On the morning of March 20, 1995, members of the religious group Aum Shinrikyo carried out a coordinated attack on five trains on three lines of the Tokyo subway, the Marunouchi, the Chiyoda and the Hibiya, all of them converging on Kasumigaseki station. Twelve people died and thousands more were hurt. One of the men assigned to the trains that morning was Ikuo Hayashi, a heart surgeon who had once had a promising medical career and who had become the group's chief physician. He was sent to the Chiyoda Line, and two station employees died on that line at Kasumigaseki.
In the months that followed, Hayashi was arrested, broke with the group and began to cooperate with the prosecutors building the cases against its members. He said that he had acted on the orders of the group's leader, Shoko Asahara. On May 26, 1998, the Tokyo District Court convicted him of murder and sentenced him to life imprisonment, the sentence the prosecutors themselves had asked for. He was the first senior member of Aum Shinrikyo to be sentenced for the subway attack, and the court, while holding him criminally responsible, gave weight to the remorse he had shown and did not impose a death sentence.
Hayashi graduated from the Keio University School of Medicine and practiced as a heart surgeon before he left that career for a place in Aum Shinrikyo. By 1995 he was one of the group's top officials. He was its chief physician, and in the group's internal hierarchy he held the title of Treatment Minister.
The police inquiry that would bring the group down was already under way when the subway attack took place. On February 28, 1995, the administrator of a notary office in Tokyo was abducted. Evidence from the abduction pointed toward Aum Shinrikyo, and the police were preparing to move against the group's facilities. Japanese authorities later came to believe that the subway attack was meant, at least in part, to disrupt that planned operation.
The attack came during the morning rush hour, on a Monday. Five trains were targeted on the three lines that met at Kasumigaseki, and Hayashi was assigned to a train on the Chiyoda Line. On that line two members of the station staff at Kasumigaseki died; the court counted them as the two deaths for which he was responsible. Across all five trains, twelve people died as a result of the attack. The number of injured was put at about 5,500, and some of them were left disabled.
Within days, the attention of the public and the work of the police centered on Aum Shinrikyo. On March 22, 1995, two days after the attack, police entered 25 of the group's facilities in Shizuoka and Yamanashi prefectures. The legal ground for that operation was the February abduction of the notary office administrator, whose whereabouts were then unknown.
It was the beginning of an inquiry on a scale the group had not anticipated. Between March 23 and September 4, 1995, police carried out more than 500 raids at about 300 locations and collected some 66,000 items of evidence. By early September, 398 of the group's followers had been arrested in 240 separate cases. Those arrested and indicted included almost the entire leadership.
Hayashi was among them, first held on a separate charge rather than for the subway attack. Asahara himself was arrested on May 16, 1995. From May onward, senior figures in the group began to confess to its crimes, and Hayashi, as one of those who had carried out the subway attack, was the most prominent of them. Their confessions were followed by a mass departure of ordinary members. He confessed to his part in the subway attack while he was held on that other charge, and that confession would become the hinge of his case. By the autumn of 1995 Hayashi had been charged with murder for the March 20 attack, along with other members of the group.
From the time of his arrest, Hayashi distanced himself from the group. He cooperated with the prosecutors and showed remorse openly, and he gave an account of the attack in which he said that he had acted under orders from the leader. In court he talked at length, about the facts, about his remorse, about the group and its leader, and he lectured the co-defendants who stayed silent. He wept often during the proceedings, at his arraignment and again when he testified about the subway attack, and once, under questioning, he collapsed onto the witness stand and the judge called a recess.
That cooperation, and the remorse that came with it, became the central question of his case. His part in the attack was not in doubt. What the court had to decide was the sentence for a man who had taken part in it and had then broken with the organization behind it.
Hayashi was tried in the Tokyo District Court, where rulings are made by a panel of judges and the sentence is read with the court's reasons. In his case the reading took about an hour.
The subway murders were not the only counts. He was also convicted of unlawful detention resulting in death in the February abduction of the notary office administrator, of two counts of confining members of the group, of harboring a fugitive and of a violation of the Pharmaceutical Affairs Law. The prosecutors asked for life imprisonment, not death.
On May 26, 1998, the court found him guilty of murder and sentenced him to life imprisonment. The presiding judge found that Hayashi was criminally responsible for his actions and that he had shown he was sorry for them. The court also accepted his confession as a voluntary surrender, and that finding, more than any other, is what spared him the death penalty. Hayashi wept openly in the courtroom as the sentence was read. He was 51 years old.
At the time of sentencing, his eligibility to apply for parole was put at 20 years. Four other members accused in the subway attack had not yet come to judgment: two had been arrested and were to be tried, and two remained at large. The group's leader was sentenced to death in 2004 and executed on July 6, 2018.
Hayashi's explanation for his part in the attack, that he acted on the leader's orders, was his own account. The court did not treat it as relieving him of responsibility: it found him criminally responsible for his actions. What it accepted was that he had shown he was sorry, and that finding shaped his sentence.
1984: Aum Shinrikyo begins with about a score of followers.
February 28, 1995: The administrator of a notary office in Tokyo is abducted; evidence points toward Aum Shinrikyo.
March 20, 1995: Aum Shinrikyo members carry out a coordinated attack on five trains on three Tokyo subway lines; Hayashi is assigned to a Chiyoda Line train; twelve people die, two of them station staff at Kasumigaseki on his line.
March 22, 1995: Police enter 25 of the group's facilities in Shizuoka and Yamanashi prefectures.
March 23 to September 4, 1995: More than 500 police raids at about 300 locations; 398 followers arrested in 240 cases.
May 16, 1995: Shoko Asahara is arrested.
May 1995 onward: Hayashi, held on a separate charge, confesses to his part in the subway attack; other senior figures also confess.
October 1995: Hayashi stands charged with murder over the subway attack.
May 26, 1998: The Tokyo District Court convicts Hayashi of murder and of the other counts against him and sentences him to life imprisonment, as the prosecutors had asked; the court accepts his confession as a voluntary surrender.
2004: Asahara is sentenced to death.
July 6, 2018: Asahara is executed.