Aum Shinrikyo and Japanese Youth offers insights into Japanese spirituality by analyzing the motivations of those who joined the Aum Shinrikyo religious sect. This group attracted worldwide attention after its poison gas attack on the Tokyo subways in March, 1995. Daniel A. Metraux explores the reasons that thousands of Japanese people, many of them youths, joined the sect. He questions why they joined it, what they expected of their membership, and why they stayed involved or left. Metraux finds that most of the members got involved for religious and social reasons and did not partake in the terrorist and criminal activities of the leaders of Aum Shinrikyo. In addition, the author examines how the Aum situation reflects a growing sense of alienation from the traditional Japanese religion and culture among some of the young and middle-aged Japanese people, providing important information about the present status of the Japanese people.

Analyzes the vast impact that Aum has had on Japanese society, including its appeal to Japanese youth. In-depth study of the question of civil liberties now that many Japanese wish to ban sects. Also details political questions raised by the Aum crisis, Aum's revivalist mission to Russia, and attempts by Aum and other New Religions in Japan to gain money and fame by pushing an "Armageddon" theme.

The Tokyo subway attack in March 1995 was just one of a series of criminal activities including murder, kidnapping, extortion, and the illegal manufacture of arms and drugs carried out by the Japanese new religious movement Aum Shinrikyo, under the guidance of its leader Asahara Shoko. Reader looks at Aum's claims about itself and asks, why did a religious movement ostensibly focussed on yoga, meditation, asceticism and the pursuit of enlightenment become involved in violent activities? Reader discusses Aum's spiritual roots, placing it in the context of contemporary Japanese religious patterns. Asahara's teaching are examined from his earliest public pronouncements through to his sermons at the time of the attack, and statements he has made in court. In analysing how Aum not only manufactured nerve gases but constructed its own internal doctrinal justifications for using them Reader focuses on the formation of what made all this possible: Aum's internal thought-world, and on how this was developed. Reader argues that despite the horrors of this particular case, Aum should not be seen as unique, nor as solely a political or criminal terror group. Rather it can best be analysed within the context of religious violence, as an extreme example of a religious movement that has created friction with the wider world that escalated into violence.

In this haunting work of journalistic investigation, Haruki Murakami tells the story of the horrific terrorist attack on Japanese soil that shook the entire world. On a clear spring day in 1995, five members of a religious cult unleashed poison gas on the Tokyo subway system. In attempt to discover why, Haruki Murakmi talks to the people who lived through the catastrophe, and in so doing lays bare the Japanese psyche. As he discerns the fundamental issues that led to the attack, Murakami paints a clear vision of an event that could occur anytime, anywhere.

This is the 52nd volume in the Occasional Paper series of the U.S. Air Force Institute for National Security Studies (INSS). This paper continues the work begun by Troy Thomas and Stephen Kiser in "Lords of the Silk Route: Violent Non-State Actors in Central Asia" (INSS Occasional Paper 43, May 2002). Inter-state war no longer dominates the landscape of modern conflict. Rather, collective violence and challenges to the international system come increasingly from violent non-state actors (VNSA). With few exceptions, VNSA play a prominent, often destabilizing role in nearly every humanitarian and political crisis faced by the international community. The broad spectrum of objectives and asymmetric methods of these contemporary Barbary Pirates fractures traditional conceptions of deterrence and warfighting. The authors contend that deterrence remains a viable strategy for meeting their challenge if adapted to an understanding of VNSA as dynamic biological systems. The prolonged utility of deterrence hinges on insight into VNSA life cycles and a broader conception of the psychology inherent in organizational decision making. Bundled as "broad biological deterrence" (BBD), they develop deterrent strategies that tackle the VNSA threat throughout its life cycle. However, the authors also realize that deterrence may not work in every case. This sets up a counter-VNSA (C-VNSA) strategy that goes beyond coercion to the defeat of the enemy. At its core, their C-VNSA strategy defeats a VNSA by the following: (1) denying the negative entropy, or stores of energy, required to survive attack; and (2) disrupting congruence, or fit, among sub-systems to achieve system failure. By also understanding the indicators of organizational change during its developmental life cycle, preemptory defeat before the VNSA reaches maturity becomes feasible. Their approach allows for measuring campaign progress by assessing changes in VNSA effectiveness.

This study examines the functional relationship between millenarian-inspired terrorism and the process of political change. Through an exhaustive investigation of late Twentieth-century movements, Aum Shinrikyo, Sendero Luminoso and Hezbollah, it concludes that in each case, apocalyptic expectations performed a significant group mobilization, leadership and therapeutic function.