Japanese authorities are keeping a wary eye on around 50 members of a mysterious doomsday cult camped on a mountain road as the group pledged to move on to an unknown destination by evening.
The group, which calls itself "Pana Wave Laboratory" and believes the world will be devastated by natural disasters on May 15, is a chilling reminder for many Japanese that such cults remain active eight years after a deadly gas attack in Tokyo.
The cult members, clad entirely in white in what they say is protection from electromagnetic waves that made their 69-year-old leader gravely ill, have been camped on a narrow mountain road in Gifu prefecture, some 274 km (171 miles) west of Tokyo since early on Saturday morning.
"We have made a promise that we will move," a cult member was quoted by Kyodo news agency as saying on Monday. "Our destination has not been decided."
The mysterious nomadic group ended a tense five-day standoff with police early on Friday when faced with the threat of arrest and has since moved camp twice to its current site, an unused road in the mountainous village of Kiyomi.
Japan's image of being relatively free from violent crime was shattered in 1995 when a gas attack on the Tokyo subway allegedly carried out by the Aum Shinri Kyo (Supreme Truth Sect) killed 12 and made more than 5,000 ill.
The group, whose leader Shoko Asahara is still on trial, had preached that the world was coming to an end and that it needed to arm itself to prepare for calamities.
Japanese newspapers have reported that the white-robed cult -- apparently an offshoot of a religious group that emerged some 30 years ago -- believes there will be a reversal of the magnetic pole on May 15, causing tidal waves and earthquakes.
GARBLED MESSAGE
An official with the group, wearing a white face mask, read on Monday morning a garbled message he said was an "emergency statement" from the group's leader that contained the line: "People without the ears to hear will all face death."
Japanese media said a pamphlet issued last year by the religious cult that evolved into Pana Wave Laboratory said that if their leader died, they should "exterminate all humankind at once".
An official with the group also told reporters last week that a communist group was seeking to take the life of their leader by trying to kill her with a weapon using electromagnetic waves.
The communist group was also after key politicians, including Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, he said.
The atmosphere on Monday appeared relatively relaxed.
Television footage showed cult members wrapping trees in white cloth for further protection, while shadows cast on other sheets shrouding the 18 vans in the caravan showed one member being hit lightly on the head with a stick by another in what appeared to be some bizarre ritual.
A Kiyomi police spokesman said that, while 250 police had been dispatched to the site, their main job was traffic control.
"There are a lot of media people up here," he added. "Others have heard of this on the news and come up just to gawk."
Authorities on Japanese cults have said the group is unlikely to pose a danger to the general public, the greater danger being a mass suicide of group members.