A person may offer help when seeing someone in despair, or instead opt to benefit from that desperation by taking advantage of it.
For 76-year-old Yutaka Takayama, offering his apartments in the Karasuyama district of Tokyo's Setagaya Ward to 38 Aum Shinrikyo members is "killing two birds with one stone," satisfying humanitarian instincts and bringing financial benefit.
The cultists have been in need of a Good Samaritan, having been forced to move from one community to another, away from neighbors who resent and fear their presence. Aum members have been ostracized since some cultists were arrested over the 1995 sarin gas attack on Tokyo subways and the 1994 gassing in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture. A total of 19 people were killed.