Japan Performed No Executions in 2023, Making U.S. the Only G7 Country to Use Capital Punishment Last Year

The United States and Japan are the only two reten­tion­ist coun­tries among the Group of Seven (G7) lead­ing indus­tri­al­ized democ­ra­cies. But Japan did not car­ry out any exe­cu­tions in 2023 and imposed just three new death sen­tences. The pause meant that the U.S. was the only G7 nation to per­form any exe­cu­tions in 2023.

Commentators have cit­ed a num­ber of rea­sons to explain the pause. Some have opined that Japanese offi­cials were con­cerned about height­ened inter­na­tion­al scruti­ny as Japan presided over the G7 in 2023. Others not­ed that the res­ig­na­tion of the jus­tice min­is­ter in 2022 made it polit­i­cal­ly dif­fi­cult to sched­ule exe­cu­tions in 2023. In 2022, Yasuhiro Hanashi was forced to resign as jus­tice min­is­ter after com­ing under fire for a remark he made about the death penal­ty. According to the Asahi Shimbun, ​“Hanashi made a joke out of his duty to autho­rize exe­cu­tions, effec­tive­ly say­ing it was the only time a jus­tice min­is­ter comes to nation­al atten­tion.” This made it polit­i­cal­ly dif­fi­cult for his suc­ces­sor, Ken Saito, to imme­di­ate­ly autho­rize exe­cu­tions. At the same time, JM Saito was also con­tend­ing with rev­e­la­tions that a num­ber of prison guards had assault­ed pris­on­ers, and sub­se­quent changes in the Japanese cab­i­net in 2023 also made the sched­ul­ing of exe­cu­tions a lesser priority.

Japanese law requires that the Justice Minister sched­ule an exe­cu­tion with­in six months of when a death sen­tence is final­ized, but in prac­tice, pris­on­ers spend an aver­age of about 15 years on death row while their sen­tences are reviewed. The coun­try cur­rent­ly has 106 peo­ple on death row; three pris­on­ers died on death row in 2023. Japan’s last exe­cu­tion took place on July 26, 2022, when Tomohiro Kato was hanged for killing sev­en peo­ple in a 2008 attack in Tokyo.

Japan’s death penal­ty law requires that exe­cu­tions must be car­ried out in utmost secre­cy. Death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers are kept in strict soli­tary con­fine­ment and mon­i­tored by 24-hour sur­veil­lance cam­eras. Prisoners are informed just one hour before their sen­tence is car­ried out, so their fam­i­lies and lawyers only learn about the exe­cu­tion after the fact. In November 2021, two death row pris­on­ers filed a law­suit with the Osaka District Court in which they demand­ed dam­ages for men­tal dis­tress based on the claim that ​“inform­ing death row inmates that their death sen­tence is to be car­ried out on the day of their deaths is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al and inhumane.” 

For sev­er­al years, the Japan Federation Bar Association has advo­cat­ed for a greater role for cap­i­tal defense coun­sel in death penal­ty cas­es and for abo­li­tion of the death penal­ty in gen­er­al, but sup­port for the death penal­ty in Japan remains high.