Public opinion and the death penalty in Japan
| Author | Viviana Andreescu,Tom “Tad” Hughes |
| DOI | 10.1177/1462474520915572 |
| Date | 01 December 2020 |
| Published date | 01 December 2020 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Public opinion and the
death penalty in Japan
Viviana Andreescu and
Tom “Tad” Hughes
University of Louisville, USA
Abstract
Based on the Japanese General Social Survey conducted in 2010 on a representative
sample of adults, the present analysis intends to identify the factors more likely to
predict variations in death penalty attitudes in Japan. Compared to death penalty
proponents, those who oppose capital punishment are less likely to express punitive
attitudes in general and to be dissatisfied with government expenditures on crime
control. Relative to retentionists, abolitionists tend to have a higher level of social
trust, show a higher level of support for public participation in the criminal justice
process, are more likely to practice a religion, and are younger. Instrumental factors,
such as victimization and fear of crime, symbolic factors, such as institutional trust, trust
in the judiciary, and the police, as well as gender do not differentiate death penalty
opponents from supporters. The results of the multinomial logistic regression show
that residents who did not express agreement or disagreement with the death penalty
have more in common with those who oppose capital punishment than with those who
favor it. Although the majority of the population (65.2%) expressed support for death
penalty, one in four respondents (26.1%) remained ambivalent regarding the use of
capital punishment. Additionally, most of those who expressed an opinion (50.5%) said
they would hesitate to recommend death, if chosen to serve in the newly instituted
citizen judge system. Findings suggest that public support for death penalty is not as
strong in the country as the Japanese government claims and that it requires further
exploration.
Keywords
capital punishment, death penalty, Japan, public opinion, punitive attitudes
Corresponding author:
Viviana Andreescu, Department of Criminal Justice, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY, USA.
Email: viviana.andreescu@louisville.edu
Punishment & Society
2020, Vol. 22(5) 573–595
!The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1462474520915572
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Introduction
On 4 October 2015, after 46 years on death row, Masaru Okuni shi passed away at
a medical prison in Japan. He was 89 years old. Okunishi has been sentenced to
death in 1969 based on circumstantial evidence and a forced confession he later
retracted. He was accused of fatally poisoning 5 women, including his own wife,
and of injuring 12 other persons, who, while attending a gathering in Nabari, Mie
Prefecture, drank wine contaminated with pesticide. First arrested on suspicion of
murder in 1961, Okunishi was acquitted of all charges in 1964, due to lack of
evidence. However, the prosecution appealed the District Court ruling and in
1969, a higher court reversed the initial verdict and declared him guilty of multiple
murders, despite inconclusive forensic evidence. Okunishi never ceased to claim his
innocence, but all his eight retrial requests have been rejected by the court
(Amnesty International, 2015).
At the time of this writing, based on data provided by Japan’s Innocence and
Death Penalty Information Center (JIADEP), there were 122 death row inmates in
Japan. Eight of these defendants are women, six were minors when they committed
the crime, and at the prosecution’s appeal, eleven individuals had their original
sentence reversed from life imprisonment to death. Since 1945, only four confirmed
death sentences have been overturned in Japan (JIADEP, 2020).
Although centuries ago Japan was the first country in the world to abolish the
death penalty and there were no executions between 810 and 1156 (Sato, 2014: 21),
the country is now part of a minority of states that retain capital punishment in law
and in practice. Within the Group of Seven largest advanced economies in the
world, United States and Japan are the only developed democracies that are also
death penalty countries. However, 20 US states have abolished capital punishment
and 4 states have gubernatorial moratoria on death penalty. Additionally, the
majority of states (31 out of 50) plus three jurisdictions (District of Columbia,
Federal Government, and Military) did not carry out an execution in at least
10 years (Death Penalty Information Center, 2019). Between 1989 and 1993,
Japan had a 40-month moratorium on executions as well (Johnson, 2005;
Zimring and Johnson, 2008) and the average annual number of executions in
the country is relatively low. However, different from the United States, where
death penalty has been a contested issue for several decades, the debate about
death penalty in Japan is much more limited and the Japanese public’s interest
in death penalty issues is low (Bacon et al., 2017; Johnson, 2005, 2016; Sato, 2014).
Johnson (2005: 253) argues that this is mostly a result of “the state’s deliberative
policy to keep the public uniformed about how, when, and why it kills.” Moreover,
if in United States social scientists examined systematically the potential crime-
deterrent effect of capital punishment and documented the arbitrariness and the
injustices that occurred in the administration of death penalty (Lambert et al.,
2011), similar studies meant to shape public attitudes toward the ultimate punish-
ment have not been conducted in Japan (Sato, 2014).
574 Punishment & Society 22(5)
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