Japan hanged three men yesterday, ending a 20-month moratorium and effectively terminating a nascent debate on the country’s controversial death penalty.
Justice minister Toshio Ogawa said that Japanese law stipulated he sign off on hangings and the public strongly supported them. “I ordered these men’s executions to fulfill my responsibility,” he said. Japan is one of the last advanced countries to retain the death penalty.
The executed men were all convicted of multiple murders. Former transport worker Yasuaki Uwabe (48) went on a rampage in a train station 13 years ago, killing five people and injuring 10.
Tomoyuki Furusawa (46) broke into the home of his in-laws, where his wife was sheltering from his abuse. He murdered her parents and 12-year-old son before kidnapping her in a 2002 crime that shocked Japan. Yasutoshi Matsuda (44) robbed and murdered two women in 2001.
The deaths were condemned by Amnesty International and the head of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, Kenji Utsunomiya: “Executions should be immediately suspended so that capital punishment can be debated nationally,” he said.
