Asahara Shoko (Matsumoto Chizuo)
Founder of Aum Shinrikyo
Ordered the subway attack as police closed in, according to the trial record. Sentenced to death in 2004, final in 2006, executed 6 July 2018. English copy almost never uses his birth name.
Courts named the order-givers and the train teams. English pages named the guru and stopped.
Police, a prime minister and a handful of journalists hold the rest of the public cast.
People
Ikuo Hayashi
Former doctor, subway team member
A senior follower convicted for a role on 20 March. His medical title became an English shorthand for how professionals were drawn into the group. He received a life term, not death.
Yoshihiro Inoue
Aum intelligence chief
Convicted as an organiser in the wider criminal file. Sentenced to death and executed in July 2018. Represents the management layer English reports often skipped.
Tomiichi Murayama
Prime minister of Japan, 1995
His coalition government managed the crisis week, the raids and the first statutory response. English diplomacy memory is thinner than the domestic political file.
Tokyo Metropolitan Police
Lead investigating force
Ran the 20 March crime scene, the March–May raids and the charging package. The 2008 victim survey that raised the death toll to 13 was also a police-era administrative act.
Shoko Egawa
Journalist
Had reported on Aum before 1995 and became a principal Japanese-language chronicler. English readers who want more than “doomsday cult” still depend on translations of that earlier scepticism.
The convicted names are many. English memory kept one.
Public-record encyclopedia. Not legal advice. Not a how-to. Graphic detail is withheld. Wars belong in a separate atlas.