Why Japan Still Hangs People, and Why This One Matters

Justice · Japan

Japan executes by rope, in secret, with notice measured in hours. The hanging of a 58-year-old arsonist this month was routine by the system’s own rules — which is exactly why it matters.

The crime and the morning

On 5 July 2009, Sunao Takami walked into a crowded pachinko parlour in Osaka, spread gasoline across the floor and threw a lit match. The fire that engulfed the building killed five people and injured ten more.

An Osaka District Court convicted him of murder, attempted murder and arson and sentenced him to death in 2011. His appeals ran out in 2016, when the Supreme Court upheld the sentence.

He then waited, as Japan’s condemned do, through about a decade of silence. On the morning of 21 August he was informed his execution would take place that day; by the government’s announcement, it already had.

Justice Minister Hiroshi Hiraguchi defended the order at a news conference. The crime, he said, ’caused extremely serious outcomes and dealt a major shock and fear to the society’, and the dead ‘must have felt unimaginable pain and fear’.

The timing drew its own criticism. The hanging came during a parliamentary recess, which opposition figures called a tactic to avoid debate; Hiraguchi denied the scheduling was intentional.

The machinery of the Japanese death chamber

Japan executes by long-drop hanging, in one of seven execution chambers attached to detention centres from Sapporo to Fukuoka. The method has not changed in living memory, and neither has the secrecy around it.

Condemned prisoners learn of their execution on the morning it happens; lawyers and families are informed after. Human rights groups, the United Nations and the Japan Federation of Bar Associations have condemned the practice for decades, without effect.

Since 2007, the ministry has disclosed the names of the executed and outlines of their crimes. Hiraguchi said this month he has no intention of going further, arguing that fuller disclosure would disturb the mental state of those still on the row.

The condemned live in solitary cells, forbidden to speak to one another, with two exercise periods a week and possessions limited to three books. They are not classified as prisoners at all, and the regime is harsher than any ordinary jail.

The wait itself is the punishment’s second layer. Because warrants arrive without warning, every morning begins with the possibility of the rope; Takami lived that uncertainty for roughly ten years, and some on the row have lived it for three decades.

There is no fixed calendar. Executions depend on a justice minister’s willingness to sign, which is why years can pass without one — and why each signature is read as a political act.

The shadow of Iwao Hakamada

Every Japanese execution since 2024 has been carried out in the shadow of one name. Iwao Hakamada, a former boxer, spent more than 40 years on death row for a 1966 quadruple murder before a court acquitted him in a retrial.

The court found that investigators had fabricated evidence, including the bloodied clothing that convicted him. The world’s longest-serving death row prisoner walked free at 88.

Hakamada’s case did not change the law, but it changed the argument. Opponents no longer speak only of cruelty; they speak of error, in a system where confessions carry enormous weight and retrials are vanishingly rare.

The mathematics of doubt sits on the row itself. Of the 100 prisoners awaiting execution, 43 are seeking retrials — nearly half the row claiming, as Hakamada did, that the state has the wrong person or the wrong story.

Supporters of the death penalty answer with cases like Takami’s, where guilt is not contested. The debate in Japan is no longer whether the innocent can hang — it is whether that risk still fails to outweigh the rest.

The politics of the rope

Takami’s was the first execution under Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, and the first since June 2025, when Takahiro Shiraishi — the ‘Twitter killer’, who murdered and dismembered nine people in his apartment near Tokyo in 2017 — was hanged. The fourteen-month gap was long by recent Japanese standards.

Public opinion is the system’s foundation. A 2025 government survey put support for capital punishment at 83.1%, up more than two points on five years earlier, and no mainstream party campaigns for abolition.

Abolitionists inside Japan keep working — the bar association, a small caucus of lawmakers, the families of the exonerated. Their argument is patient: every execution performed in silence is one the public never has to watch.

Internationally, Japan’s position grows lonelier by the decade. Among the G7, only the United States also executes, and even there the practice is retreating state by state; the majority of the world’s countries have abolished the penalty in law or in practice.

The government shows no sign of movement. As long as five dead in an Osaka pachinko parlour count for more, in the public mind, than the 40 wrongful years of Iwao Hakamada, the rope stays — and the secrecy around it stays too.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was executed in Japan in August 2026?

Sunao Takami, 58, was hanged on 21 August 2026 for a 2009 arson attack on an Osaka pachinko parlour that killed five people and injured ten. It was Japan’s first execution since June 2025 and the first under Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.

How does Japan carry out executions?

Japan executes by long-drop hanging, inside detention centre chambers, with the prisoner informed only on the morning of the execution. Lawyers and families are notified afterwards, a practice condemned by the United Nations and human rights groups.

How many prisoners are on Japan’s death row?

One hundred, of whom 43 are seeking retrials. The figure has been shaped by the 2024 acquittal of Iwao Hakamada, who spent more than 40 years on the row before a court found evidence against him had been fabricated.

Why does Japan still use the death penalty?

Public support stands at about 83%, and no mainstream party campaigns for abolition. Japan and the United States are the only G7 countries that still execute, and Tokyo’s government says it has no plans to change either the penalty or the secrecy around it.

This article was drafted with automated assistance and reviewed before publication. How we use AI · Report an error · Editorial responsibility: Matthias Camenzind, Editor-in-Chief