Exactly, I was only about 5 or 6. To be honest, despite it being a pretty cataclysmic and notorious event for Japan, and me having an interest in Japanese culture, I had absolutely no clue about it whatsoever until maybe a year or two ago, and even then I only knew vaguely of some "subway gas attack by a crazy cult" and that was all. But I decided to do a project recently on the ramifications the 'incident' has had for the religious landscape of Japan, and so began reading up a lot about it. All pretty mental stuff. And Japan's relationship with religion is pretty troubled and contradictory to say the least!
There's also apparently some other Manga author Yoshinori Kobayashi (who himself was an early critic of Aum), who did some heavily nationalistic and revisionist manga that made direct reference to Aum. In fact according to author, Aum was the reason he turned to jingoism, as he saw that Japan's denial of patriotic pride directly lead to a weak minded population who could be swayed by Aum's 'mind control'. Completely baffling. Extreme nationalists did actually capitalise heavily on Aum's violence though, and that's actually one of the main points of the project I did. I can't believe it's now constitutional for school teachers to stand and sing the national anthem at ceremonies. Shocking.
