Over 80% of Japanese say death penalty system is 'unavoidable'

The vast majority of the public continues to endorse the country's death penalty system, according to a recent government survey.

In the Cabinet Office's survey of 1,815 people between October and December, 83.1% said that the system is “unavoidable.”

The percentage of respondents giving that answer exceeded 80% for the fifth consecutive time.

When asked about whether they’d support abolishing the death penalty in the future if “circumstances change,” 34.4% of the 1,508 respondents who said the death penalty system is “unavoidable” answered in favor.

The survey, which is conducted every five years, also found that 16.5% of respondents believe the death penalty should be abolished, compared with 9% in the previous edition.

The Cabinet Office did not compare the latest results with past editions, since the survey method changed from in-person interviews to mailed-in responses following the pandemic.

"Misleading"

Although the latest poll suggests that the death penalty is still widely accepted, Japan’s largest attorneys group said last year that it is misleading to use the survey as a basis to say that over 80% of people support the death penalty.

The Japan Federation of Bar Associations has repeatedly said that the structure and design of the survey is problematic.

“This structure lumps together respondents who selected ‘the death penalty is unavoidable’ despite the diversity of opinions within this group,” the federation said in a petition statement in January 2024.

“As a result, the interpretation that ‘80% of the public supports the death penalty system’ has taken on a life of its own and is now being used as justification for maintaining the death penalty.”

The government has relied heavily on the survey to back up its stance on the death penalty. Current and former justice ministers have repeatedly stated it is not appropriate to abolish the penalty, as the majority of the public holds that it is “unavoidable” in case of extremely heinous and atrocious crimes.

A Justice Ministry official overseeing criminal affairs said the survey is intended to “gauge public opinion on whether the death penalty should be completely abolished as a legal institution,” and that the ministry believes criticisms that the response options are leading or manipulative are unfounded.

Based on a Japan Times calculation using a method that the federation has used in the past to contend that support for abolition is in fact higher, the latest survey shows 45% of all respondents were in favor of abolishing the death penalty in the future, while 53% were against that. This is based on adding up those who said the death penalty should be abolished and respondents who said it's unavoidable for now but might be in favor of its abolition in the future.

Abolition vs. LWOP

The latest survey also asked all respondents whether they’d support abolishing the death penalty if lifetime imprisonment without parole — which currently doesn’t exist in Japan — is introduced; 37.5% answered yes, while 61.8% said no.

In addition, among the 300 respondents who said the death penalty should be abolished, 71% said this is because it leaves no room for correction if there were problems with the trial. In the 2019 survey, 50.7% gave the same response.

There are five cases in Japan's postwar history in which a person whose death penalty had been finalized was found innocent in a retrial.

The most recent case happened two weeks before the latest survey took place, when a Shizuoka court in late September ruled ex-boxer Iwao Hakamada not guilty in a 1966 murder case.

There were 106 inmates awaiting execution in Japan at the end of 2023. The most recent execution took place in July 2022.

Source: Japan Today, Francis Tang, February 21, 2025

_____________________________________________________________________

Twitter/X | Instagram | Telegram | Contact Us

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde

Comments

Tennessee | Questions Raised About the Doctor Who Was Overseeing Tony Caruthers’ Execution

Mark Fowler, according to a deposition, had not placed a central line in a patient for more than a decade when he attempted to put one in Carruthers Around 11 a.m. Thursday morning in the execution chamber at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, a medical doctor stepped in and attempted to place a central IV line in Tony Carruthers’ chest. By that point, the prison staff had spent some 30 minutes trying unsuccessfully to insert a backup IV line that would allow them to proceed with the lethal injection. According to Carruthers’ attorney Maria DeLiberato, who was in the room, after asking a staff member to attempt inserting a line through Carruthers’ jugular vein, the doctor moved on to the central line, which is identified as the last resort in Tennessee’s lethal injection protocol .

Oklahoma | Richard Glossip on Life After Decades on Death Row

In an exclusive interview at home in Oklahoma City, Glossip describes his first days of freedom in a world he hasn’t experienced for nearly 30 years. For three decades, Richard Glossip lived on concrete. First at the Oklahoma County jail, after his arrest for murder in 1997, and then in the underground bunker housing death row inmates at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. As with the rest of his surroundings, he eventually got used to the hard, unforgiving floors, although recently he’d developed painful swelling in his legs.

China Executed 2,400 People in 2013, Dui Hua

A Chinese police officer lights a last cigarette for an inmate moments before his execution. The Dui Hua Foundation estimates that China executed approximately 2,400 people in 2013 and will execute roughly the same number of people in 2014. Annual declines in executions recorded in recent years are likely to be offset in 2014 by the use of capital punishment in anti-terrorism campaigns in Xinjiang and the anti-corruption campaign nationwide. Dui Hua bases its 2013 estimate on data points published in Southern Weekly that are consistent with information provided to Dui Hua by a judicial official earlier this year. The mainland magazine reported that a former senior judge of the Supreme People's Court (SPC) stated at a seminar in July that the number of executions had reached 1/10 of the highest number recorded since 1979. In 1983 - the 1st year of the Strike Hard campaign during which the power to approve capital punishment was given to provincial high courts - 2...

20 Minutes to Death: Witness to the Last Execution in France

The following document is a firsthand account of the final moments of Hamida Djandoubi, a convicted murderer executed by guillotine at Marseille’s Baumettes Prison on September 10, 1977. The record—dated September 9—was written by Monique Mabelly, a judge appointed by the state to witness the proceedings. Djandoubi’s execution would ultimately be the last carried out in France before capital punishment was abolished in 1981. At the time, President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing—who had publicly voiced his "deep aversion to the death penalty" prior to his election—rejected Djandoubi’s appeal for clemency. Choosing to let "justice take its course," the President allowed the execution to proceed, just as he had in two previous cases during his term: Christian Ranucci , executed on July 28, 1976 and Jérôme Carrein , executed on June 23, 1977. Hamida Djandoubi , a Tunisian national, was sentenced to death for killing his former lover, Elisabeth Bousquet. He was execu...

New Mississippi billboard warns criminals: ‘Firing squad is legal’

DESOTO COUNTY, Miss. (WREG) — A billboard standing on Interstate 55 southbound as you cross the Tennessee state line and enter Mississippi from Memphis is sending a grim message to those coming into the state. DeSoto County District Attorney Matthew Barton recently announced the new billboard campaign, which features the sign reading, “WELCOME TO MISSISSIPPI. WHERE THE FIRING SQUAD IS LEGAL. THINK TWICE.” It references Mississippi’s law permitting execution by firing squad under certain circumstances for inmates sentenced to death. Barton says this campaign is aimed at deterring violent crime and sends a direct message to criminals entering Mississippi.

EU GSP+ Reform: Will Brussels Finally Enforce Its Own Conditions on Pakistan?

The EU has tightened the rules governing GSP+ trade preferences, but Pakistan’s record raises a harder question: whether Brussels is prepared to suspend market access when a major beneficiary fails to demonstrate sustained compliance with human rights, labour and governance obligations. The European Union has formally adopted revised rules for its Generalised Scheme of Preferences, strengthening the conditions attached to preferential market access for developing countries. The new framework will apply from 1 January 2027 and is intended to tighten monitoring, widen the list of international conventions, and make suspension of benefits easier in cases of serious violations.

Iraq: German schoolgirl, 17, turned jihadi bride escapes death penalty and is jailed for six years

GERMAN Jihadi bride Linda Wenzel has been jailed for six years in Baghdad for her role as an Islamic enforcer with terror group ISIS. Wenzel, 17, who last year sobbed on TV “I have ruined my life,” could have faced the death penalty. German media reported that a German embassy representative in Iraq was in court yesterday to witness her sentencing. She received five years for joining IS and one year for entering Iraq illegally. Wenzel was found in the rubble of IS stronghold Mosul back in the summer of 2017. Charges were laid against her and three other German women captured with her. Schoolgirl Wenzel fled to Turkey then into Syria last year from her hometown of Pulsnitz in eastern Germany after being groomed online by a Chechen IS fighter who she married. He was killed in the savage fighting for Mosul while she was employed by the terror group enforcing the strict Islamic dress code on women in the city. She burst into tears after her capture and said s...

Iran executes Esma Zarei in Ardabil Prison after she gave birth in custody

Hengaw – Saturday, May 23, 2026. Iranian authorities have executed Esma Zarei, a 28-year-old Turkish woman from Parsabad in Ardabil Province, who had previously been sentenced to death on charges of “premeditated murder” in connection with the killing of her husband. She is the sixth woman executed in Iran since the beginning of 2026. According to information received by Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, Zarei was executed at dawn on Wednesday, May 20, 2026, in Ardabil Central Prison. She had been sentenced to qisas (retribution-in-kind) after being convicted of her husband’s murder.

Florida: The Daily Routine of Death Row Inmates

The breakfast carts rattle through the concrete prison at about 5:30 am and as they approach Death Row the first sounds of morning repeat the last sounds of night - remote controlled locks clanging open and clunking closed, electric gates whirring, heavy metal doors crashing shut, voices wailing, klaxons blaring. A maximum security prison has no soft or delicate sounds. At the end of each corridor of death row cells a guard opens a heavy door of steel bars and a prison trusty pushes a breakfast cart inside. The door closes behind him and when it locks a second door opens and admits the trusty to the wing. He steers his cart along the wing stopping at each cell to pass a tray of powdered eggs and lukewarm grits through a small slot on the bars. Food is prepared by prison staff and transported in insulated carts to the cells. The food carts are full of cockroaches, the food is often undercooked or just rotten and is served on Styrofoam plates with a plastic "spork" - fork/spoon...

California inmate sentenced to death for 1983 rape, killing dies

Richard R. Ramirez, who was sentenced to death for the 1983 rape and murder of a 22-year-old bank teller in Garden Grove, died in prison at age 66 on Sunday, May 24, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said. He died at a medical facility, authorities said, with his cause of death to be determined by the San Joaquin County coroner’s office. He was not the Night Stalker, who shared the same first and last names and was convicted of 13 murders and 30 other crimes committed up and down the state in the mid-1980s. That Richard Ramirez, also condemned to death, died in 2013 of natural causes.

Death Penalty News

Search This Blog