In any case, in Tokyo he resumed his work as an acupuncturist and masseur, while at the same time immersing himself in the revolutionary writings of Mao Zedong. In 1978, he met, impregnated, and married Tomoko Ishii, who gave birth to a daughter and would eventually bear their five other children. That same year, with the financial support of his wife’s family, he opened a Chinese herbal-medicine pharmacy, which made a great deal of money. But in 1982, at the age of twenty-seven, he was arrested for selling fake Chinese medicines, convicted, fined 200,000 yen (about $2,000), and given a brief jail sentence. He went into bankruptcy, experienced a profound sense of humiliation, and plunged more deeply into studies he had already begun of various forms of traditional fortune-telling, Taoist medicine, and related expressions of divination and mysticism.
This pre-Aum experience suggests that Asahara (then still going by the name of Matsumoto) wavered between fantasies of mainstream power (entering Tokyo law school or becoming prime minister) and radical rebelliousness (lawbreaking and a fascination with Mao). He did the same in his preoccupation with healing: the vision of Tokyo University medical college giving way to fringe expressions of spiritual healing that relied on con-man tactics. His trajectory went from grandiose plans to conquer society from within to embittered failure to idiosyncratic healing enterprises.