A wide-range of reactions were heard Friday to news of the executions of Shoko Asahara and six former senior members of the doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo — which carried out the deadly 1995 sarin nerve gas attack in the Tokyo subway system — with some saying it was good the sentences were finally carried out and others recalling the devastation inflicted by the group.
"There are people who both support and oppose the executions, but it had to happen eventually, didn't it?" Motokatsu Hosaka, 81, from Tochigi Prefecture, said at Tokyo Station.
"I am not a person who supports the death penalty but in this instance the crime was indiscriminate and unforgivable," said a 71-year-old woman from Fujisawa, Kanagawa Prefecture.