Talk:Sakamoto family murder

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I suggest adding more on Sakamoto... Done.

I will also change the following introductory passage:

This article is on the murder of a lawyer, Tsutsumi Sakamoto, and his family. A jury of the trial of Shoko Asahara found that the Aum Shinrikyo organization was responsible for their deaths.

Technical inaccuracy. The jury did not find Aum Shinrikyo as organization responsible, though it did find responsible some of its members. The jury simply can't rule anything like that. I believe individual trials of those listed perpetrators ruled them guilty and then Shoko Asahara's trial ruled him guilty of issuing orders (the latter I will check and remove the reference if untrue). I will rephrase. - ExitControl

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Removed the following:

Realizing it was a holiday, Asahara instructed the men to kill Sakamoto, along with his family, at his apartment.

This is mentioned below ("ruled him guilty"). There are different accounts, though. Some testified that they decided to execute the murder themselves (thouse got death penalties), without telling Asahara and some said Asahara instructed (lawyers argued that since they were simply following orders, they deserve milder sentence, namely life imprisonment). But all got death sentences anyway. So despite the decision of the jury on Asahara's trial, whether he indeed instructed remains debatable. That's why I think it would be best to just state below that he was "ruled guilty".

The Kanji for the Sakamoto family is as follows. --Miya 00:49, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

  • 坂本 堤 : Sakamoto Tsutsumi
  • 坂本 都子:Sakamoto Satoko
  • 坂本 竜彦:Sakamoto Tatsuhiko

[edit] Motive for the murder is wrong

The information in the article on the motives for the murder are inaccurate according to the Religious Movements Homepage Project.

On 31 October 1989, Tsutsumi Sakamoto (坂本 堤 Sakamoto Tsutsumi, 8 April 1956 - 4 November 1989), a lawyer working against Aum Shinrikyo, successfully persuaded Aum leader Shoko Asahara to submit to a blood test to test for the "special power" that the leader claimed was present throughout his body.

Wrong. Sakamoto did not persuade Shoko Asahara to submit to a blood test, Asahara himself claimed that previous blood tests done at Kyoto University revealed that he had unique DNA. In fact, these blood tests were never done. Sakamoto was going to reveal this to the public. Therefore, Sakamoto was not murdered because he was going to reveal that the blood tests came up negative, but because he was going to reveal that no such blood tests were done in the first place. The full text on the motive, from the webpage on Aum Shinrikyo:

Around this time, Sakamoto uncovered a faulty claim. Asahara claimed that tests conducted at Kyoto University revealed his blood contained unique DNA. This "finding" constituted the blood initiation that was believed to enhance "spiritual power enhancement." No such tests were run (Reader: 38).

As far as I can tell, this website is a verifiable source. The webpage provides the following bibliography for the relevant information:

Reader, Ian. 1997.

A Poisonous Cocktail? Aum Shinrikyo's Path to Violence. Copenhagen, Denmark: NIAS Publications

Thoughts/comments? I hesitate to edit this article myself without input from others on this inconsistency.

NOTE: Not used to the way spaces between text are handled, apologies for all the edits. The only major edit here is this section on the motive being wrong.

Gaius Octavius Atellus 1:24 UTC, 8 March 2006

I have no ideas why Ian Reader adopted such a simplistic explanation, but IMO the blod test revelations, if true were not at all problematic to Aum. Feel free to condense the article and I suggest to removing the 'motivation'-related text as it is hard to explain the motives, so a description of the murder and quick bio of Sakamoto will be enough, this isn't a newspaper article after all.

[edit] Missing reference

This statement is missing it's reference and seems to have possibly been edited or stuck in by another source (like the oddly worded phrase "sex with the girls").

"In their view, Sakamoto was never concerned to become a hero and was more interested in regular wordly affairs, such as sex with the girls or money." —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 76.168.38.78 (talk) 12:03, 10 January 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Merging Tsutsumi Sakamoto here

This article and the one on Sakamoto are vitually identical. I suggest the few differences be resolved and that Tsutsumi Sakamoto become a redirect to here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ravenhull (talk • contribs) 14:45, 20 November 2007 (UTC)