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DEATH PENALTY-JAPAN: Lone Voices in a Land of Hardening Views

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Sep 27 2007 (IPS) - For years after his brother was killed in January 1982, Masaharu Harada, 57, says he grappled not only with the trauma of personal loss but also with deep anger and hatred for the perpetrator.

Then the opportunity came to express his feelings. “I decided to visit the murderer in prison to yell at him, telling him how much I hated him. But when confronted with his anguished apologies, I felt my anger change to inexplicable sadness for him. Suddenly, at that moment, I was filled with a sense of relief,” Harada told IPS.

That powerful, enduring change in his feelings is what Harada is now trying hard to convey to the Japanese public. Anti-death penalty activists welcome the move. They hope he will help soften what they see as hardening support for the death penalty in a country shocked by recent gruesome killings.

Harada is now a firm abolitionist. Not only did that fateful prison visit in August 1993 change his mind about capital punishment, but his experience afterwards strengthened his conviction. The convicted killer, Toshihiko Hasegawa, 51, who became a Christian before he was hanged in 2001, wrote to him telling of the cruelty he endured on death row.

“I learned from Hasegawa how for months he waited out his hanging in isolation. His family was barred from visiting him. My requests for more meetings were turned down. Such treatment is inhuman and does not make me feel better,” he said.

Harada, who lives alone in Aichi Prefecture in central Japan, launched this June the Japan chapter of Ocean, an organisation based in the U.S. that works to bring together crime victims and the perpetrators in the hope both can move “beyond the feelings of hatred”.

“The kind of work done by Ocean is badly needed in Japan where meetings between bereaved family members and the criminals are rare. We believe face-to-face meetings will bring transparency to Japan’s secretive death penalty system,” Misako Yagishita, heading Amnesty Japan’s anti-death penalty campaign, said.

Activists who have spoken to family members of hanged prisoners have compiled a chilling picture of Japan’s death row. Some of the inmates are left languishing for decades on death row before being hanged. Executions are carried out secretly. There is no prior warning of the day of execution. Inmates are told they will be executed only hours before. Embarrassed relatives rarely collect the bodies.

Harada said he supported such a system until his own experience, believing in the traditional Japanese view that criminals should be ostracised from society.

Another voice calling for a change of attitudes towards convicted killers is Dr Masami Hirayama, a mental health specialist. He has long campaigned for better rights for the mentally ill, accusing the government of failing to provide psychological treatment for death row inmates. This is tantamount to denying them a fair trial.

“There is obviously a huge need out there for criminals who have committed murder because of their mental health problems. Handing down death sentences on these people without giving them proper medical treatment is wrong,” he told IPS.

But more emotional support was needed for both sides of crime – the relatives of the victims, as well as the convicted, he said.

Hirayama runs a non-profit organisation, Grief Care Support, providing counselling and advice for such people. Lack of similar such schemes in Japan was an indication of the ignorance of the rights of people with mental problems, he said.

Many other psychiatrists would agree.

As a clear example of a criminal with a mental disorder, they name Shoko Asahara, the cult leader sentenced to death by hanging in 2004 for masterminding the Tokyo underground attack. The deadly sarin nerve gas the cult released on subway in 1995 killed 12 commuters and injured thousands.

Asahara’s defence team have often raised the question of his mental health. They appealed his death sentence on the grounds that he was mentally ill. But in August last year, a court-appointed psychiatrist who examined Asahara found he could be feigning mental illness and was fit to stand trial.

Asahara’s appeal against his death sentence was turned down by the Japanese Supreme Court in September 2006. Several other cult leaders have also been sentenced to death.

Anti-death penalty activists believe the case is the biggest single barrier to the abolition of the death penalty in Japan. A 2005 survey of public opinion showed that support for the death penalty has been rising steadily. For the first time it topped 80 percent – a rise of 23 percent since 1975.

Since then, abolition activists have noted growing public sympathy for Hiroshi Motomura, 31, a family victim of a capital crime, campaigning for the death sentence. Motomura’s wife was raped and she and her daughter killed in 1999.

In May, the Japanese Supreme Court ordered the life sentence for the convicted killer in the case to be reviewed by the Hiroshima High Court, instructing it to take into consideration the death penalty.

Activists are watching with concern the workings of a new law that will allow crime victims to testify in court against defendants. Many lawyers believe that that the emotional testimony could work against the defendants in capital cases and lead to more death sentences. The law was approved by the Japanese Diet in June.

The appointment of Japan’s new justice minister, Kunio Hatoyama is a reflection of the current pro-death penalty trend in Japan, some activists say. Hatoyama, a hawkish, open supporter of the death penalty, has promised a safer society and a crackdown on crime.

There are currently 103 prisoners on death row, according to Amnesty Japan. In April there were three hangings, followed by three more this August.

Japan and the U.S. are the only two major industrialised countries still retaining the death penalty.