The nation hanged a man convicted of a 2009 arson attack on an Osaka pachinko parlour that killed five people, with the prisoner as usual informed shortly before his execution.
It was Japan’s first execution since Takahiro Shiraishi, the “Twitter killer” who murdered and dismembered nine people, was put to death in June 2025.
Sunao Takami doused the pachinko arcade – a mechanical game involving thousands of small steel balls – near his home with petrol and set it on fire, killing four customers and one employee.
“This incident resulted in extremely serious consequences... and sent shock waves through society and instilled a deep sense of fear,” Justice Minister Hiroshi Hiraguchi said.
“As minister of justice, I ordered the execution of the death sentence after giving the matter the most careful consideration possible,” Hiraguchi told reporters.
He also said that Takami, 58, was only informed of his impending execution yesterday morning, as is the standard practice in Japan.
“This is because there is concern that notifying the prisoner before the execution date could destabilise their emotional state, and it is believed that doing so might actually cause them undue suffering,” Hiraguchi said.
Japan and the United States are the only two G7 countries to still use capital punishment, and surveys suggest there is strong support among the Japanese public.
Amnesty International said in May that recorded executions worldwide rose 78% in 2025 to 2,707, the highest number documented by the rights group since 1981.
Iran put at least 2,159 to death, more than double the 2024 number, a minimum of 356 in Saudi Arabia, 47 in the United States and 17 in Singapore, according to Amnesty.
A Japanese government survey in 2024 found that 83% of respondents considered the death penalty “unavoidable”.
Support for abolition, however, rose to 17% from 9% five years earlier.
Japanese law stipulates that executions must be carried out within six months of a final verdict after appeals are exhausted.
In practice, however, most inmates are left on tenterhooks in solitary confinement for years – and sometimes decades – with sometimes severe consequences for their mental health.
There have also been a number of wrongful convictions.
Most famously, Iwao Hakamada spent decades on death row over a 1966 quadruple murder before being released in 2014 and fully exonerated in 2024 at the age of 88.
A court ruled that investigators had tampered with evidence and said he had suffered “inhumane interrogations meant to force a statement”.
Rights groups have also criticised what they call “hostage justice” when suspects spend sometimes years in pre-trial detention under pressure to confess. — AFP
