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The Death Penalty in Japan


1.A new Prison Law was enacted in 2007 providing that a death row prisoner shall be detained in a single cell and separated from other prisoners day and night. Under this law, it is possible to make contact with other death row prisoners when it is deemed advantageous in light of the principle of treatment prescribed in paragraph (1) of Article 32, which states that “upon treatment of an inmate sentenced to death, attention shall be paid to help him/her maintain peace of mind”. But in reality, the Ministry of Justice acknowledges that such contact has never been allowed.


2.Contacts with people outside prison are severely restricted. Te number of outside people allowed to make contact with a death row prisoner is limited to three to five, and even those who are allowed to exchange letters with the prisoner are not necessarily permitted to meet with him or her in person.


3. Meetings between prisoners and their legal representatives are usually observed by prison guards, but on 27 January 2012, the Hiroshima High Court held that meeting with one’s lawyers for a retrial case without attendance by a prison guard is a “legitimate interest of the inmate sentenced to death” and that unless there are special circumstances, a guard’s attendance at such a meeting should not be allowed. Te government has appealed to the Supreme Court against this decision and the case is still pending before that Court. In the meantime, the attendance of guards at meetings between lawyers and inmates remains common practice.


4.Te Ministry of Justice frequently claims that the idea underlying these restrictive practices is the need “to maintain the peace of mind” (shinjo no antei) of the death row inmate, as stipulated in Article 32 of the new Prison Law. Te Ministry also states that “to maintain the peace of mind” should not be interpreted as a tool for restricting prisoners’ rights but rather should be used to provide them with assistance. In practice, however, the “peace of mind” provision is routinely used to restrict prisoners’ rights, especially the right to make contact with people outside prison.


5.Prisoners in Japan are not informed of the date of their execution until shortly before it occurs (usually just an hour or two of notice is given). Moreover, no one except a limited number of prison officials, a public prosecutor, and his or her assistant can attend executions. Tere is, therefore, no independent oversight of executions and little opportunity to observe whether cruelties or excessive suffering occur. Another consequence of this policy of secrecy is that Japanese citizens are poorly informed about many of the realities of capital punishment in their country (for more details, see Part Two of this report on public attitudes toward capital punishment in Japan).


6. Because of the severe conditions of confinement on Japan’s death row, mental illness appears to be common among persons condemned to death (though the exact number with mental health problems remains unknown because of the government’s policy of secrecy). Japan has a legal provision which prohibits the execution of inmates who are insane, but without any independent mechanism to evaluate the mental state of death row inmates, this provision has little effect. As documented by Amnesty International in 2009, Japan is contravening an important provision of its Criminal Procedure Act as well as Safeguard 3 of ECOSOC Resolution 1984/50 by failing to prevent the execution of prisoners who are mentally ill and by failing to provide decent medical care to persons on death row with mental health problems.27


7.Te only method of execution in Japan is hanging, and Japan’s government acknowledges that its method of hanging has not changed since 1873. Little is known about what happens at hangings because the people who know (a handful of public officials) seldom talk about it, but we do know that in 1883 a female prisoner’s head was almost torn from her body when she was hanged. In 2011, a defence team for Sunao Takami, who was accused of arson and murders and


Amnesty International, Hanging by a Tread: Mental Health and the Death Penalty in Japan, September 2009 (ASA 22/005/2009), pp.1-93; available at http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/ASA22/005/2009/en/acc1c64b-e5ed-425f-bb93-36be3ec25f59/asa220052009eng.pdf


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