Japan Hangs Man in First Execution of 2026, Joining U.S. as Only G7 Nations to Execute

On August 21, 2026, Japan hanged Sunao Takami for the killing of five peo­ple. The exe­cu­tion is not only the first of the year for the nation but also the first car­ried out under Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s gov­ern­ment. Aside from the United States, Japan is the only oth­er G7 coun­try to retain use of the death penal­ty. 

In 2009, Mr. Takami was con­vict­ed of set­ting fire to a pachinko par­lor in Osaka, killing five peo­ple and injur­ing 10. Despite his defense team argu­ing that Mr. Takami was men­tal­ly ill at the time, he was con­vict­ed of attempt­ed mur­der and arson and sen­tenced to death by the Osaka District Court in 2011. The Supreme Court reject­ed his appeals and upheld his death sen­tence in 2016. 

According to the Associated Press, Justice Minister Hiroshi Hiraguchi char­ac­ter­ized the crime as ​“deal[ing] a major shock and fear to the soci­ety” in a news con­fer­ence fol­low­ing Mr. Takami’s exe­cu­tion. He explained that ​“the vic­tims whose lives were tak­en away must have felt unimag­in­able pain and fear, and those who suf­fered injuries … were forced to live with long-term effects.” Critics ques­tioned the tim­ing of Mr. Takami’s exe­cu­tion dur­ing a par­lia­men­tary recess, describ­ing it as a strate­gic move to avoid pub­lic debate; how­ev­er, Justice Minister Hiraguchi denied that the tim­ing was inten­tion­al. Executions in Japan are car­ried out under secre­tive con­di­tions, with pris­on­ers only being noti­fied that they are to be exe­cut­ed on the morn­ing of their exe­cu­tion, and very few details are pub­licly released after exe­cu­tions take place. During the news con­fer­ence, Justice Minister Hiraguchi respond­ed to ques­tions regard­ing the min­i­mal infor­ma­tion that is released to the pub­lic fol­low­ing an exe­cu­tion. He said that the gov­ern­ment did not intend on chang­ing its secre­tive prac­tice, say­ing that releas­ing fur­ther details about an exe­cu­tion would dis­turb the men­tal state of oth­er death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers, accord­ing to the AP. 

According to Justice Minister Hiraguchi, there are 100 death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers in Japan, 43 of whom are seek­ing retri­als. Prior to Mr. Takami’s exe­cu­tion, Japan’s last exe­cu­tion was that of Takahiro Shiraishi on June 27, 2025, which had marked the resump­tion of exe­cu­tions after a near­ly three-year hia­tus. At the time, Chiara Sangiorgio, Death Penalty Advisor at Amnesty International called the exe­cu­tion of Mr. Shiraishi the ​“lat­est cal­lous attack on the right to life in Japan.” In a state­ment, she added that the ​“secre­cy that con­tin­ues to sur­round the noti­fi­ca­tion of exe­cu­tions make the use of this pun­ish­ment in Japan addi­tion­al­ly cru­el” and called for an imme­di­ate mora­to­ri­um and com­mu­ta­tion of all death sen­tences. Following the exon­er­a­tion of Iwao Hakamada in 2024 after spend­ing 46 years on death row, calls for abo­li­tion in Japan have grown, although Justice Minister Hiraguchi cit­ed sur­veys show­ing strong sup­port for the death penal­ty in the news con­fer­ence fol­low­ing Mr. Takami’s execution.