Japan is the only G7 country, apart from the United States, that retains the right to legally execute its own citizens. Shiraishi\u2019s hanging was quickly condemned by the European Union. Japan responds to such criticism by pointing to the death penalty\u2019s popularity with the public: a survey<\/a> published earlier this year found support at over 83 per cent.<\/p>\n But the system has been thrown into crisis by the final acquittal last year of Iwao Hakamada<\/a>, often called the world\u2019s longest-serving death-row inmate. The former boxer was convicted of murdering a family of four in 1968 and spent nearly half a century waiting in a small cell to be hanged on fabricated evidence. <\/p>\n His release, and revelations about his life behind bars, which pushed him into mental illness, triggered a rare media debate<\/a> about the gallows and the difficulty of reversing a miscarriage of justice. Hakamada is one of only five prisoners released from Japan\u2019s death row since 1945. <\/p>\n Nearly half of the 105 people on death row in Japan are appealing for a retrial, according to Yuji Ogawara of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations (JFBA). \u201cThere are surely more cases where innocent people have been executed,\u201d he says. \u201cThe only way to avoid such mistakes is to abolish the death penalty.\u201d <\/p>\n Since Hakamada\u2019s acquittal, a panel of politicians, prosecutors and senior police, under the initiative of the JFBA, have recommended setting up an official parliamentary body to \u201cfundamentally re-examine\u201d capital punishment, but the government has yet to agree. There is little expectation that right-wing prime minister Sanae Takaichi will get behind an inquiry. <\/p>\n In the meantime, death penalty abolitionists are gathering in Tokyo<\/a> this weekend to demand Japan and the rest of East Asia scrap the state\u2019s ultimate sanction. \u201cThe trend toward abolition worldwide is irreversible,\u201d says Raphael Chenuil-Hazan, who leads Together Against the Death Penalty, a French lobby group. \u201cLike slavery and torture, the abolition of the death penalty is inevitable.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite competition from the Middle East, particularly Iran<\/a> and Saudi Arabia, governments in East Asia execute more people than anywhere else in the world. That\u2019s largely thanks to China, the world\u2019s leading executioner<\/a>, according to Amnesty International. While data on Chinese executions is kept secret, many estimates put the number at several thousand a year.<\/p>\n Just 20 nations use the death penalty on a regular basis, and only a handful of democracies \u2013 notably Japan, India and the US. <\/p>\n US president Donald Trump used an executive order to reinstate the federal death penalty on his first day office in January, but long-term public opinion<\/a> appears to be moving against its use nationwide.<\/p>\n![\"Death](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/CDP6IV54IEMZMXQ4QYA7ANYV3I.jpg\")
Death row inmate Iwao Hakamada (L), flanked by his sister Hideko, was released from Tokyo Detention House after serving more than 30 years. Photograph: Kyodo\/Reuters <\/p>\n