On the morning of Monday, March 20, 1995, publishing house employee Junichi Sugiyama had planned to head to Tsukiji, a Tokyo district served by the Hibiya Line subway station of the same name. He had a meeting with a major advertising agency there, part of a project he was working on whose negotiations had grown contentious. He was feeling exhausted.

The following day happened to be a public holiday, so Sugiyama and his counterpart decided to reschedule and take the day off to get some rest. It was a fateful choice. At a little after 8 a.m., at the peak of morning rush hour, members of the doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo punctured bags containing liquid sarin on five train cars on the Hibiya, Chiyoda and Marunouchi subway lines, unleashing an extremely toxic compound that spread through subway cars packed with commuters passing through Japan’s political nerve center of Kasumigaseki.

Fourteen people were killed, including two subway employees, and more than 6,000 were injured, many of them left with long-lasting aftereffects. Tsukiji Station, where Sugiyama was supposed to be that morning, became a scene reminiscent of a war zone with throngs of victims dragged out of the station, gasping for air.