Support from a new justice minister dispirits opponents of capital punishment
By D.McN. | TOKYO
IT IS one of the anomalies of Japan’s approach to the death penalty that a stricken conscience can bring the system grinding to a halt. At least two Japanese justice ministers have refused to sign execution orders, most recently Seiken Sugiura, a devout Buddhist who oversaw a 15-month moratorium from 2005 to 2006. But Japan’s new justice minister, Midori Matsushima, seems unburdened by such doubts.
Ms Matsushima, who took office this month, has swatted away demands to review the system. Japan is one of 22 nations and the only developed country—apart from America, where it is falling out of favour—that retains capital punishment. “I don’t think it deserves any immediate reform,” she said last week: in her view the gallows are needed “to punish certain very serious crimes”.
Calls for a review have grown since the release earlier this year of Iwao Hakamada, a 78-year-old who spent 45 years of his life in a toilet-sized cell awaiting execution. A Japanese court said the police evidence that put him behind bars in 1966 was probably fabricated. Mr Hakamada, dubbed the world’s longest-serving death-row prisoner, is awaiting a fresh verdict later this year. Prosecutors have lodged an appeal against his retrial.
Opponents are hoping that the state’s stubborn fight to wheel another elderly man back to the gallows (he is severely ill and suffers from advanced dementia) may trigger debate and a backlash. But critics face an uphill struggle. Japan’s media largely steers clear of the topic. Ms Matsushima points to public support of over 85% on carefully-worded surveys put out by the cabinet: respondents reply to whether execution is “unavoidable if the circumstance demands it”.
Mr Hakamada would not be the first elderly or infirm inmate to be hanged in Japan. On Christmas day in 2006, Fujinami Yoshio, aged 75, was brought to the gallows in the Tokyo Detention Centre in a wheelchair. Even the openly abolitionist Keiko Chiba, who was justice minister from 2009 to 2010, failed to make a dent in the system. In July 2010 she signed and attended two executions in a bid, she said, to start a public discussion that quickly petered out.
With the odds so highly stacked against them, some critics have tried to reframe the debate on the death penalty using soft power. For the last decade, a group of abolitionists has staged art exhibitions by death-row inmates, funded by a wealthy donor whose son is awaiting execution. Since the fund was set up a decade ago, 34 inmates have contributed hundreds of drawings, some of which are on display at a Tokyo gallery next month. Six of the incarcerated artists have already been executed.
The fund’s managers have announced, ahead of World Day Against the Death Penalty on October 10th, that they are extending it beyond the ten years initially planned. They enlisted new donors after the death of the fund’s original benefactor. Lamenting the latest double execution on August 29th, one of the managers told Kyodo News that the fund had “expected the death penalty to be abolished in Japan” within the decade of its activism. “But we cannot foresee abolition at present.”
