JAPAN: Dead Men Walking - Japan's Death Penalty

. ITHACA, NY, USA / Japan Focus Weekly / March 22, 2009 The hangmen are undeterred by age, senility or handicap: The condemned include 86-year-old Ishida Tomizo, convicted of a 1973/4 rape and double-murder, ... Dead Men Walking: Japan’s Death Penalty David McNeill & C.M. Mason Japan’s death penalty is cruel, secretive and out of step with much of the developed world say its opponents. As a record 97 men and 5 women await the hangman’s noose, one man alive and free who knows its true horrors speaks. After breakfast on Christmas Day, 2006, three Japanese pensioners and a middle-aged former taxi-driver were given an hour to live. The men were told to clean their cells, say their prayers and write a will. Fujinami Yoshio, 75, scribbled a note to his supporters before he was taken to the gallows of the Tokyo Detention Center in a wheelchair. “I cannot walk by myself, I am ill and yet you still kill such a person,” he wrote. “I should be the last person executed.” Also struggling to walk and partially blind, Akiyama Yoshimitsu, 77, had to be helped by prison guards to the execution chamber. Both men were appealing their convictions for murder. Fujinami attacked his ex-wife’s family with a knife in Tochigi Prefecture in 1981, killing two of her brothers and robbing the family. His defense argued that he was addicted to amphetamines and had snapped after his in-laws prevented him from meeting his estranged wife. Akiyama was convicted of murdering a factory boss in Chiba in 1975 and robbing him of 10 million yen. For the rest of his life, he maintained that his brother Taro bore most responsibility for the crime. Fukuoka Michio, 64, also claimed he was innocent of killing three people, including his wife’s sister, in Kochi Prefecture over three years from 1978, protesting that the police forced his confession and ignored his alibi. The fourth man, 44-year-old Hidaka Hiroaki, was a serial killer who had lured four women, including a 16-year-old high-school student, into the taxi he drove in Hiroshima before raping, robbing and murdering them, all in 1996. He rejected his lawyer’s appeals for a stay of execution, saying he wanted to die. To continue reading, click here David McNeill writes regularly for the Chronicle of Higher Education, the London Independent and other publications. He is a Tokyo-based coordinator of Japan Focus. C. M. Mason is a freelance writer based in Tokyo. This article was written for The Japan Times, where it appeared on April 8, 2007. This revised version appeared at Japan Focus on April 28, 2007. Many thanks to Brian Victoria and William Drew for their comments on the original article. Sources Sakamoto Toshio, “Shikei wa ikani shikkou sareruka -- Moto keimukan ga akasu” (How an execution is conducted: recounted by a former prison guard), Publisher: Nihon Bungei sha. Menda Sakae Gokuchu Nooto – watashi no miokkuta shikeishu-tachi. Publisher: Impakutoo Shuppankai. ( Menda Sakae’s prison diary: The friends I lost). © 2002-2009 JapanFocus.org Related report Mainichi Daily News, Osaka, March 22, 2009 Reflections on the Death Penalty: An innocent man spared execution speaks