New justice minister considers abolition of death penalty to be “inappropriate”

New Justice Minister Hideki Makihara said abolishing the death penalty was “inappropriate” despite the recent acquittal of the world's longest-serving death row inmate.

Japan and the United States are the only G7 countries that still use the death penalty, which has strong public support in Japan, where its abolition is rarely discussed.

But the death penalty, which in Japan is always carried out by hanging, has also been criticized for the “cruel” manner in which it is carried out, with prisoners often being informed of their impending death early in the morning, just hours before it occurs.

“It would be inappropriate to abolish the death penalty” as “heinous crimes continue to happen,” Makihara told reporters on Wednesday after being nominated by Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba the previous day.

According to Nippon Television's online media, he promised to be “careful and extremely sincere” when deciding whether to sentence someone to death.

Last week, 88-year-old Iwao Hakamata was found not guilty of a quadruple murder charge for which he had spent 46 years on death row.

The Shizuoka District Court ruled that investigators had tampered with the evidence and said Hakamata was subjected to “inhumane interrogations designed to compel testimony.”

Hakamata is the fifth death row inmate in Japan's postwar history to be granted a retrial. All four previous cases also resulted in exonerations.

The country's last execution took place in July 2022. This was a man who killed seven people in a truck and knife rampage in Tokyo's Akihabara district in 2008.