Almost 70 percent of lawmakers supported a proposed...

Almost 70 percent of lawmakers supported a proposed bill to set up an ad hoc commission in the Diet to discuss capital punishment in Japan, a recent Meiji University survey showed.
"It indicates that lawmakers are ready to establish a commission to stir public debate over the death penalty," said Koichi Kikuta, a law professor at the university who led the criminologists' group that conducted the poll earlier in 2004.
The bill, drafted by a Diet group opposed to the death penalty, proposed introducing the punishment of life imprisonment without parole. It also called for a moratorium on executions while the proposed Diet commission debated the issue. The Japan Parliamentary League Against the Death Penalty, headed by Shizuka Kamei, former policy chief of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, aimed to submit the bill to the Diet as soon as possible.
The Meiji University group sent the questionnaire to almost all lawmakers from both the House of Councillors and the House of Representatives, excluding only members such as the upper house president and the lower house speaker. Among the 673 lawmakers who received the questionnaire, 179, or 26.6 percent, responded.
According to the survey results, 108, or 69.3 percent, of the respondents said they supported the planned bill unconditionally, while 30, or 16.8 percent, were opposed. Others did not express a clear stance on the bill. Of 38 respondents from the LDP, 12 supported the bill while 12 were against it. From the New Komeito party, the LDP's coalition partner, 20 of the 23 respondents were for it while two were against. From the opposition bloc, 47 of the 84 respondents from the Democratic Party of Japan expressed support while 14 opposed it. All 13 respondents from the Japanese Communist Party and 11 from the Social Democratic Party were supporters. "The results indicate most lawmakers of the New Komeito, the JCP and the SDP as well as more than half of the DPJ members support the bill, while those for and against in the LDP balance out," Kikuta said.
Most supporters of the bill said they favored abolition of the death penalty, but others had different reasons. DPJ lower house member Hideo Hiraoka said in the questionnaire that it is inevitable under the global trend for abolishing the death penalty to set up the Diet commission and suspend executions, "but I still see many problems in abolition itself."
Among opponents, DPJ lower house member Akihisa Nagashima said, "While the introduction of life imprisonment without parole may decrease death sentences, I think we should maintain the death penalty as a deterrent for crimes."