Letter from Japan:This time last year, Japan's minister of justice was preparing what cynics later dubbed his Christmas present to three pensioners - death warrants. Fujinami Yoshio (75) was taken to the gallows in a wheelchair on December 25th, 2006, along with 77-year-old Akiyama Yoshimitsu, who was struggling to walk and partially blind, and Fukuoka Michio (64). All were appealing murder convictions.
A fourth man, convicted serial killer Hidaka Hiroaki, rejected appeals for a stay of execution, saying he wanted to die.
Some were expecting a repeat this year. Current justice minister Kunio Hatoyama has proved one of the most enthusiastic executioners in years. Thirteen people have been hanged over the last 12 months, a three-decade high. Hatoyama sparked a furore recently when he hinted at "automatic" executions, eliminating the need for his signed orders.
That call confirmed something long suspected: justice ministers here hate the flak that inevitably accompanies a hanging. It also acknowledged that the system is troubled by some ministers' lack of enthusiasm. The devoutly religious Sugiura Seiken, for example, refused to sign executions in 2006, allowing the number on death row to climb past 100 for the first time since the 1950s.
Japan is bucking a worldwide abolitionist trend: 133 countries have scrapped their execution chambers and a growing number are debating abolition. Paradoxically, support for the death penalty here is increasing. A recent government poll found for the first time more than 80 per cent of Japanese back it, a rise of 23 per cent since 1975.
The particular cruelties of death row in Japan have been widely criticised: inmates are deprived of contact with the outside world, a policy designed to "avoid disturbing their peace of mind", say officials; kept in solitary confinement, and forced to wait an average of more than seven years, and in one case four decades, in toilet-sized cells while the legal system grinds on.
Decisions about who is to be executed and when often seem arbitrary, but when the order eventually comes, implementation is swift. The condemned have literally minutes to settle their affairs before facing the noose. Because the death warrants can come at any time, the inmates, in effect, live each day believing it could be their last.
Japan's ultimate sanction has proved immune to condemnations from the Council of Europe, the United Nations and the country's own abolitionists. The criticism has mounted as the average age of the hanged rises along with the country's rapidly greying population.
Critics then have reacted with dismay to Hatoyama's renewed determination to not only keep what he calls the "foreign" abolitionist trend at bay, but to speed up the execution trend. His reason for doing so has the virtue of originality, if not logic. The Japanese state kills people, it seems, because it "places so much importance on the value of life", unlike the West.
"You see, the western nations are civilisations based on power and war," he explained recently to an Asahi Weekly interviewer. "So conversely, things are moving against the death penalty. The so-called civilisations 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."
Hatoyama has earned a reputation for arresting statements. In a summer press conference to explain why Japan was fingerprinting and photographing all foreigners entering the country, he justified the new system by saying a "friend of a friend" was involved in a bomb attack on the Indonesian island of Bali. But the Asahi interview has left people wondering whether Japan's top legal official is playing with a full deck.
At one point, he says that there are too many legal professionals trying to save people from being executed - this in one of the most famously under-lawyered societies in the world. Japan must avoid becoming like - you guessed it - the West. Why? "Japan is a civilisation of beauty and compassion, a civilisation of harmony," he explained. "The fact is, since the West is a very dry civilisation, it's all right there to take everything to court."
With the death row figure again above 100, expect to see Hatoyama in action again soon.
