ANOTHER SHOCK TO THE SYSTEM

By Kevin Fedarko

For the second time in 10 days, a man in a white surgical mask terrified Japan. This time the target of the mysterious assailant was carefully picked: Takaji Kunimatsu, chief of the country's 220,000-strong police force and the man in charge of investigating the deadly poison-gas attack in Tokyo's subway.

Kunimatsu was right on schedule when he left his apartment last Wednesday morning, just after 8:25. As usual, he took the elevator down to the lobby, met his aide and started to walk across the tiled entry toward his chauffered car. At that moment, a gunman hiding behind a utility pole opened fire with a .38-cal. pistol.

Police believe the shooter was a professional. He had studied Kunimatsu's movements and chosen his time carefully. But it was the assailant's marksmanship that most clearly separated his act from that of a rank amateur. At a distance of more than 65 ft., he fired four times and did not miss once, putting bullets through Kunimatsu's leg, chest and abdomen even as the police chief crumpled to the ground. Then the gunman hopped on a bicycle and disappeared.

It took six hours of surgery before doctors could pronounce Kunimatsu in stable condition. They say the police chief will survive the shooting, although his recovery will take weeks. What may prove far more difficult to repair is Japan's proud sense of itself as a nation immune to the sort of violence and fear that the Japanese associate with America, not their own homeland.

The attempt to murder Kunimatsu, coming so quickly after the subway gas attack that killed 10 and injured 5,500, struck at the very symbol of social stability in Japan. Not since the Japanese Red Army terrorized the country in the early 1970s has there been such a brazen challenge to authority in postwar Japan. Says Takeo Mori, professor of criminal psychology at Senshu University: "Anyone can do it anytime, and therein lies the fear.''

So far, there are few clues and even less hard evidence to suggest who might be responsible. But in the popular mind, the leading suspect is Aum Shinrikyo, the apocalyptic cult whose messianic leader, Shoko Asahara, has eluded a nationwide police hunt since the subway attacks two weeks ago. Although no legal proof links Aum to either case, the circumstantial evidence is mounting dramatically.

Shortly after the shooting, anonymous callers telephoned TV stations to warn that more police officials would be harmed if the investigation of Aum was not called off. But if the assault was meant to intimidate authorities, there were no signs of anyone backing off. All week investigators continued to dig into the cult's compounds in a rural village near Mount Fuji. According to a police spokesman, the investigators were gathering evidence that sect leaders planned to make poison gas "in preparation for murder,'' the closest that authorities have come to implicating Aum. Police unearthed tons of suspect chemicals, drugs and apparatuses and came close to uncovering evidence that the killer nerve gas may have been made on the premises. They discovered a large and elaborate laboratory hidden behind an inner sanctum, where only the most enlightened of Asahara's followers--many of whom are professional chemists--were admitted.

But what the investigators still need to find are laboratory traces of "signature" compounds that are either used to make sarin or appear as by-products of sarin production. The absence of such direct evidence is the authorities' biggest problem. "They are beginning to run out of time," says a foreign diplomat. "They need to get beyond circumstantial evidence against Aum in order to indict."

Aum spokesmen have launched an aggressive campaign to persuade the Japanese of the sect's innocence. Everyday last week Fumihiro Joyu, former head of the cult's Russian branch, appeared on talk shows, offering vigorous protestations of Aum's blamelessness. He tirelessly browbeat his interlocutors, drumming home the message that Aum is not responsible for the sarin attacks and has been framed by the government. The sect has also taken its case to on-line services: one Aum member flooded a computer message board with the cult's propaganda. Such assurances have done nothing, however, to assuage the fear among ordinary Japanese that more attacks could be in the offing.

The terror has triggered an unprecedented psychological shock wave. While Kobe's earthquake two months ago knitted Japan together in a spontaneous effort to help the stricken, the subway killings and the police shooting have had the opposite effect, straining the ties of courtesy and trust that are so tightly woven into the fabric of the society. "In these crimes," says Mori, "there is a marked lack of humanity, a hollowing out of the heart." It seems that the antei na kuni, or "safe society," which Japanese have long prided themselves on, can no longer be taken for granted.

--Reported by Edward W. Desmond and Irene M. Kunii/Tokyo

With reporting by Edward W. Desmond and Irene M. Kunii/Tokyo