Today’s executions are also the first under Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who assumed the office of Prime Minister in October and won a general election in the same month.

Japan executes three people

December 21, 2021 5:16 PM

As the world gears up for Christmas festivities, Japan executed three prisoners on death row today.

Lethal injection table

These executions are reportedly the first since December 2019 when two individuals Koichi Shoji, 64 and Yasunori Suzuki, 50, at Fukuoka Detention Centre received the death penalty.

Today’s executions are also the first under Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who assumed the office of Prime Minister in October and won a general election in the same month.

The latest persons to be executed are not known, the identity of the three prisoners have not yet been released.

With more than 100 inmates awaiting execution in Japan, the country has come under the spotlight as one of the few countries still using the death penalty in the world.

Although Amnesty International has decried Japan’s ‘shocking disregard for human life’ with respect to the death penalty, public support for capital punishment in Japan remains high.

Japan executed 3 inmates in 2019 and 15 in 2018 -- including 13 from the Aum Shinrikyo cult that carried out a fatal 1995 sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway killing twelve people and injuring over 5,000.

Executions are always by hanging and usually enforced after lengthy sentences.

In December 2020, a top court in Japan reversed a ruling which blocked the retrial of Iwao Hakamada, he is described as the world's longest-serving death row inmate and is 85-year-old.

Hakamada has lived under a death sentence for over 50 years after being convicted of robbing and murdering his boss, his boss’s wife, and their two teenaged children.

Deputy chief cabinet secretary Seiji Kihara refused to deny or confirm news about the executions of the three. However, he did speak out on the future of the death penalty in Japan.

"Whether to keep the death sentence system or not is an important issue that concerns the foundation of Japan's criminal justice system," he said.