TOKYO - In a quiet suburb outside this teeming city, residents have hung banners from apartment balconies to greet their new neighbors.
"Aum Get Out," says one, while another urges: "Leave Aum. We want to rehabilitate you."
"Aum" is Aum Shinri Kyo, the religious sect responsible for the release of sarin gas on the Tokyo subway, which killed 12 people and injured nearly 4,000, on March 20, 1995.
Nearly seven years later, the onetime doomsday cult has reorganized on a much smaller scale. But it has renewed concerns among Japanese officials and citizens.
At its peak, the cult had an estimated 17,000 members in Japan, more than 10,000 in Russia, and chapters in the United States and Germany.
Shoko Asahara, the legally blind, charismatic leader of Aum Shinri Kyo - "Aum Supreme Truth" - planned to overthrow the Japanese government and "purify" a corrupt society through murder.
Almost six years after hearings began, Asahara is still on trial. The prosecution recently finished its case, and legal experts say the proceeding may take another six years.
Of the five people who released the sarin gas, two were executed. Two are appealing their death sentence, and one is serving a life term. Former cult spokesman Fumihiro Joyu served a three-year prison term and is the sect's new leader.
Charged with 13 crimes, Asahara is likely to be sentenced to death by hanging if convicted.
Criminal trials in Japan generally take a long time, although Asahara's is exceptional, legal experts said. In addition to the mountain of evidence arrayed against him, Asahara has chosen not to speak with his lawyers, making his defense an even more daunting prospect.
Some observers believe the government is moving slowly because it is afraid of making the guru a martyr.
Journalist Shoko Egawa, who has been writing about Aum for more than a decade, doesn't believe this is so. "If the government is prolonging this, it is because they don't want to be seen as acting hastily; they don't want to be criticized," she said.
Egawa speculated that Asahara would "become bigger among his followers" if he were executed.
Said Susumu Shimazono, a professor of religious studies at Tokyo University: "It's difficult to say whether it's more dangerous for Asahara to be dead or alive."
How much influence Asahara has over the reorganized sect is a matter of debate. The group has renamed itself Aleph, after the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, which means "new beginning."
Aum differed from other so-called new religions in Japan because it was more urban and drew followers from the elite wealthy families and graduates of the top universities. The sect's adherents rejected the corporate, consumerist system of the 1980s and '90s in Japan.
Originally a yoga and meditation sect, Aum drew from mystical Tibetan Buddhism. Through asceticism and devotion to Asahara, Aum followers sought to purify themselves of the corrupting influences of the world. Asahara's apocalyptic vision embraced killing as a rite of purification.
"Many still follow Asahara, and he never renounced justified murder," Shimazono said.
That is cause for worry. In December 2000, Justice Minister Masahiko Komura asserted that Asahara continued to wield enormous influence over his followers and said Aum-Aleph still posed a threat to the public.
In 1999, crisis management consultant Raisuke Miyawaki, a former investigator with the National Police Agency, warned the government that it had hired many young systems engineers with Aum ties to help fix expected Y2K problems. A later probe revealed that more than 100 agencies and companies had hired them as subcontractors.