He dedicated his free time to the study of various religious concepts, starting with Chinese astrology and Taoism. Having been recently married, he worked to support his large and growing family.
Īsahara's interest in religion reportedly started at this time.
In 1981, Asahara was convicted of practicing pharmacy without a license and selling unregulated drugs, for which he was fined ¥200,000 (equivalent to about ¥260,000 in 2019). He married the following year and eventually fathered 12 children, the eldest of whom was born in 1978. He graduated in 1977 and turned to the study of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine, which were common careers for the blind in Japan. Asahara was known to be a bully at the school, taking advantage of the other students by beating them and extorting money from them. He had infantile glaucoma from birth, which made him lose all sight in his left eye and go partially blind in his right eye at a young age, and was thus enrolled in a school for the blind. Shoko Asahara was born as Chizuo Matsumoto on March 2, 1955, into a large, poor family of tatami-mat-makers in Kumamoto Prefecture.
