Hanging in Japan: What Occupation-era documents and a lay judge trial reveal about executions in the state that still kills in secret

Abstract

Japan’s secretive system of capital punishment means that little is known about what happens when people are hanged. This article uses information from recently discovered records about 46 persons who were hanged during the postwar Occupation of Japan and from a murder trial in Osaka in 2011 to describe several aspects of Japan’s execution process – including how long hangings last. This new evidence suggests that in Japan as in the United States, it may well be impossible to carry out executions humanely. Future revelations about Japan’s execution process could weaken the legitimacy of capital punishment in that country, but they might also lead to efforts to ‘humanize’ hangings or change execution methods, with the ultimate effect of making the death penalty more resistant to repeal.

Keywords

capital punishment death penalty executions hanging Japan secrecy

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

ACLU (2013) A death before dying: Solitary confinement on death row. New York: American Civil Liberties Union, 22 July, 1–14. Available at: http://www.aclu.org/files/assets/deathbeforedying-report.pdf.

Amnesty International (2009) Hanging by a thread: Mental health and the death penalty in Japan. London: Amnesty International (ASA 22/005/2009), September, 1–94. Available at: http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/ASA22/005/2009/en/acc1c64b-e5ed-425f-bb93-36be3ec25f59/asa220052009eng.pdf.

Asahi Shimbun (2014) Shikei to wa Moto Keimukan Shogen. Asahi Shimbun, 27 January (evening edn), 1.

Bedau

(2004) An abolitionist’s survey of the death penalty in America today. In: Bedau

Cassell

(eds) Debating the Death Penalty: Should America Have Capital Punishment? The Experts from Both Sides Make Their Case, New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 15–50.

Blecker R (2013) The Death of Punishment: Searching for Justice Among the Worst of the Worst. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Borg

Radelet

(2004) On botched executions. In: Hodgkinson

Schabas

(eds) Capital Punishment: Strategies for Abolition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 143–168.

Botsman

(2005) Punishment and Power in the Making of Modern Japan, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Camus

(1960) Reflections on the guillotine. Resistance, Rebellion, and Death, New York: Vintage Books, pp. 173–234.

Constitution of Japan (1947) Available at: http://www.kantei.go.jp/foreign/constitution_and_government_of_japan/constitution_e.html.

10.

Creque SA (1995) Killing with kindness: Capital punishment by nitrogen asphyxiation. National Review, 11 September, 51.

11.

Death Penalty Project, The, in association with Centre for Prisoners’ Rights (2013) The Death Penalty in Japan: A Report on Japan’s Legal Obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and an Assessment of Public Attitudes to Capital Punishment, London: The Death Penalty Project, pp. i–vi, 1–56.

12.

Denno

(2003) Lethally humane? The evolution of execution methods in the United States. In: Acker

Bohm

Lanier

(eds) America’s Experiment with Capital Punishment: Reflections on the Past, Present, and Future of the Ultimate Penal Sanction, Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, pp. 693–762.

13.

Denno

(2009a) For execution methods challenges, the road to abolition is paved with paradox. In: Ogletree

CJ, Jr

Sarat

(eds) The Road to Abolition: The Future of Capital Punishment in the United States, New York: New York University Press, pp. 183–214.

14.

Denno

(2009b) The future of execution methods. In: Lanier

Bowers

Acker

(eds) The Future of America’s Death Penalty: An Agenda for the Next Generation of Capital Punishment Research, Durham, NC: Carolina Academic Press, pp. 483–497.

15.

Dower

(1999) Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II, New York: WW Norton.

16.

EPR Law News (2009) Is there a more humane way to kill? EPR Law News, 22 June. Available at: http://www.express-press-release.net/62/Is%20There%20A%20More%20Humane%20Way%20To%20Kill.php.

17.

Fernandez M (2013) From America’s busiest death chamber, a catalog of last rants, pleas, and apologies. New York Times, 29 June.

18.

Forum 90 [Newsletter] (2007) Saikin no Shikei Shikko. Forum 90, Tokyo, January.

19.

Fuse

(2008) Amerika de Shikei o Mita, Tokyo: Gendaijinbunsha.

20.

Garland

(1990) Punishment and Modern Society: A Study in Modern Theory, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

21.

Garland

(2010) Peculiar Institution: America’s Death Penalty in an Age of Abolition, Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

22.

Gawande

(2007) The doctors of the death chamber. Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance, New York: Picador, pp. 130–153.

23.

Goldberg-Hiller

Johnson

(2013) Time and punishment. Quinnipiac Law Review 31(3): 621–676.

24.

Gottfredson

Hirschi

(1990) A General Theory of Crime, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

25.

Greenhouse

(1989) Just in time: Temporality and the cultural legitimation of law. Yale Law Journal 98(8): 1631–1651.

26.

Harrington

(2013) The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

27.

Hill

PBE

(2003) The Japanese Mafia: Yakuza, Law, and the State, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

28.

Honolulu Star-Advertiser (2013) Court orders Mitsubishi to pay Koreans’ descendants. Honolulu Star-Advertiser, 31 July, A5.

29.

Hood

Hoyle

(2008) The Death Penalty: A Worldwide Perspective, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

30.

Horikawa

(2011) Sabakareta Inochi: Shikeishu kara Todoita Tegami, Tokyo: Kodansha.

31.

Horikawa K (2012) Koshukei wa Zangyaku ka [two parts]. Sekai 825(January): 63–72 and 827(February): 122–131.

32.

Japan Times (2013a) Scholar finds archive details of ’48 war criminal hangings. Japan Times, 12 June.

33.

Japan Times (2013b) Slaying of five in Yamaguchi Hamlet triggers manhunt. Japan Times, 23 July.

34.

Johnson

(2002) The Japanese Way of Justice: Prosecuting Crime in Japan, New York: Oxford University Press.

35.

Johnson

(2006) Where the state kills in secret: Capital punishment in Japan. Punishment & Society 8(3): 251–285.

36.

Johnson

(2008) The homicide drop in postwar Japan. Homicide Studies 12(1): 146–160.

37.

Johnson DT (2010) Capital punishment without capital trials in Japan’s lay judge system. Asia Pacific Journal 8(52): 1–38. Available at: http://www.japanfocus.org/-David_T_-Johnson/3461.

38.

Johnson

(2011a) American capital punishment in comparative perspective. Law & Social Inquiry 36(4): 1033–1061.

39.

Johnson DT (2011b) Shikei wa Tokubetsu ka? Amerika no Shippai kara Erareru Kyokun. Sekai 823(November): 280–291.

40.

Johnson

Zimring

(2009) The Next Frontier: National Development, Political Change, and the Death Penalty in Asia, New York: Oxford University Press.

41.

Kaufman-Osborn

(2006) A critique of contemporary death penalty abolitionism. Punishment & Society 8(3): 365–383.

42.

Kaufman-Osborn

(2009) Perfect execution: Abolitionism and the paradox of lethal injection. In: Ogletree

Jr Sarat

(eds) The Road to Abolition: The Future of Capital Punishment in the United States, New York: New York University, pp. 215–251.

43.

Law

(2009) The anatomy of a conservative court: Judicial review in Japan. Texas Law Review 87(7): 1545–1594.

44.

Law Office of Sadato Goto, The (2013) http://sgotolaw.com/jd.html.

45.

Levin M and Tice V (2009) Japan’s new citizen judges: How secrecy imperils reform. The Asia-Pacific Journal 19-6-09 (9 May). Available at: http://www.japanfocus.org/-Virginia-Tice/3141#sthash.xF3wp8rn.dpuf.

46.

Mainichi Japan (2011) Japan court deliberates hanging’s unconstitutionality. Mainichi Japan, 11 October.

47.

Mainichi Shimbun (2013a) Shikei no Jittai: Kobunsho ni. Mainichi Shimbun, 7 April.

48.

Mainichi Shimbun (2013b) Pachinkoten Hoka: ‘Kiwamete Zangyaku’ 2shin mo Shikei: Osaka Kosai Hanketsu. Mainichi Shimbun, 31 July.

49.

Mainichi Shimbun (2013c) Pachinkoten Hoka: Koshukei: Gokensei Mitome, Kokkai de no Giron Unagasu. Mainichi Shimbun, 31 July.

50.

Martschukat

(2009) ‘No improvement over electrocution or even a bullet’: Lethal injection and the meaning of speed and reliability in the modern execution process. In: Ogletree

CJ, Jr

Sarat

(eds) The Road to Abolition: The Future of Capital Punishment in the United States, New York: New York University, pp. 252–278.

51.

Matsui S (2011) Justice for the accused or justice for victims? The protection of victims’ rights in Japan. Asia Pacific Law & Policy Journal 13: 54–95. Available at: http://blog.hawaii.edu/aplpj/files/2012/02/APLPJ_13-1_Matsui.pdf.

52.

Mayer J (2013) Torture and Obama’s drone program. The New Yorker blog, 15 February. Available at: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2013/02/torture-and-obamas-drone-program.html.

53.

Messuti

(2008) Time as Punishment, Aurora, CO: The Davies Group Publishers.

54.

Nagata

(2013) GHQ Bunsho ga Kataru Nihon no Shikei Shikko: Kobunsho kara Semaru Koshukei no Jittai, Tokyo: Gendaijinbunsha.

55.

Nakagawa Tomomasa

Bengodan

Rabl

(2011) Koshukei wa Zangyaku na Keibatsu de wa nai no ka? Shimbun to Hoigaku ga Kataru Shinjitsu, Tokyo: Gendaijinbunsha.

56.

New York Commission on Capital Punishment (1888) Report of the Commission to Investigate and Report the Most Humane and Practical Method of Carrying into Effect the Sentence of Death in Capital Cases: Transmitted to the Legislature of New York, January 17, 1888, New York: The Troy Press.

57.

Nonet

Selznick

(1978) Law and Society in Transition: Toward Responsive Law, New York: Harper & Row.

58.

Radelet M (2010) Examples of post-Furman botched executions. Available at: http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/some-examples-post-furman-botched-executions.

59.

Rountree

(2012) ‘I’ll make them shoot me’: Accounts of death row prisoners advocating for execution. Law & Society Review 46(3): 589–622.

60.

Sarat

(2001) When the State Kills: Capital Punishment and the American Condition, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

61.

Sarat

Blumstein

Jones

Richard

Sprung-Keyser

Weaver

(2013) Botched executions and the struggle to end capital punishment: A twentieth-century story. Law & Social Inquiry 38(3): 694–720.

62.

Sarat A, Jones A, Sprung-Keyser M, Blumstein K, Richard H and Weaver R (2012) Gruesome spectacles: The cultural reception of botched executions in America, 1890–1920. British Journal of American Legal Studies 1(1): 1–30.

63.

Shikei Haishi Nempo (2012) Shikei Haishi Nempo, Tokyo: Impakuto.

64.

Shinomiya S (2010) Defying experts’ predictions, identifying themselves as sovereign: Citizens’ responses to their service as lay judges in Japan. Social Science Japan 43(September): 8–13.

65.

Shinomiya

(2012) Kokumin o Ningen teki – Jindo teki Handan kara Tozakete Iru Mono wa Nani ka: Koshukei no Zangyakusei ga Arasowareta Saibanin Saiban no Igi. Horitsu Jiho 84(2): 1–3.

66.

Shukan Shincho (2013) Tokyo Kochisho ‘Shikeishu’ Sorezore no Dokkyobo. Shukan Shincho, 25 July, 58–61.

67.

Sugimoto

(2010) An Introduction to Japanese Society, New York: Cambridge University Press.

68.

Tavuchis

(1991) Mea Culpa: A Sociology of Apology and Reconciliation, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

69.

Treadwell

Vernon

(2001) Last Suppers: Famous Final Meals from Death Row, Seattle, WA: Amazon Digital Services.

70.

Turow

(2003) Ultimate Punishment: A Lawyer’s Reflections on Dealing with the Death Penalty, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

71.

Vollum

(2007) Last Words and the Death Penalty: Voices of the Condemned and Their Co-Victims, El Paso, TX: LFB Scholarly Publishing.

72.

Weil E (2007) The needle and the damage done. New York Times Magazine, 11 February, 46–51.

73.

Welsh N (2012) The death penalty is experiencing technical difficulties: Your execution may not resume shortly. Pacific Standard, November/December, 48–53.

74.

Wingersky

(1954) Report of the Royal Commission on Capital Punishment (1949–1953): A review. Journal of Criminal Law & Criminology 44(6): 695–715.

75.

Yamaguchi

Miyaji

(2011) Saikosai no Anto: Shosuiken ga Jidai o Kirihiraku, Tokyo: Asahi Shimbun Shuppan.

76.

Baze v. Rees, 553 US 35 (2008).

77.

Fierro v. Gomez, 865 F Supp 1387 (1994).

78.

Glass v. Louisiana, 471 US 1080 (1985).

79.

Supreme Court of Japan. 1948 (12 March). 2–3 Keishu 191.

80.

Supreme Court of Japan. 1948 (23 June). 2–7 Keishu 777.