Masami Tsuchiya was not among the men who carried out the crime on the Tokyo subway on the morning of March 20, 1995. The courts of Japan nonetheless sent him to his death for it, and for the deaths in Matsumoto the summer before. A graduate chemist from the University of Tsukuba who had given his life to the religious group Aum Shinrikyo, he was found to have supplied the expertise without which the group's two deadliest crimes could not have happened. On January 30, 2004, the Tokyo District Court convicted him of murder and attempted murder over the deaths of seven people in Matsumoto and 12 people on the Tokyo subway, and sentenced him to death. He was 39.
His case ran for more than a decade after that. The Tokyo High Court rejected his appeal in August 2006, and the Supreme Court left the sentence standing. On July 6, 2018, Tsuchiya was executed in Tokyo, one of seven Aum Shinrikyo members put to death that day, alongside the group's founder.
Tsuchiya was born in Tokyo in 1965. He studied at the University of Tsukuba, first in its undergraduate college of agriculture and forestry and then in the graduate school of chemistry, where he specialized in organic physical chemistry. His graduate research concerned the chemical reactions of organic compounds under light. He was enrolled in the doctoral program in chemistry when he left ordinary life behind.
He joined Aum Shinrikyo in 1989, and two years later, in 1991, he renounced the world and became a live-in member, the step the group called shukke. By the time the group came under police scrutiny he held a senior post within it, heading a section the group styled its Second Ministry of Health and Welfare, and he was responsible for its chemistry work. After his arrest he told an investigator that in the group he had been allowed to do the research he wanted.
On the night of June 27, 1994, seven people died in the city of Matsumoto, in Nagano Prefecture, about 220 kilometers west of Tokyo, and 144 others were injured. The Tokyo District Court later found that Aum Shinrikyo's leader had conspired in the crime. Tsuchiya was one of the members held responsible for it.
On the morning of Monday, March 20, 1995, during the rush hour, several members of Aum Shinrikyo acting in coordination committed the crime at five points on the Tokyo subway network. Twelve people were counted among the dead when Tsuchiya was convicted, and more than 5,000 were injured, some of them permanently. The Japan Self-Defense Forces were called in to help the injured. The count of the dead later rose to 13, and the number of people injured was put at about 6,000.
His own part, as the courts later found, lay earlier, in the work on which the crime depended.
Police raids on Aum Shinrikyo began in March 1995. On May 16, 1995, the group's founder, Chizuo Matsumoto, who used the name Shoko Asahara, was arrested at the group's headquarters.
Tsuchiya was already in custody by then. By April 28, 1995, he was being held by the Tokyo Metropolitan Police at the special investigation headquarters set up for the subway case, and he was refusing to say anything at all. That day the head of the police's First Investigative Division asked a researcher from the department's scientific investigation laboratory to meet him. The researcher had obtained, from Tsuchiya's former university laboratory, a record of the work he had done as a graduate student. In their first meeting Tsuchiya sat with his eyes closed and did not respond. Over later conversations, beginning with talk about his graduate research, he slowly began to answer, and when the subject turned to his research inside the group, his manner brightened.
Prosecutors charged Tsuchiya with murder and attempted murder over the Matsumoto and Tokyo deaths, among other counts. His case came before the Tokyo District Court, where it lasted more than eight years. It was one of 189 indictments brought against people connected to Aum Shinrikyo's crimes, and the defense's legal maneuvering and the sheer volume of charges, evidence and testimony drew it out.
He dismissed his defense counsel twice during the trial. Through the years in court he often spoke in praise of the group's founder. On the events themselves he kept to silence. When he was called as a witness at the trial of a fellow member, the two men said nothing about the crimes.
His defense disputed that he was responsible for the deaths in Tokyo.
On Friday, January 30, 2004, the Tokyo District Court sentenced Tsuchiya to death. The court found that the crimes had been premeditated, carried out with intent to kill and in conspiracy with others, and that the group could not have carried out its two deadliest crimes without his direction. He was the 11th member of Aum Shinrikyo sentenced to death, and the second to last of the 189 people indicted to receive a first-instance ruling.
Four weeks later, on February 27, 2004, the same court sentenced the group's founder to death, ending an eight-year trial. With that ruling, first-instance verdicts had been handed down for all 189 people indicted.
Tsuchiya appealed. In August 2006 the Tokyo High Court rejected the appeal and upheld the death sentence; he was 41. On August 24, 2006, his lawyers took the case to the Supreme Court of Japan. The appeal to the top court did not succeed, and the death sentence became final. When the last of the Aum Shinrikyo trials and appeals ended in January 2018, 13 members of the group, Tsuchiya among them, stood under final sentences of death.
In later years his stance changed. He came to apologize to the victims, and he urged the group's founder to tell the truth.
On Friday, July 6, 2018, Japan's Ministry of Justice announced the execution of seven members of Aum Shinrikyo, and the Justice Minister confirmed them. The seven were the founder, Chizuo Matsumoto, and six senior members: Yoshihiro Inoue, Masami Tsuchiya, Tomomitsu Niimi, Tomomasa Nakagawa, Seiichi Endo and Kiyohide Hayakawa. They were the first executions connected to the group's crimes. The seven were put to death at detention centers in Tokyo, Osaka, Hiroshima and Fukuoka. Tsuchiya, aged 53, was executed in Tokyo.
None of the seven had been among the members who acted on the subway trains. It was the largest number of people executed at one time in Japan since 1911.
On July 26, 2018, the remaining six Aum Shinrikyo members under sentence of death were executed after the Justice Minister signed the orders two days earlier. With that, all 13 of the group's members whose death sentences had become final had been executed.
Tsuchiya's own position on his guilt shifted over the years. At trial his defense disputed that he was responsible for the deaths on the subway, and through much of the trial he spoke in praise of the founder and showed no remorse. The courts at every level rejected his defense and upheld the finding that he bore responsibility for the deaths. In later years he apologized to the victims.
Amnesty International, which opposes the death penalty in every case, said that some of the seven executed on July 6, 2018, may have had requests for retrial pending at the time.
1965: Masami Tsuchiya is born in Tokyo.
1989: He joins Aum Shinrikyo while studying chemistry at the University of Tsukuba.
1991: He becomes a live-in member of the group.
June 27, 1994: Seven people die and 144 are injured in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture.
March 20, 1995: Twelve people die and more than 5,000 are injured on the Tokyo subway; the dead later number 13.
March 1995: Police raids on Aum Shinrikyo begin.
April 28, 1995: Tsuchiya, in custody in Tokyo, is still refusing to speak to investigators.
May 16, 1995: The group's founder is arrested.
January 30, 2004: The Tokyo District Court convicts Tsuchiya of murder and attempted murder and sentences him to death.
February 27, 2004: The founder is sentenced to death; first-instance verdicts are complete for all 189 people indicted.
August 2006: The Tokyo High Court rejects Tsuchiya's appeal.
August 24, 2006: His lawyers appeal to the Supreme Court; the appeal later fails and the sentence becomes final.
January 2018: The last of the Aum Shinrikyo trials and appeals ends.
July 6, 2018: Tsuchiya is executed in Tokyo, one of seven members executed that day.
July 26, 2018: The remaining six members under sentence of death are executed.