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Comment by realce | Hacker News Reader

This feels a lot like that "witches coven" from SK a few years ago. Are cults really that influential in Asia?

Yes, they are. The LDP (Japan's ruling party) is quite openly in coalition with Komeito, the political wing of Soka Gakkai, a prominent Buddhist-ish cult.

Japan had a cult crisis circa 1990. This was the most famous example

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aum_Shinrikyo

however as the bubble economy popped there was a moral panic over financially exploitative cults and closely related multilevel marketing scams.

For those skimming, Aum Shinrikyo is the cult responsible for the Tokyo subway sarin attack. What's often overlooked is that the cult synthesized the sarin gas themselves in a self-made sophisticated chemical weapons lab:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_subway_sarin_attack#Chem...

When their headquarters were raided, police found enough weaponry to fight a small war:

>Over the next week, the full scale of Aum's activities was revealed for the first time. At the cult's headquarters in Kamikuishiki on the foot of Mount Fuji, police found explosives, chemical weapons, and a Russian Mil Mi-17 military helicopter. While the finding of biological warfare agents such as anthrax and Ebola cultures was reported, those claims now appear to have been widely exaggerated.[52] There were stockpiles of chemicals that could be used for producing enough sarin to kill four million people.[53]

They bought a sheep farm in Australia to mine uranium in order to enrich it and build nuclear weapons:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banjawarn_Station#Aum_Shinriky...

Had they not been caught, I have little doubt they'd have eventually succeeded.

Murakami wrote a non-fiction book about the Sarin attacks and the Aum cult, Underworld. I’m not sure if it’s accurate (he’s a fiction writer, afterall) but it’s very fascinating and sent many chills down my spine.

Best way to understand Aum Shinrikyo is to watch the two ungooglable documentaries about it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_(1998_Japanese_film) and A2.

No different than other cults. A bunch of once aimless people who found purpose by subsuming their existences to the will of a venerated man (who teaches yoga in his apartment.)

One downside of having an industrialized high technology society with a good education system is that radicals will tend to have the skills and knowledge required to create harm on a large scale.

God damn someone has a god complex.

Yes, the cult leader declared himself Christ:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoko_Asahara

Japan and Korea have a cult crisis, a lot of them Christian: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_new_religions https://www.france24.com/en/20181122-mission-god-south-korea... https://thediplomat.com/2014/06/the-cults-of-south-korea/

I lived in a Soka Gakkai heavy neighborhood in Tokyo. They tried to recruit me a few times. I've been to their services and social events. It's big thing. They even have offices world-wide, with a few in Cali.

Generally while it's pretty culty, it doesn't do any of that cut-ties with non-culters and its beliefs are derived from Nichiren Buddhism which is pretty standard in Japan. As a result it peacefully exists out in the open for the most part. Not defending it, but it walks a fine line between religion and culty cooporation more so than the normal "cult".

Generalizing Asian countries is usually as useful as generalizing Canada, the US, and Mexico as just North American countries. There are some extremely high level things you can point out, but it's often useless to try and come to conclusions about the group as a whole.

Generalizing North America is a totally worthwhile thing to do. Why would it not be? They all have legacies of colonialism, racism, Western education, etc. Obviously, Mexico is more like the rest of Central America than the US and Canada, but so what? Japan is more like the Koreas than it is like Cambodia.

Yes generalizations are the real solution. Wait weren't those the things that started racism and colonialism...? the things you seemed to be concerned about?

I'm very offended you are generalizing the distinct five regions of Mexico.

Or should I be offended you are generalizing Oaxaca as a singular region?

When does a pile of sand become a beach?

Generalization was not the thing that started racism and colonialism. The Europeans started enslaving Africans because there was a taboo against enslaving Christians, and then a bunch of BS pseudoscience combined with natural human xenophobia to make a new monster with a life of its own.

Generalization is an important tool for understanding the world. How could we think any thoughts without generalizing?

Take mexico out and add the other anglos and you've got yourself a good an acceptable generalization!

East Asian society somehow went almost uncontrollable with cults. Yellow turban, Taiping, Aum Shinrikyo and now this.

qanon is getting a good run with. same cult-political nexus too.

Think you are tad exaggerating things for sensationalism here, there is nowhere near the level of cult behaviour you describe. Aum Shinrikyo was a small group. There are other religious groups but they aren't extremists. I would argue that there are far more Christian sect groups in the States who are armed.

Also both the Yellow Turban and Taiping Tianguo are millenarian groups that arise during bad times. They’re not all that different from political movements that seek to rebel against the state, just with less rational-seeming ideologies. But to the discontented, it’s very rational.

Also, those groups existed hundreds of years apart from each other, let alone from Aum Shinrikyo.

Well if we are gonna travel that far back in time we should also be discussing the numerous cults that formed out of Europe and rosicrucianism still going strong

They don't gas major Subway

Umm, the yellow turban rebellion happened in 184 AD. It's like saying West Europe can't control cultists and citing Celtic druids.

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