To Her Final Rest

Kōno Sumiko has died, fourteen years after being put into a coma by Aum Shinrikyo's Sarin attack on a Law Ministry dormitory in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture.

She leaves behind her husband Toshiyuki, a medical researcher who alerted police of a possible poison gas event the night of the attack. In a grotesque but typical turn of events, Toshiyuki became the prime suspect of police investigation of the incident that killed 7 and poisoned hundreds. "Somehow" his identity was leaked to the press, which then hounded him as he tried to care for his incapacitated wife and pick up the pieces of his life. Only Aum's March 20, 1995 attack on the subways of Tokyo turned away the attentions of the rat pack press to the real culprits.

We will see if the news conglomerates today take even a moment's time to express real remorse for what the various arms of their organizations did to the Kōnos -- or explore the dark side of the methods used by the police to identify criminals.

I do not have my hopes up.