The death penalty in Japan is provided for 13 crimes

The death penalty in Japan is provided for 13 crimes, but, in practice, is applied only to homicide cases.
Death is by hanging: the detainee, hooded and tied, is placed over a trap-door which gives way without warning.
Typically, the accused is not informed of the date of their execution until the actual day of the hanging. Because prisoners are advised of their execution only one hour beforehand, prisoners are unable to see family members or make final appeals. Family members and lawyers are generally notified after the execution, at which even lawyers are not allowed to be present.
The prisoners are held in small cells which are monitored by closed circuit cameras 24 hours a day. Speaking to other prisoners is prohibited. Apart from visits to the toilet, prisoners are not allowed to move around the cell and must remain seated. Death row prisoners are less likely than other prisoners to have access to fresh air and light and more likely to suffer additional punishments because of behaviour that may infringe upon the strict rules imposed on them.
Detainees’ contact with the outside world is limited to highly supervised visits with family members and lawyers. Contact with family members, lawyers and others can be restricted to as little as five minutes at a time. Hobbies and television are forbidden except for the possession of three books. More books can be borrowed with the permission of the warden, but they cannot contain material deemed to “subvert authority.” Physical exercise is limited to two brief weekly sessions outside the cell.
In a recent survey on death row inmates, a large number of them said they want to be notified of their execution date in advance instead of being told only in the morning of the day they are to going to be hanged. A majority of them also called for a review of the execution method, with many saying they would prefer lethal injection to the noose.
The government maintained maximum secrecy concerning executions until December of 2007. The government limited itself to reporting only the number of executions without revealing the names of the executed. Executions were usually held during the summer or at the end of the year, when the Diet, the Japanese parliament, is not in session, thus avoiding the possibility of debate.
With the new Minister of Justice, Kunio Hatoyama, an outspoken supporter of the death penalty who took office in August 2007, the principles and taboos that Japan maintained with regard to capital punishment were systematically broken down.
In December 2007, with the first execution of the Fukuda government, then Justice Minister broke with the tradition of not publicizing them and announced the names and crimes of the three convicts being executed. The tradition of not carrying out executions while the Diet, Japan’s legislature, is in session in an attempt to avoid unnecessary controversies was also broken.
With the Yukio Hatoyama government entering office in September of 2009, the new Minister of Justice, Keiko Chibaha, called for a wide scale public debate on the possibility of abolishing the death penalty and that greater transparency would be applied to this issue in general. “I hope that people will focus on the issue and think about it, and that we can create some kind of forum for debate,” Keiko Chiba said on 30 September 2009. “I hope we can open things up little by little in some form or other, including by making information public and bringing execution venues into public view. I am aware that it is hard for debate to proceed without the public knowing any of the reality.”
On 27 August 2010, the Tokyo Detention House opened its execution chamber to the media, giving the public its first peek at the place where death-row inmates are hanged. The Justice Ministry organized the tour at the instructions of Justice Minister Keiko Chiba, who is trying to generate public debate on the death penalty. Officials of the detention house and the ministry escorted some 20 reporters to the execution chamber, which is part of a larger structure consisting of a chaplain chamber, front chamber, button chamber and attendant chamber. Reporters were first briefed in a conference room and then loaded onto a small, curtained bus for the trip to the execution chamber. Reporters were banned from speaking and from bringing anything other than pen and notebook. In the chaplain chamber, inmates can receive services from a chaplain appointed by the detention house. The room has a Buddhist altar, but Christian and Shinto arrangements can also be made upon request. Tea, fruit or sweets are also offered in the room, he said. Then they are escorted to the front chamber, where they are given a last chance to speak with the chaplain. It is in the front chamber where the chief of the detention house formally announces the execution. Inmates are then blindfolded, handcuffed in front and escorted to the execution chamber. A curtain is the only thing that separates the front and execution chambers, but it is usually closed, and inmates are unable to see the execution chamber and the rope dangling from the ceiling pulley and hooked to the floor. There was no rope visible in the execution chamber because “it is installed only when an execution is carried out,” officials said. In the execution chamber, the inmate’s legs are tied, the noose is tightened and the condemned stands on a trap door. The 30-minute tour showed the red square on the floor where a convict stands with a noose around their neck before the trapdoor opens beneath them. Then three officials enter a side room where there are three buttons. They push them at the same time so they don’t know which one actually springs the trapdoor. In the attendant chamber, officials view the execution chamber and the room below. In five minutes after a doctor confirms death, the corpse is lowered and put in a coffin.
In December 2011, the Justice Ministry said nearly half of death row inmates are on full-time medication for mental stress. Inmates on death row have complained of psychological symptoms such as insomnia and hallucinations and have been continuously treated with drugs, The Yomiuri Shimbun reported. Such symptoms can occur because of confinement in closed spaces for a long period of time, and since some inmates have been detained for more than 30 years. Under Japanese law, if a death row inmate is diagnosed as insane, the justice minister will order the suspension of the execution. However, a high-ranking ministry official has said no inmates currently on death row have been so diagnosed. “As far as we could tell, there are no death row inmates who are insane,” the official said.
From November 1989 to March 1993 there has been a de facto moratorium of executions, in part due to personal opposition to the death penalty by the then Minister of Justice acting. Since the mid-90s there has been a resurgence of the death penalty that continued to accelerate in the 2000’s.
After that in 2011, for the first time in nearly 20 years, no prisoner was put to death in Japan, 7 people were executed in 2012, and 3 were given death sentences, down 8 from the previous year.
Another 5 people were hanged in the first six months of 2013.
After these executions, the number of death row inmates dropped to 134.
Under the previous Liberal Democratic Party government, seven prisoners were hanged in 2009, 15 in 2008, nine in 2007 and four in 2006. This represents an unprecedented escalation, considering that from 1998 to 2005 there were only 16 executions, an average of two a year. Japan had a de facto moratorium on executions for 15 months until 2006 because the then-justice minister, Seiken Sugiura, said the death penalty went against his Buddhist beliefs.
The Ministry of Justice has been debating capital punishment since the Democratic Party of Japan took office in September 2009, after more than 50 years of nearly unbroken rule by conservatives. Minister of Justice, Keiko Chiba ordered and personally witnessed two hangings in July 2010 despite her opposition to capital punishment. Then Minister Toshio Ogawa, sent three inmates to the gallows in March 2012. He also scrapped an internal study panel in March 2012 and also cancelled plans to set up a broader discussion panel on the issue, arguing the pros and cons have been discussed sufficiently and that the ultimate decision should be left up to the public, of which the overwhelming majority supports the death sentence. Minister Makoto Taki sent four prisoners to gallows.
On 26 December 2012, Shinzo Abe was elected as Prime Minister by the Diet, following the Liberal Democratic Party's landslide victory in the 2012 general elections. New Justice Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki has expressed a positive stance toward executions. "The death penalty system has adequate grounds and I will perform my duties under relevant laws," he told a news conference.
After executions carried out in February 2013, justice minister Sadakazu Tanigaki said: "I ordered the executions after giving careful consideration to the matter. These were extremely cruel cases in which victims were deprived of their precious lives for very selfish reasons." Tanigaki made clear he has no intention for now of reviewing the system. He insisted any debate over capital punishment should be based on Japan’s “domestic situation,” including public sentiment and maintaining public order, rather than movements beyond Japan’s borders. “I am aware that there have been various debates over the death penalty, whether people are for or against it. But our nation has maintained this system from the viewpoint of deterrence, and the sentiment of the victims’ families,” Tanigaki said. “If there are problems, we must make improvements.”
On 7 February 2010, the Japanese government said over 85% of Japanese believe that the death penalty is necessary under certain circumstances. The poll showed that only 5.7% of the Japanese oppose the death penalty. The support for the death penalty has grown by 4 percentage points since 2004. The poll cited heinous crimes and the fear of rising crime after the abolition of capital punishment among key factors.
The government inflates support for the death penalty in its opinion surveys and a significant portion of those who favor capital punishment also say they would support abolishing it in the future, according to an information science expert. "It has been reported that more than 80 percent (of Japanese) approve the death penalty, but seen from an informatics perspective, it is unreasonable to make such a generalization," Fumiyasu Yamada, a professor of information science at Shizuoka University, said on 27 November 2012. In a December 2009 survey by the Cabinet Office, 85.6 percent said "the death penalty is unavoidable under certain circumstances," while 5.7 percent said "the death penalty should be abolished in all circumstances" and 8.6 percent said they "do not know." Yamada noted that 34.2 percent of those who said capital punishment is "unavoidable" also said in the same survey that the death penalty "may be abolished if circumstances change in the future." Given this figure, it is "natural to see that those who want the death penalty to be upheld comprise 50 percent, and those who want its elimination or a move toward elimination form slightly more than 30 percent," he said. Yamada also criticized one of the choices in the survey, that the death penalty "should be abolished in all circumstances," saying such an expression is "too strong" and thus "makes it hard for people to choose it." Posing such a question is "biased," he said. Yamada also said the survey isn't representative of the entire nation as questionnaires were collected only from about two-thirds of the people sampled.
On 31 October 2012, Japan was reviewed under the Universal Periodic Review of the UN Human Rights Council. On 14 March 2013, Japan rejected the recommendation made by more than 20 States regarding the death penalty, including introducing a moratorium on executions with a view to full abolition. Takashi Okada, Deputy Permanent Representative of Japan to the United Nations Office at Geneva, said that Japan did not think that it would be appropriate to abolish the death penalty.
On 20 December 2012, Japan voted against the Resolution on a Moratorium on the Use of the Death Penalty at the UN General Assembly.