1. The members were located around the world: 30,000 in Russia, 10,000 in Japan, and the remainder in the United States, Germany, and elsewhere. David A. Kaplan, "Aum Shinrikyo," in Jonathan B. Tucker, ed., Toxic Terror (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), pp. 207-226.
2. David E. Kaplan and Andrew Marshall, The Cult at the End of the World: The Incredible Story of Aum (London: Hutchinson Press, 1996).
3. "The humiliations resulting from this public rejection intensified Aum's own gradual estrangement from the world: one is tempted to speculate that this rejection, when in Aum's eyes Japanese society spurned the chance to be saved . might well have pushed Aum's leadership into feeling that society was damned and should be abandoned. It also meant, once its hopes of influencing society through legal, democratic means such as political campaigns were wrecked, that if "Sahara's contention that spiritual action was no longer enough to fulfil its mission were correct, it had to look elsewhere for the means by which to influence or control Japanese society." Ian Reader, Poisonous Cocktail (Denmark: Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Special Report, 1996), p. 45.
4. D. W. Brackett, Holy Terror: Armageddon in Tokyo (New York: Weatherhill, Inc., 1996), p. 13. 13 "Aum seemed to enjoy a curious immunity from public complaints. The police investigated each charge made against the sect promptly, yet it never went any farther and there were never any arrests." Brackett, Holy Terror, p. 49.
5. "[A] contributing factor to Aum's behavior was the degree of impunity that the cult enjoyed. Despite an extraordinary six-year crime spree, the sect met with surprisingly little resistance from Japanese officials, who were hampered by jurisdictional problems, a reluctance to probe religious organizations, and a lack of investigative initiative. Only after the Tokyo subway attack did authorities move quickly against the cult." Ian Reader, Religious Violence in Contemporary Japan: The Case of Aum Shinrikyo (Great Britain: Curzon Press, Nordic Institute of Asian Studies Monograph Series No. 82, 2000), p. 223.