by tomokazu kosuga
illustrations by ami kaneko
translated by lena oishi
As if there were ever any cause for doubt, Japan’s absolute cultural superiority over America is by 1994 a total given. Our bathroom technology makes it look like you’re still shitting in cave holes, our rockabillies’ hair is on average four to five centimeters higher than yours, and our recession is thoroughly kicking your recession’s ass (in recession terms). Even our religious nuts are leaving you schlubs in the dust. So what if there are a hundred Texan child molesters holed up in a rural church with some guns and teenage brides? Right now, the Aum Supreme Truth cult is holed up at the base of Mt. Fuji, not only prophesying the end of the world but working around the clock to make it happen. And not in some Manson-family “let’s kill a couple movie stars and see if that kicks off a race war” way, either. We’re talking nuclear bombs, nerve gas, Tesla-style earthquake lasers, sinking continents—the works. What separates these stallions of crazy from the rest of the herd is they might actually pull it off.
Aum started as most things do here, with a bunch of pent-up nerds who couldn’t get laid. If you were a big reader of paranormal fanzines back in the early 80s, you may have come across an ad featuring a shirtless, levitating doofus named Chizuo Matsumoto for his “Aum Association of Mountain Wizards.” Chizuo’s wizard training more or less consisted of doing yoga and drinking dubious health tonics, and promised its adherents the powers of flight, mind-reading, X-ray vision, “trips to the fourth dimension,” and conversations with God. Evidently, during one of these chats, God told Chizuo to raise an army for the apocalypse and Chizuo said, “Sure.”
Sometime around ’87 or ’88, Chizuo Matsumoto changed his name to Shoko Asahara, retitled the Mountain Wizards
Aum Shinrikyo, and started cobbling together a religion from bits and pieces of Buddhism, Hinduism, the Christian Book of Revelation, and—100 percent seriously—the works of Isaac Asimov. According to one of the hundred-odd books, pamphlets, and manga (Japanese comic books for adults—think
Akira) he and his followers have put out in the past five years, Shoko believes that two years from now Japan will be completely underwater and by 1999 China and the Western world will have nuked each other out of existence, leaving Aum to run the show. Despite confirmed newspaper reports that you have to give Aum direct access to your bank account and drink a cup of the Reverend Master’s blood in order to join, despite the fact that said master looks and sounds for all the world like a brain-damaged member of the Flower Travellin’ Band, and despite the fact that a friend of ours who got snookered into attending an introductory class told us that they tried to sell him chunks of Shoko’s beard, the group has taken off.
As of 1993, their membership in Japan is estimated at over 8,000. That may not sound like much compared with other East Asian cults like the Moonies or even our own screwy Buddhists, the Soka Gakkai, but it reputedly includes a brain trust of Japan’s brightest research scientists. How did a high-school-educated yoga teacher and literal snake-oil salesman persuade folks like Aum’s “science minister,” Hideo Murai, an astrophysicist with an IQ 20 points north of Einstein’s, to give up their jobs at the nation’s top industrial giants and follow him? Simple, he said he could get them laid. Just kidding, he said he could make them psychic.
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Anonymous, on Oct 16, 2009 wrote:
sweet wolf illustration |
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Anonymous, on Oct 14, 2009 wrote:
awesome dog drawings |
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Anonymous, on Oct 12, 2009 wrote:
he looks like my aunt’s chow chow. |
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Anonymous, on Oct 12, 2009 wrote:
Ami’s drawings remind me a whole lot of J. Penry and that is a great thing. Love his shit. |
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