The Public Security Investigation Agency and police today conducted their first inspections of Aum Shinrikyo facilities under a new law aimed at controlling the cult's activities.
More than 200 officials were involved in the inspections.
The agency on Thursday presented its inspection plans to the Public Security Examination Commission, which on Monday granted the agency permission to put the cult under surveillance in accordance with the anti-Aum law, enacted in December.
The five Aum facilities that were searched have been the scene of protests from neighboring residents, according to the agency.
The facilities are located in Otawara, Tochigi Prefecture; Koshigaya, Saitama Prefecture; Sanwa, Ibaraki Prefecture; Minokamo, Gifu Prefecture; and Kosei, Shiga Prefecture.
Agency officials said they will inspect other facilities across the country to uncover more details of the cult's activities.
Agency officials and police officers entered the cult facilities after showing identification and obtaining Aum's consent to the searches, which were conducted voluntarily and did not involve a search warrant.
During the inspections, agency officials and police officers are permitted to take photographs and examine account books and other documents. But they must ask cult members for permission to open locked safes and cannot confiscate materials.
Should the cult obstruct the inspections by refusing to open locked safes, for example, the agency chief can instruct the commission to apply the law's more serious provisions, including a ban on the use of Aum facilities by cult members.
At an apartment and warehouse where the cult operates a food sales company in Minokamo, more than 10 agency officials and police investigators started their inspection shortly after 8 a.m. today.
After one agency official asked over a building intercom for permission to enter, the woman at the other end told him to wait for her to finish talking on the telephone. About four minutes later, the door was opened and inspectors entered the building.
A 66-year-old man living in the neighborhood said he hoped authorities would find out what is going on inside the cult building, and that he wanted Aum to leave as soon as possible.
According to the agency, the cult-which now calls itself Aleph-currently has 26 facilities nationwide. Before December, when Aum closed down or sold some of them, it had 33.
Authorities plan several rounds of inspections at 12 more facilities where local residents have protested Aum's presence, officials said.
The commission gave the agency and police a three-year mandate to keep the cult under surveillance.
The cult is required during that period to report the names and addresses of its members and the details of its assets every three months.

YOKOHAMA -- Senior Aum Supreme Truth cult member Fumihiro Joyu, 37, has announced the cult will try to get application of the new law controlling the activities of dangerous organizations overturned in court.
At a press conference held Tuesday at the cult's facility in Naka Ward, Yokohama, Joyu said the law violated the Constitution and that they are consulting with lawyers to decide when to file a lawsuit.He added that the planned inspections of several key cult facilities by the Public Security Investigation Agency and police will only confirm the harmlessness of the cult.Joyu also said that Aum had paid 25 million yen in cash to compensate the victims of its gas attacks on the Tokyo subway system and in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture.The new law requires the cult to report the names and addresses of all its members to the Public Security Investigation Agency. However, Joyu said the cult will no longer consider those living outside cult facilities full members because to do so could possibly lead to their rejection by municipal governments under the control law.
Public security authorities suspect that this is an attempt to circumvent the law, according to sources.

TOKYO, Feb. 3 (Kyodo) - Officers from a Justice Ministry agency will inspect five premises belonging to the AUM Shinrikyo cult on Friday under a new anti-AUM law, agency officials said Thursday.
The Public Security Investigation Agency announced its plan to an independent panel, the Public Security Examination Commission, which gave the agency permission Monday to put AUM under surveillance under a law enacted in December to crack down on the cult.
The agency will inspect the cult's facilities in Otawara, Tochigi Prefecture, where some children of AUM founder Shoko Asahara live.
Other facilities to be inspected are those in the towns of Sanwa in Ibaraki Prefecture, Koshigaya in Saitama Prefecture, Minokamo in Gifu Prefecture, and Kosei in Shiga Prefecture, the officials said.
Two facilities -- one in Yokohama, where de facto leader Fumihiro Joyu is staying, and the other in the Ibaraki village of Asahi, where Asahara's eldest son was abducted -- are yet to be examined by the agency because of an ongoing search by police.
The commission allowed the agency to put AUM under surveillance in collaboration with police for up to three years.

MITO, Japan, Feb. 3 (Kyodo) - Police raided six AUM Shinrikyo facilities in Nagano, Tokyo and Ibaraki prefectures Thursday in connection with the abduction last month of the 7-year-old son of the cult's founder Shoko Asahara.
According to police, six people, including two of Asahara's daughters, abducted the boy Jan. 21 from an AUM facility in Asahi, Ibaraki Prefecture.
The boy was rescued unharmed two days later in Hakone, Kanagawa Prefecture. He is now staying at a children's welfare facility in the prefecture.
Police have obtained arrest warrants for the two daughters, aged 18 and 16, and another AUM member in connection with the abduction. Two other male cult members have been arrested by Ibaraki police.
The cult's members view Asahara's 16-year-old daughter as his successor, police said.
AUM has said the abduction was a mere quarrel between brothers and sisters and criticized the police for ''overreaction.''
Asahara, 44, and his wife, Tomoko Matsumoto, 41, have four daughters and two sons. The couple are in detention for their alleged involvement in a series of AUM-related crimes.
Asahara is on trial for his alleged role in at least 17 crimes, including masterminding the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system, which killed 12 people and injured more than 5,000.
The cult announced last month it was changing its name to ''Aleph.''

The Aum Supreme Truth cult was officially put under the scrutiny of public security authorities Tuesday after the surveillance was approved in record time the day before.
The surveillance was approved under a law to regulate dangerous organizations.
The Public Security Examination Commission took only about a month to grant the permission after the Public Security Investigation Agency made the request.
The commission's official decision became effective Monday in what was considered an unprecedented speeding up of procedures.
On Jan. 31, 1997, the commission turned down a request to dissolve the cult based on the Antisubversive Activities Law, a decision that a former Cabinet minister described as "extremely regrettable." After that the cult revitalized its activities and clashed with local residents in many places across the nation. The result was the enactment of two anti-Aum laws and the commission's decision Monday.
While the agency prepares to carry out surprise inspections of cult facilities, the cult is struggling for survival. The battle between the agency and the cult appears to be entering a new phase.
In an attempt to invoke the Antisubversive Activities Law, the agency held six hearings at which the cult presented arguments in its defense over a half-year period.
While the commission pondered adoption of the law, the cult's bankruptcy procedures progressed and suspects in the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system were arrested.
The Antisubversive Activities Law includes a clause which obliges the commission to complete its examination within 30 days.
The recent proceedings under the new law progressed speedily in what a Justice Ministry official called "the shortest course." Aum took various measures to stave off becoming a target of the new law, including an admission for the first time that cult guru Chizuo Matsumoto, 44, also known as Shoko Asahara, may have been involved in a series of crimes. It also issued an apology to victims and presented a plan to compensate victims.
But on Jan. 21, cult followers allegedly abducted Matsumoto's eldest son from an Aum facility.
An agency official said, "It is highly likely that internal conflicts over a future course of action caused by rapid and drastic reorganization are behind (the kidnapping). The incident unintentionally unveiled the cult's dangerous nature." The agency, whose main mandate is collecting information, has no experience with on-the-spot raids. It has therefore been making preparations since November, when two bills were submitted to the Diet.
When the agency submitted its request to conduct surveillance, it targeted about 100 cult facilities for monitoring and drew up an inspection manual.
The agency assigned more than 100 inspectors to inspect Aum facilities and held lectures for them in mid-January.
During inspections, the agents will not be allowed to enter facilities using duplicate keys or to confiscate documents. In principle, however, they will be able to take photographs and make copies of documents.
A cult refusal to go along with the inspections will be grounds for the agency to adopt measures to prevent the recurrence of crimes, including prohibiting the cult from using the facilities. Thus, the agency is fine-tuning its inspection methods to cope with a variety of contingencies.
Aum also has been making its own preparations. The cult has sent e-mail to followers to coach them on their response to inspections and to warn them to act cautiously so as to avoid becoming the targets of preventive measures, according to sources close to the cult.
At a press conference Monday, commission Chairman Kozo Fujita said, "We decided that surveillance should be conducted as soon as possible because we recognize there is a danger that the cult will commit indiscriminate mass murder again." He expressed deep doubts about the sincerity of the the cult's reform plans such as the name change and its presentation of a scheme to compensate victims and their bereaved families.

TOKYO, Feb. 2 (Kyodo) - The police and the Justice Ministry's Public Security Investigation Agency were divided Wednesday over how to proceed with raids on AUM Shinrikyo facilities despite formal authorization of such searches by an independent panel.
Investigative sources said such searches will not be launched before Thursday although the Public Security Examination Commission notified security authorities Monday that they would be authorized to place the AUM Shinrikyo cult under surveillance for up to three years, the maximum period the AUM-directed law allows.
With the commission's approval, the agency and the police were expected to start inspecting AUM facilities from Wednesday.
The security agency hopes to carry out joint inspections with the police of four or five AUM facilities, security sources said. The sources said, however, that the agency and the police are divided over whether the Yokohama branch of the religious group should be the first target.
Fumihiro Joyu, a high-ranking AUM member, has been at the Yokohama branch since his release from prison Dec. 29. Joyu, 37, served a three-year term for perjury.
The agency, citing the reasons behind the new law, wants to search the Yokohama branch first, but the police are arguing that the alleged abduction of AUM founder Shoko Asahara's eldest son should be given top priority, the sources said.
Kanagawa prefectural police searched the Yokohama branch Wednesday in connection with the alleged abduction case.
The sources said the police and the agency have agreed to search AUM facilities in Ibaraki, Tochigi, Saitama and Gifu prefectures to begin with, followed by similar raids on about a dozen other facilities of AUM, which now calls itself Aleph.
Under the new law, joint searches by the security agency and the police need clearance from the National Police Agency. They then consult and the security agency is required to notify the security commission of the dates and places of inspections.
Asahara, 44, whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto, is on trial for murder and other charges in 17 criminal cases, including the 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway system. The gassing killed 12 people and injured more than 5,000.

Lawyers representing victims of AUM Shinrikyo crimes urged the government Tuesday to set up a structure to support followers of the cult trying to return to normal society, arguing that just putting the cult under legal surveillance would resolve little and dangerously isolate its members.
The decision to put the cult, now calling itself Aleph, under constant scrutiny for three years was made official on Tuesday, and security authorities hoped that more AUM followers would leave the cult because of this.
However, there is no organization in place to accept defecting followers and help them readjust to society.
The government task force tackling AUM decided last December to set up a panel to study the best way to help people out of religious "mind-control" and establish consultations with legal authorities to help cult members who decided to leave.
Taro Takimoto, a member of the group of lawyers representing victims of AUM crimes, does not believe those measures will have the desired result.
"It is too much to ask AUM followers to put their trust in authorities that have been refusing to grant them resident status," Takimoto said.
He is also critical of the Public Security Investigation Agency, which blatantly keeps track of former AUM members. Many former cult followers were forced out of their jobs after their past became public knowledge after the agency's investigations.
"If the authorities kept on doing that sort of thing, nobody would be encouraged to quit AUM," Takimoto said.
The cult may also be trying to "enclose" its members to prevent them from leaving.
"It is becoming increasingly difficult to know the whereabouts of our children since the cult began to close its facilities and disperse," said Hiroyuki Nagaoka, 61, leader of a group whose family members are AUM followers. The group onsisted of 126 families, offspring of which are AUM members.
"We've tried to establish a dialogue with the cult, but we received no reply," Nagaoka said.
"We just want our children back."
Some people at a grassroots level have already started support programs for former cult members - and have met with some success.
A Buddhist temple in the Chubu region has already accepted over 60 former AUM followers to help them to readjust to the outside world.
One of them, a former doctor of an AUM hospital, was arrested for a minor offense and had his medical license taken away.
After his release, he came to the temple seeking help.
"What AUM did was wrong, but you have to give them (former members) a place to come back to," a chief priest of the temple, who asked not to be named, said.
The priest did not reveal exactly how he helped the former members, but said he used Buddhist teachings to make them open their minds.
The former doctor spent around a week at the temple. He then decided to return home and establish a new kind of hospital - one where physicians consult patients with a more humane approach, instead of simply checking them for a couple of minutes and then handing out prescriptions.

Aum Shinrikyo has paid 25 million yen as the first installment of its own compensation package for victims of crimes attributed to the religious cult, senior Aum officials said Tuesday.
At a press conference held at the cult's Yokohama branch, top members, including Fumihiro Joyu, said Aum remitted the money into the account of a fund headed by Saburo Abe, the court-appointed administrator in charge of liquidating the cult's assets, so victims of its alleged crimes can be compensated.
The transfer was confirmed by Abe's office the same day.
According to Joyu and others at the conference, the money includes profits from businesses run by resident followers as well as donations. The cult also said it is planning to raise tens of millions of yen from the sale of Aum properties, including automobiles.
Regarding Monday's decision by the Public Security Examination Commission to allow the cult to be placed under surveillance, Aum said it would immediately file suit to seek nullification of the decision.
"(The law) is unconstitutional and the new group (Aleph) does not meet the conditions the law deems necessary for its application," they said. Aum announced that it had changed its name to Aleph in mid-December.
However, Joyu stressed that the cult will abide by the government's surveillance rules, in accordance with the law.
The same day, a citizen's group that helps former members of the cult submitted a petition to the central government asking authorities to ensure that former cult followers will not face discrimination when they rejoin society.
The Nihon Datsu-Cult Kenkyu-kai (Japan Study Group for Quitting Cults), headed by Shingo Takahashi, an associate professor at Toho University, also asked that the government take into consideration the feelings of those who are still with the cult when authorities inspect Aum's facilities.
The petition asks authorities to make sure that any revelation of past membership of Aum will not be reflected in the treatment of former members.
It also calls for an early solution to the row over the enrollment of children of Aum members in local public schools in Tokigawa, Saitama Prefecture. The municipal board of education is refusing to accept Aum followers' children to attend local schools.
The group was established in 1995 by a group of people led by lawyer Taro Takimoto, whom Aum once attempted to kill. He is now promoting activities to help Aum members quit the cult.

TOKYO - A public commission ruled Monday that Aum Shinrikyo, the religious group that killed 12 people in a nerve-gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, continues to pose a threat to society. It instructed security authorities to put the sect under surveillance for up to three years.
The Public Security Examination Commission, which is technically an independent panel but is heavily influenced by the government, invoked a law enacted last year that will allow the police and Justice Ministry officials to enter the sect's property for inspections without a search warrant.
Under the surveillance law - specifically directed at the group, which recently changed its name to Aleph from Aum Shinrikyo - the sect must report the names of its members, and details of its assets and activities, to the authorities.
Beginning on Tuesday, when the commission's decision will be published in a government gazette, the group's every move will be monitored by the authorities, a security official said.
Human rights advocates and civil libertarians denounced the decision as a violation of the group's basic rights and warned that the action could have broad implications for democracy in Japan.

TOKYO, Feb 1 (AFP) - The Japanese doomsday cult accused of a 1995 nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway vowed Tuesday to fight against police crackdown on its activities.
The Aleph cult, formerly known as Aum Supreme Truth, said in a statement that it would file a suit against the clampdown which it described as "unconstitutional." The announcement came a day after Japanese authorities approved a clampdown on the cult under a law specially targetted at Aum.
The decision was based on legislation passed in December allowing police to conduct raids and demand information and financial data from the sect without the need for a warrant.
Aum Supreme Truth disciples spread the Nazi-invented Sarin nerve gas on trains in Tokyo's subway in March 1995, killing 12 people and injuring thousands of others.
The cult, whose guru Shoko Asahara has warned against an apocalyptic war and is standing trial for his role in 17 crimes, now claims it has reformed and is no longer a danger.
"Our sect for its part considers the law as unconstitutional and our new organisation does not fulfill the criteria to be covered by the law," the cult's statement said.
"Therefore, we extremely regret the decision by authorities and our sect plans to promptly apply for an administrative litigation to nullify the decision," it added.
The cult also said it had paid 25 million yen (234,000 dollars) to the administrator of its assets as part of compensation for the victims of the Tokyo subway atrocity.
Fumihiro Joyu, 37, considered the cult's most influential leader after his release from prison in late December after a three-year term for perjury, said Aleph would not reject police inspections for the time being.
"We will not reject them but cooperate with them," Joyu, well known for his eloquence, told a news conference at the cult's branch in Yokohama, south of Tokyo.
The cult's statement also said it would not recognise the guru's two sons as its spiritual leaders although they have been revered since Asahara's imprisonment.
The cult announced in mid-January it was deposing its jailed guru Shoko Asahara as leader, changing the sect name to Aleph and vowing reforms, including a pledge to obey the law.
But public security authorities said in a report the possibility of such reforms being carried out was "inconceivable."

TOKYO, Jan. 31 -- A public commission ruled today that Aum Shinrikyo, the religious group that killed 12 people in a nerve gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, continues to pose a threat to society and it instructed security authorities to put the sect under surveillance for up to three years.
The Public Security Examination Commission, which is technically an independent panel but is heavily influenced by the government, invoked a law enacted last year that will allow the police and Justice Ministry officials to enter the sect's property for inspections without a search warrant.
Under the surveillance law -- specifically directed at the group, which recently changed its name to Aleph from Aum Shinrikyo -- the sect must report the names of its members and details of its assets and activities to the authorities.
Beginning on Tuesday, when the commission's decision will be published in a government gazette, the group's every move will be monitored by the authorities, a security official said.
Human rights advocates and civil libertarians denounced the decision as a violation of the group's basic rights and warned that the action could have broad implications for democracy in Japan.

It's not the end of the world for the AUM Shinrikyo doomsday cult but it took a body blow on Monday as the Public Security Examination Commission approved placing AUM under tough legal surveillance for three years. The Public Security Investigation Agency has already decided, along with the police, to raid several facilities related to AUM, which now calls itself Aleph. They will do so as soon as legal authorization for the strict surveillance measures comes through.
The monitoring straitjacket is allowed for under a tough anti-AUM law that came into effect in December.
Crimebusters will be allowed, among other measures, to raid AUM facilities and the cult must submit, within 30 days, lists of assets and members.
The commission, in making the Monday decision, placed great importance on the still-prevalent influence over AUM followers of guru Shoko Asahara, 44, whose real name is Chizuo Matsumoto, sources close to the agency said.
The Jan. 21 kidnapping by fellow cult members of the eldest son of Matsumoto had played into the hands of those wanting the cult put under the maximum three-year monitoring period. The commission had thought that the incident indicated the dangerous nature of the cult.
AUM will be allowed to sue to demand the revocation of the surveillance measures.
Earlier, on Jan. 20, AUM had demanded that the commission block application of the draconian surveillance, arguing that the law is a gross violation of human rights and that the cult is no longer a danger to society as it has abandoned some of its doctrines.
In a separate development on Monday, AUM followers who were living on the premises of a former printing company in Fujioka, Gumma Prefecture, completed their evacuation and handed the key of the facility over to the trustee for the company's bankruptcy.
According to police, the premises had once become the cult's biggest colony, with some 130 followers living in the facility and the house of the company's former president.
The evacuation, which was ordered by the Maebashi District Court on Dec. 9, came as relief to local residents, who had learned about the influx of AUM followers into the city in mid-August last year.
"I hadn't imagined that the AUM issue would be settled in half a year. I don't know where the followers will move to next, but I can now live with a sense of security," said Chieko Ishikawa, a 67-year-old woman living in the neighborhood.
Police said the AUM followers who evacuated the premises have moved to other facilities, including those in Koshigaya, Saitama Prefecture, and Sanwa, Ibaraki Prefecture.
Meanwhile on Monday, a group of Yokohama residents and members of the Diet and the Kanagawa Prefectural Assembly filed a petition with Justice Minister Hideo Usui to use the law to ban the cult from using its Yokohama branch in Naka-ku.
Fumihiro Joyu, the notorious 37-year-old AUM executive member, is living there now.
"We want to have our quiet town back as soon as possible. We would like the government to cooperate in order to have the cult pushed out of town," one of the Yokohama residents said.
Also on Monday, a lawyer representing an imprisoned AUM cultist demanded that the Tokigawa Municipal Board of Education drop its refusal to allow her twin 6-year-old daughters from enrolling at the Tokigawa Municipal Elementary School.
Both of the daughters of the cultist, Hisako Ishii, 39, live in an AUM facility in the village of Tokigawa, Saitama Prefecture.