Japan carried out its first execution in more than a year on Friday, hanging Sunao Takami, a 58-year-old man convicted of setting fire to a pachinko parlour in Osaka in 2009, killing four customers and one employee. Takami had doused the gaming venue, located near his home, with petrol before igniting it. A panel of three judges and a six-member jury rejected defence arguments that he was mentally ill at the time of the crime, and he was sentenced to death in 2011. Justice Minister Hiroshi Hiraguchi confirmed the execution, saying the incident had "resulted in extremely serious consequences" and had "instilled a deep sense of fear" in society. As is standard practice in Japan, Takami was informed of his impending execution only on the morning it was carried out — a policy the justice minister defended by saying earlier notification could cause prisoners undue emotional suffering.

Pachinko parlours are a widespread feature of Japanese social life, combining elements of pinball and slot machines using small steel balls. The execution is the first carried out under the current Takaichi administration. Japan's previous hanging took place in June 2025, when Takahiro Shiraishi — known as the "Twitter killer" — was put to death for the 2017 murders and dismemberment of nine people, crimes that came to light when police discovered body parts in the city of Zama, near Tokyo.

Japan and the United States are the only G7 nations that still practise capital punishment. Public support for the death penalty in Japan remains high: a 2024 government survey found 83 per cent of respondents considered it "unavoidable," though support for abolition has grown, rising to 17 per cent from 9 per cent five years earlier. The broader global picture is stark — Amnesty International reported in May that recorded executions worldwide rose 78 per cent in 2025 to 2,707, the highest figure the organisation has documented since 1981, driven largely by a dramatic surge in Iran.

Rights groups have long criticised Japan's capital punishment system on several grounds. Although Japanese law requires executions to be carried out within six months of a final verdict, in practice inmates often spend years or decades in solitary confinement, with serious consequences for their mental health. Transparency has also been an issue: the justice ministry only began disclosing the names of executed prisoners in 2007. Wrongful convictions have further shadowed the system — most notably, Iwao Hakamada spent decades on death row for a 1966 quadruple murder before being released in 2014 and fully exonerated in 2024 at the age of 88, after a court found that investigators had tampered with evidence and subjected him to "inhumane interrogations." He was the fifth death-row inmate granted a retrial in post-war Japan; all four previous cases also ended in exoneration.