This is the first time that the death penalty has been applied since December 2019 and the arrival to power of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida last October.
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“Three death row inmates were executed today”. An official from the Japanese Ministry of Justice made the announcement on Tuesday, December 21. He is a 65-year-old man convicted of the hammer-and-knife murder of seven members of his family and neighbors in 2004, and two men, 54 and 44, convicted of a double murder in 2003, said the manager. The last execution in Japan was in December 2019, that of a Chinese convicted of the murders of four members of the same family in the southwest of the country in 2003.
Japan had executed three convicts in 2019 and 15 in 2018, including 13 members of the Aum sect, involved in a sarin gas attack in the Tokyo metro in 1995. Despite international criticism, the Japanese people support the death penalty. its maintenance or not “is a crucial question that concerns the foundations of the Japanese criminal justice system”, commented on Tuesday the Deputy Secretary General of the Government Seiji Kihara. “As atrocious crimes continue to be committed, the death penalty must be imposed on those who have committed acts of such gravity and atrocity as is inevitable”, he added. Japan currently has more than 100 people on death row.