­ly cin­e­mat­ic ref­er­ences were oblique. In Juzo Itami’s Woman in Wit­ness Pro­tec­tion, a woman wit­ness­es the mur­der of a lawyer who is inves­ti­gat­ing a shad­owy sect rem­i­nis­cent of Aum. In Shin­ji Aoyama’s An Obses­sion, a detec­tive trails a woman who has mur­dered a cult leader, aveng­ing her hus­band who was killed in a gas attack. In more recent films, the con­nec­tion to the cult is made explic­it. Bun­yo Kimura’s Where Does Love Go? and Nobuhiko Hosaka’s Lurk­ing – The Silence of the Cult both fol­low Aum mem­bers on the run from the law.

The most well-known non-fic­tion films on the inci­dent, Tat­suya Mori’s A and A2,released in 1998 and 2001 respec­tive­ly, adopt the cult’s own per­spec­tive. These inter­view-led films explore – with an unpar­al­leled lev­el of access – the inti­mate work­ings of the dis­graced, lead­er­less cult as it looked to rebuild itself after the attacks. Mori’s con­tro­ver­sial films offer a sort of reverse ver­sion of what is pro­vid­ed by Haru­ki Murakami’s book Under­ground’, which col­lect­ed inter­views with a wide spec­trum of mem­bers and vic­tims. Both projects chal­lenge the sen­sa­tion­al­ism present in Japan­ese media at the time by speak­ing, respec­tive­ly, direct­ly with those respon­si­ble and those affected.

It is this inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­is­tic lega­cy that Sakahara’s film builds upon. Ara­ki fea­tures heav­i­ly in Mori’s films, and though Saka­hara was not inter­viewed for Murakami’s sur­vey, he has pub­lished sev­er­al of his own books about his expe­ri­ences and speaks pub­licly about the inci­dent often. Hav­ing pub­lished an auto­bi­og­ra­phy a decade ago, Saka­hara felt that he still had trau­ma he would like to work through by mak­ing a film. He reached out to Fumi­hi­ro Joyu, a charis­mat­ic Aum spokesper­son who formed a splin­ter group after the attacks, and to the qui­eter, more mys­te­ri­ous Ara­ki, who had stuck with Aum. I want­ed to face them, I want­ed to learn about them, and I want­ed to over­come what I’ve been suf­fer­ing from,” Saka­hara says dur­ing an interview.

Joyu was keen to be involved, but Saka­hara pur­sued Ara­ki instead. You don’t want to make a film about some­one who wants to be filmed, right?” Saka­hara argues that, the hard­er route is going to prove the most worth­while.” The film he has pro­duced, struc­tured as it is like a pil­grim­age”, is about pur­su­ing the more dif­fi­cult road. In it, Saka­hara and Ara­ki trav­el togeth­er back to the town where they were both born, in order to dis­cov­er whether these two men, whose lives share a sim­i­lar start­ing point but have tak­en diver­gent paths, have any­thing in common.

It’s quite a pecu­liar set-up for a film, staged some­thing like the ear­ly work of Louis Ther­oux or Michael Moore; earnest in approach and full of dark humour despite the dif­fi­cult sub­ject mat­ter. I per­son­al­ly believe a sense of humour is the ulti­mate free­dom of mind,” Saka­hara says. With humour you can prob­a­bly sur­vive any tough situation.”

Their inter­ac­tions begin in a straight­for­ward fash­ion, dis­cussing their shared ori­gins and split ide­olo­gies, but before long Saka­hara begins to push Ara­ki to acknowl­edge his pain: his ner­vous sys­tem dam­age but also the post-trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der that is a dai­ly part of his life. An uncom­fort­able scene sees Ara­ki fac­ing up to Sakahara’s par­ents, who are unafraid to describe the posi­tion they see him as play­ing in what has hap­pened to their son.

By plac­ing him­self in direct dia­logue with some­one who, while not exact­ly a per­pe­tra­tor, is cer­tain­ly not inno­cent either, Saka­hara looks to iden­ti­fy to what extent con­tin­u­ing to pro­mote Asahara’s ideals makes Ara­ki com­plic­it in his vio­lence. All that Saka­hara asks for from Ara­ki is an apol­o­gy, not even for his own actions, but for the dam­age caused by those who car­ried out the attacks.

A scene in Me and the Cult Leader in which Ara­ki is sur­round­ed by the press, all of whom are ask­ing the same thing from him, recalls a sim­i­lar one in A1, filmed more than 20 years before and fea­tur­ing a much younger Ara­ki. His response is eeri­ly sim­i­lar; his expres­sion much the same. It seems that there is no way of phras­ing the ques­tion that will solic­it an ade­quate response.

As Saka­hara sees it, before [Ara­ki] joined the cult he had options. He played the game of life like a bad play­er, and began los­ing those options. Soon he had check­mat­ed him­self, and he was trapped in the cult.” Saka­hara says that he always wants to believe in the good in humans,” and that he hopes that he will still be able to con­vince Ara­ki to leave the cult. Some­times I feel angry at [Ara­ki], but it’s more like a feel­ing of dis­ap­point­ment. I have an expec­ta­tion of him that he is nev­er able to meet,” he says. Evil is not in the begin­ning, evil. I don’t give up on him. I’m angry at him with love.”

Me and the Cult Leader is avail­able to watch on Sheffield Doc/​Fest Selects

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