Shizuka Kamei, former policy chief of Japan's ruling...

Shizuka Kamei, former policy chief of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), was re-elected chairman of a Diet group against the death penalty in the country and reiterated his desire to see it abolished. "It might be natural for people to have a desire to retaliate, but we have to think if such an attitude will bring about human happiness," Kamei said at a general meeting of the Japan Parliamentary League Against the Death Penalty. "We also need to consider how to support crime victims...I hope we can work to abolish the death penalty while strengthening the support system for crime victims," he added. The non-partisan league of 106 lawmakers elected Seiichi Kaneda, a lower house member of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), and Toshiko Hamayotsu, a House of Councillors member of the New Komeito party, as vice chairs. "The abolition of death penalty is considered a dream in Japan, but it is common sense in countries with mature democracies. I hope we can make the elimination of capital punishment common sense in Japan," Hamayotsu said. In 2003, the league had planned to submit a bill to the Diet to replace the death penalty with life imprisonment without parole while suspending executions, but it did not have enough time to prepare ahead of the general election at the end of that year.The members aimed to propose the bill by the end of 2004 calling for a four-year moratorium on executions while debate continued on the issue. On the bill, some anti-death penalty activists had said that life imprisonment without parole could also be considered as cruel a punishment as the death penalty, and that its introduction would lead to tougher penalties.