The Cult Dossier · No. 108 · Apocalyptic / Doomsday
Pana Wave Laboratory
Chino Shoho
1977 – c.2011 (effectively dissolved) · Japan
XII. THE WIDER FIELD — CONCISE ENTRIES
Fully religious
Who led it
YUKO CHINO (1934–2006).
What it worshipped and taught
Belief that communist guerrillas were attacking members with electromagnetic waves. Members dressed entirely in white and wrapped vehicles, trees and roadsides in white cloth to block the waves. Predicted a catastrophe around 15 May 2003 and urged members to evacuate.
Who was in it
Yuko Chino; SATOSHI CHIGUSA (1957–2003), a university associate professor and member who died after a punishment beating by other members; TAMA-CHAN, a bearded seal that appeared in a Tokyo river in 2002 and which the group began feeding that September.
How it ended, or where it stands
DISSOLVED — AND THIS FILE PREVIOUSLY HAD IT WRONG, listing the group as running to the present and ‘reduced to a handful’. It also left out a death. It is effectively defunct and has been since about 2011. It was always a division of CHINO SHŌHŌ-KAI, headquartered in FUKUI PREFECTURE; after Chino’s death the apparatus was taken down rather than handed on, and the remaining members went on living there as neighbours.
The dead
1 — SATOSHI CHIGUSA, a member, in August 2003 after a punishment beating; the link to the death was not proved in court
Of note
THE QUIETEST ENDING IN THIS DOSSIER, AND WORTH THE SPACE FOR THAT ALONE. A group that in 2003 blocked mountain roads in white hoods, convinced electromagnetic waves were killing its leader, DID NOT IMMOLATE ITSELF OR SPLINTER. It was not harmless: a member died in 2003 after being beaten by others on the leader's orders. Its founder died of an illness she refused to have treated; three years later the members took the sheeting down, removed the sign, and stayed put. By 2011 they were telling reporters the organisation no longer existed. Set against Aum (068) in the same country and decade, it is a useful reminder that the overwhelming majority of apocalyptic groups end in exactly this way — not in fire, but in people quietly getting on with their lives.
Its timeline
- 1977 Founded as a health group.
- LATE APRIL–MAY 2003 National attention as convoys of white-clad members occupy mountain roads in Gifu Prefecture. The Public Security Intelligence Agency begins investigating on 9 May; on 14 May police raid the group's facilities nationwide on suspicion of vehicle registration fraud.
- AROUND 15 MAY 2003 The predicted disaster does not come.
- 7 AUGUST 2003 SATOSHI CHIGUSA dies. Hours earlier, five members had beaten him on Chino's orders as punishment for letting a van's grounding device lose contact with the road; police said the beating was meant to drive out electromagnetic waves. The cause of death was given as heat stroke.
- DECEMBER 2003 The five are arrested. Prosecutors cannot prove the beating caused the death, and each man is fined 200,000 yen for assault.
- 26 OCTOBER 2006 Yuko Chino dies, aged 72, having refused treatment for cancer.
- 2009 THE GROUP QUIETLY DISMANTLES ITSELF. The white cloths come down, the PANA WAVE LABORATORY SIGN IS REMOVED, and the site is re-registered under a company name handling only Chino Shōhō-kai publications.
- 2011 A Fukui Shimbun reporter finds the compound looks like an ordinary private house. Residents say plainly: PANA WAVE LABORATORY NO LONGER EXISTS.
- MAY 2021 A writer who had visited the headquarters for years reports the settlement quiet and untroubled.