'No Warning': The Death Penalty In Japan

Stakes for wrongful convictions are high in Japan, where the death penalty has broad public support despite criticism over how it is carried out.

Tokyo: Capital punishment in Japan is under scrutiny again after the world's longest-serving death row prisoner, Iwao Hakamada, was awarded $1.4 million in compensation this week following his acquittal last year in a retrial.

Stakes for wrongful convictions are high in Japan, where the death penalty has broad public support despite international criticism over how it is carried out.

Here are some things to know:

Widespread Support

Japan and the United States are the only two members of the Group of Seven industrialised economies to retain the death penalty.

There is overwhelming public support for the practice, and a 2024 Japanese government survey of 1,800 respondents showed 83 percent saw the death penalty as "unavoidable".

Of them, 62 percent said the families of murder victims "would never feel vindicated" if the death penalty was scrapped.

But the same survey -- conducted around a month after Hakamada's acquittal -- also found those in favour of abolition rose from 9 percent five years ago to 17 percent. 

Around 70 percent of those opposed cited the "irrevocable" consequences of executing someone wrongfully convicted.

Dozens On Death Row

As of December 2023, some 107 prisoners were waiting for their death sentences to be carried out, the Justice Ministry told AFP. It is always done by hanging.

The law stipulates that executions must be carried out within six months of a final verdict after appeals are exhausted.

In reality, however, most inmates are left on tenterhooks in solitary confinement for years -- and sometimes decades -- severe consequences for their mental health.

'Cruel' Method

Hanging has been Japan's sole execution method for around a century-and-a-half.

Convicts are led to the gallows blindfolded, with their feet and hands cuffed.

A trapdoor opens below them when several prison officers each press a button simultaneously in an adjacent room.

None is told which button triggers the deadly mechanism.

Three death-row prisoners sought an injunction against the method in 2022, calling it cruel.

Critics have argued that hanging is prone to botched executions and makes for an agonising death, although the Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled the method isn't cruel.

According to the court, capital punishment can only be considered cruel if done by "burning, crucifixion, decapitation or boiling".

Recent Executions

More than two years have passed since Japan's last execution -- reportedly the longest hiatus since 2007, when the justice ministry began disclosing names of those hanged.  

The last hanging, in July 2022, was of Tomohiro Kato, who killed seven people in 2008 when he rammed a truck into pedestrians in Tokyo's Akihabara district and then went on a stabbing spree.

The high-profile executions of the guru Shoko Asahara and 12 former members of the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult took place in 2018.

Aum Shinrikyo orchestrated the 1995 sarin gas attacks on Tokyo's subway system, killing 14 people and making thousands more ill.

The death penalty of Shinji Aoba, 46, whose 2019 arson attack killed 36 people at an anime studio, was finalised in January when he withdrew his appeal. 

'No Warning'

There is widespread criticism of the system and the government's lack of transparency over the practice.

Inmates are often informed of their impending death at the last minute, typically in the early morning before it happens.

Some "may be given no warning at all", rights group Amnesty International once said in a report.

The psychological pain of not knowing when they will be put to death prompted two prisoners to file a lawsuit against the late-notice system in 2021.

No family members are allowed to witness the inmates' last moments.

Still, so little information is disclosed about the system that "the public is deprived of the fundamental basis on which to form their opinions", a group of lawmakers, legal experts and crime victims said in a report in November. 

One possibility, the group said, is to retain the system itself but suspend its implementation pending a further review.

"This is exactly what South Korea decided to do, and to date, the country isn't grappling with the rise in heinous crimes," it said.

Source: Agence France-Presse, Staff, March 28, 2025

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

— Oscar Wilde