02.01.08
Japan hangs three convicts
Japan hangs three convicts reports HS today.
Just a slightly funny anecdote in an otherwise not-at-all funny situation. The reporter didn’t think too closely to what s/he was writing: “Edellisen kerran hirttotuomioita pantiin täytäntöön Japanissa joulukuun alussa, jolloin myös hirtettiin kolme kuolemaan tuomittua.” In English, word for word: “The previous time hanging sentences were executed in Japan was in the beginning of December when also three persons sentenced to death were hung.” Did anyone think that they just hang random people in Japan? I agree Japan is one of the modern countries that put others in disgrace with legal capital punishment, but even the Japanese restrict their hanging to people that have already been centenced to death. So wasn’t that a little junny to write that they killed people who were to be killed? And even further; that the last time they killed people was when they killed people… duh. Anyway, we got it. And Amnesty International has issued an urgent appeal to stop death penalty in Japan. It has been said that the hangings were possibly deliberately timed for the 62nd anniversary of the dropping the Nagasaki atom bomb in WW II. Executions in Japan are often scheduled during on holidays to avoid public discussion of capital punishment.
There are probably more than one reason to why Japan hasn’t abolished the death penalty. Explanations range from increased foreign gangs and rise in crime rates, the infamous Aum sect that released sarine gas in the Tokyo subway system (and nine of its members were executed – as a response to public demand?) to Buddhist politicians who have refused to ratify executions because of their religious beliefs.
Hanging has been the only form the state can administer capital punishment in Japan since the late ninteenth century, when, after the Tokugawa period, Imperial rule was reinstated and a general need for modernizing the country was established. Before that, for almost throughout Japan’s history, various forms of death penalty has been almost the norm, not unlike in Medieval Europe. In both places confession was squeezed out with the help of torture, which in Japan was necessary since a confession was a prerequisite for legal execution, which in Japan took forms of boiling, burning, crusifiction, and several forms of beheading. There has been, however, a peaceful and de facto abolitionist era (810-1156) in Japan’s history, namely the Heian era, thus becoming the known world’s first to seize capital punishment. Unfortunately, this changed after a violent rebellion, and the during the following Kamakura and Tokugawa periods (until 1867), the seven centuries under samurai rule, almost all crimes, from petty, were punishable by death. Executions became highly public to prop the ruler’s power, and the Englishmen who sailed ashore in search for gold and trade in the 1600’s found this practice appalling. (And think of Europe at that time – they weren’t exactly from the most pacifist place themselves.)
Back to modern times.
Japan’s justice minister, Kunio Hatoyama says: “As the Japanese place so much importance on the value of life, it is thought that one should pay with one’s own life for taking the life of another. You see, the Western nations are civilizations based on power and war. So, conversely, things are moving against the death penalty. This is an important point to understand. The so-called civilizations of power and war are the opposite of us. From incipient stages, their conception of the value of life is weaker than the Japanese. Therefore, they are moving toward abolition of the death penalty.
It is important that this discourse on civilizations be understood.”
All clear? asks David McNeill in Japan Times today (at where I quoted the above). The same article priovides a link to a translitteration of the Justice Minister’s full answer.
The Heian era didn’t formally abolish death penalty, but Buddhism, introduced from China around that time, may have contributed to a peacful period in Japan’s otherwise violent history. The Japanese of today don’t see themselves as religious. Still politicians who are former Buddhist priests have been keystones at stopping or at least postponing executing death sentences. Should one hope for more Buddhist influence in Japanese society? At least it is a pacifist religion, and it also seemed to do the trick in the past.
