The May/​June issue of Foreign Policy mag­a­zine includes an arti­cle on the death penal­ty in Japan by Charles Lane, Supreme Court reporter for The Washington Post. Lane notes that Japan’s death penal­ty is shroud­ed in secre­cy and cul­mi­nates in exe­cu­tions out­side of all pub­lic view. He pro­vides read­ers with a rare look inside this sys­tem and com­pares that coun­try’s poli­cies with U.S. prac­tices and inter­na­tion­al trends.

The arti­cle, ​“A View to a Kill,” notes that although death sen­tences are slight­ly on the rise in Japan, it car­ries out only about two exe­cu­tions a year, far few­er than the 59 peo­ple exe­cut­ed in the U.S. in 2004. Japanese pris­on­ers await­ing exe­cu­tion do not know the date of their exe­cu­tion, and the only wit­ness­es to their hang­ings are rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the prosecutor’s office. 

(Foreign Policy, May/​June 2005). See Resources and International Death Penalty.

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