Blind religious leaders

Asahara isn’t the only religious leader known for his poor vision. An installment of the explainer column this week at Slate discusses a practical reasons why there are so many blind Islamic clerics.

A traditional Muslim education in some ways favors the blind, since it proceeds largely through the repetition and memorization of sacred texts. Children chant Quranic verses until they know them by heart; those who learn the whole book often receive advanced religious training. Blind kids—who often make up for their disability with a finely tuned sense of hearing—tend to do quite well at this.

Children who can’t see may also get pushed toward the clergy by their parents. Clerics often preach through the artful recitation of the Quran—something a blind person can learn to do as well as anyone else. The same child would be at a severe disadvantage in a conventional classroom, and he’d have a harder time holding down a regular job.

The type of study needed for Buddhism is very different and with the heavy emphasis on Sutra study might not be as comfortable for a blind student, but Asahara’s partial-sightedness caused him to be placed in an environment that allowed his most anti-social tendencies to foster. Look at this excert from an article about Asahara and Aum that I linked to a few days ago.

Smitten at birth with infantile glaucoma, he was blind in his left eye and only partially sighted in his right.

Because of his disability and timid manner, he was bullied and teased constantly at school until his parents enrolled him in a government-funded school for the blind.

He quickly learned that being the only partially sighted child in a class full of blind students had distinct advantages. It wasn’t long before he became the school bully, dominating and manipulating his classmates into doing his bidding.

Have you heard the expression “in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king”? Have you ever before thought that it could be literally true?

Asahara is of course far from the only blind prophet in history. It’s a common archetype in mythology and fantasy, the most famous example of which is probably the Greek seer Tiresias.

Job opportunity for readers in Japan

I subscribe to the Gaijinpot mailing list just in case something interesting ever comes up amidst the sea of eikaiwa jobs, and today something finally did. If anyone reading these actually applies for the job, please send me some stories.

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    • Another Aum member sentenced

    The Japan Times has the story:

    The Tokyo District Court sentenced a past key Aum Shinrikyo figure to 30 months in prison Friday and fined him 2 million yen for unlicensed sales of skin ointment in 2003 and 2004.

    Takashi Inoue, 37, who headed the cult’s Tokyo training center, had pleaded not guilty to charges of fraud and violation of the Pharmaceutical Affairs Law.

    “It was not fraud. I did not know that it was a pharmaceutical product that requires a license,” Inoue said during the trial.
    […]

    According to the prosecution, Inoue’s gains from selling some of the medicine by falsely advertising it as not including steroids amounted to 4.15 million yen.

    Noda was found guilty in the same court in December of illegally selling the ointment and sentenced to a suspended 18-month prison term. He did not appeal.

    While this doesn’t seem on the surface to have any direct connection with the operations of Aum itself (which was disbanded as an organization in 1997 by court order, and whose teachings were carried on by the successor organization Aleph), the snake oil sale hucksterism of the operation is very much in line with Asahara’s pre-Aum activity. Were they inspired by the scams of their former spiritual guru, or did he suggest the idea to them directly while communing in the astral plane from his prison cell?

    Windows’ Japanese edition uses haiku error messages.

    Actually it doesn’t, but apparently there is (was?) a net legend to that effect.

    Yesterday it worked.
    Today it is not working.
    Windows is like that.

    Sadly, such messages are fictional. The list of haiku messages circulating on the Internet is culled from a 1998 contest organized by Salon, an online magazine, which challenged readers to come up with error messages in haiku form. Salon received more than 200 entries from which it picked two winners: Three things are certain:

    Death, taxes, and lost data.
    Guess which has occurred.

    and

    Everything is gone;
    Your life’s work has been destroyed.
    Squeeze trigger (yes/no)?

    Another good site for Aum background

    If you can’t read the original Japanese court transcripts that have been published in book form in Japan, then this web site may be one of the best resources for learning about the legal aspects of the investigation and prosecution of the cult is this site created by Tokyo based software engineer Timothy Romero. Unfortunately he stopped updating it in 1997, many years before Asahara’s trial was concluded, but as he wrote at the time he decided to halt work on the site, “there is little doubt as to the eventual verdict.” Mr. Romero currently keeps an unrelated blog, which seems to be updated every week or two.

    TSA to Offer Shorter Lines if You Bare it All for them: MF Has a Suggestion

    The TSA (Transportation Security Agency or as some people call them “Thugs Standing Around”) has officially announced its Registered Traveler Program:

    New travel plan would require in-depth checks

    Beyond shorter lines for airline passengers, benefits are vague.

    WASHINGTON – The government is asking airline travelers to give up potentially a huge amount of personal information for what, at this point at least, could be little more than shorter waits at airport security checkpoints.

    The Transportation Security Administration announced details of the Registered Traveler Program on Friday, but officials said the benefits for travelers were still being worked out and might not include an exemption from security searches.

    Under the voluntary program, which begins in June, travelers would have to submit fingerprints and allow officials to conduct in-depth background checks, including in some cases providing access to personal and financial histories, to prove they aren’t terrorists.

    No incentive, you say? Why not integrate this new background check with the government’s security clearance process? If I could put government clearance on my resume without actually having to work for the government, that would be more than enough reason to give up my personal information.

    Thoughts?

    Some recommended background reading on Aum

    If you’re interested in reading some more about Aum Shinrikyo, the easiest place to turn would be this fairly long article on Court TV’s Crime Library web site.

    Additionally, I can’t strongly enough recommend Haruki Murakami’s book, Underground The Tokyo Gas Attack and the Japanese Psyche. It’s actually a compilation of what was published as two separate volumes in Japan. The first volume, also named Underground, consists of a brief history of Aum, a description of the attacks, and a series of edited interviews in which survivors of the attack (and If I recall correctly, in one case a relative of a ‘survivor’ left in a coma, and a relative of a fatality). By interviewing some of the transit workers alongside a variety of ordinary commuters, interspersed with his own narrative, Murakami paints a vivid and complete picture of how the attack unfolded throughout the day, as well as giving the best overall impression of the Tokyo subway’s geography that I have ever seen in print.

    The second (and much slimmer) volume, originally titled “To the place that was promised,” consists of interviews with former members of the cult, whose reactions range from regretful, to disbelieving, to resentful. Of course, at that time he was unable to gain access to any of the cult members who had actually been involved with or known in advance about the attacks, who were all either in prison or hiding (which is still the case).

    At least one convicted Aum member has told his story since though. Ikuo Hayashi, a former cardiologist who was arrested and subsequently confessed shortly after the sarin attack, has written a 575 page memoir entitled “Aum and I.” It has not been published in English, but I have a copy sitting right here and it’s a damn good read.
    As an aside, I read Murakami’s Aum book about a year before I first went to Japan, when I had just started learning Japanese and was only starting to become interested in learning about the country. It was the first thing by Haruki Murakami that I had ever read, and only after reading Underground did I even know that he was a popular novelist.

    Asahara not fit for trial: psychiatrist

    Lawyers for Shoko Asahara, founder of the Aum Shinrikyo religious cult, released portions of a psychiatrist’s report Monday stating that Asahara is unable to stand trial because of his confused state of mind.The report of Masaaki Noda, a professor at Kwansei Gakuin University, will be submitted to the Tokyo High Court, the lawyers said.

    Asahara, 50, who has been sentenced to death and whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto, is in the midst of an appeal.

    Based on the report, the lawyers will ask the high court to suspend the appellate trial. Asahara has been found guilty on 13 counts, including the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system.

    “If competency to stand trial is defined as understanding the meaning of the trial and the ability to defend oneself, then (Asahara) should be deemed lacking in such competency,” Noda said in the report.

    He also stated in the report that Asahara’s symptoms may improve in about six months if he is given immediate psychological treatment and that reopening the trial after his recovery would be more practical than arguing over whether he is pretending to be ill or is actually confused.

    Three of the four psychiatrists, including Noda, who have interviewed Asahara have expressed doubts about his competency to stand trial. Another is drafting a report stating that Asahara is suffering from a mental disorder caused by his long stay in prison.

    The Japan Times: Jan. 17, 2006

    I’m currently in the midst of a job translating some Aum related documents into English so I know something about this Mr. Asahara. You’d think that someone who was supposedly such a master meditation guru would be able to cope with a prison stay. I mean, one of the training techniques he used on his followers was making them meditate for periods of time in an isolation cell! Didn’t he ever practice that one himself? Or maybe the fact that the prison isn’t feeding him the “Aum diet” of vegetables and natto is wreaking havoc with his charkas and inhibiting the flow of Kundalini energies. How could he possibly be expected to remain sane with his Kundalini energies locked down like that?

    Or maybe it’s just the aftereffects of a little too much second-hand smoke from the sarin factory.

    Beijing Peking duck restaurant to open in Taiwan

    Yes, I know that Beijing and Peking are different ways to write the same thing, but when have you ever seen “Beijing Duck” written on the menu of a Chinese restaurant?

    Anyway, today’s Taipei Times mentions that the famous Quanjude duck restaurant in Beijing is planning to open a branch (or branches) in Taiwan. I ate at this restaurant during my trip to Beijing a couple of years ago, along with Saru and Younghusband, and I’ve got to say that their Peking duck was among the most delicious things I have ever eaten. I have, before and since, had Peking duck perhaps somewhere between a half dozen and ten times on other occassions and at other restaurants, but there is absolutely no comparison.

    The article states that, due to avian flu concerns, the Taiwanese government will (maybe quite reasonably) not allow the import of actual ducks from China, but the unique glaze and signature multi-hour slow roasting process of the duck is what makes Quanjude so amazing.

    The entrance to the restaurant in Beijing.


    This is actually the statue they have in front of the building. You can see the restaurant’s name written on the duck’s hat.

    A chef wheels the entire duck over to your table on a cart, and then slices the meat right in front of you. A waitress then prepares one pancake for each person, presumably so you can see how it’s meant to be done, and then leave you to your feast.