Yes, Japan still has the death penalty. It is one of only two G7 countries that continues to execute people, alongside the United States, and executions resumed in June 2025 after a nearly three-year pause. More than 100 people currently sit on death row, and courts continue to hand down new death sentences.1Japanese Law Translation Database System. Penal Code – English – Japanese Law Translation
What Crimes Can Bring a Death Sentence
On paper, nineteen offenses across the Penal Code and special legislation can lead to a death sentence. In practice, almost every death sentence in modern Japan involves murder, usually with multiple victims or exceptional brutality. The Penal Code covers homicide, robbery resulting in death, arson of an occupied building, insurrection, foreign aggression, derailing a train that kills someone, and poisoning a public water supply where a death results. Separate statutes add offenses such as using explosives to kill, aircraft hijacking resulting in death, and piracy causing death.2Cabinet Office of Japan. Penal Code (Act No. 45 of 1907)
Only one offense carries a mandatory death sentence: conspiring with a foreign state to launch an armed attack against Japan. For every other capital crime, judges can impose life imprisonment instead.1Japanese Law Translation Database System. Penal Code – English – Japanese Law Translation
How Courts Decide on Death
A conviction for a capital crime does not automatically produce a death sentence. Since 1983, judges have been required to weigh nine factors set out by the Supreme Court in what are known as the Nagayama criteria: the severity of the crime, the defendant’s motive, the cruelty of the method, the number of victims, the feelings of the victims’ families, the social impact of the crime, the defendant’s age, prior criminal history, and any remorse shown after the offense. The Supreme Court has said death should be imposed only when it is “unavoidable” after weighing all these factors together, which in practice confines it largely to cases with multiple victims or extreme brutality.3Washington International Law Journal. Death Penalty Sentencing in Japan Under the Lay Assessor System – Avoiding the Avoidable Through Unanimity
Capital cases are tried under Japan’s lay judge system, introduced in 2009. Six citizens drawn from the electorate sit alongside three professional judges and decide both the verdict and the sentence. A death sentence can be appealed to a High Court and then to the Supreme Court, and the process often stretches over years. Some inmates spend decades exhausting appeals before a sentence becomes final.4Japan Federation of Bar Associations. The Japanese Judicial System
How Executions Are Carried Out
Executions in Japan are carried out by long-drop hanging inside detention centers. Once appeals are finished, the Code of Criminal Procedure requires the Minister of Justice to personally sign each death warrant. The law sets a six-month window for the minister to act, but that deadline is routinely ignored. Some ministers have refused to sign any warrants during their tenure; others have authorized multiple executions in a single day.5Japanese Law Translation Database System. Code of Criminal Procedure – English – Japanese Law Translation
Article 479 of the Code of Criminal Procedure adds one safeguard: if an inmate is found to be insane, the minister must suspend the execution, and the sentence cannot be carried out unless the minister later orders it after the person has regained sanity.
The most controversial feature of the process is its secrecy. Inmates are not told in advance when they will die. They learn on the morning it happens, roughly an hour beforehand, when a warden comes to their cell to confirm their identity and inform them. Until around fifty years ago, inmates were given a day or two of notice so family could visit; that practice has been dropped, and families are now told only after the execution. Inside the chamber, three corrections officers press three buttons at once, only one of which releases the trap door, so no officer knows who triggered the mechanism.6Nippon.com. The Pressure of Death Row – Corrections Officers Thoughts on the Death Penalty
Life on Death Row
Conditions on death row are severe. Inmates are held in single cells in strict isolation and are generally prohibited from speaking with other prisoners. Movement within the cell is limited, and inmates must stay seated for most of the day. Exercise outside the cell is brief and taken alone, a few times a week under staff supervision.
Contact with the outside is tightly controlled. Visits from family, lawyers, or other approved visitors are supervised and can last as little as five minutes at the warden’s discretion. Letters can be sent and received but are censored. Television is generally not permitted, reading material is limited to a small approved selection, and there are no rehabilitation programs because the sentence has no release date. Some inmates spend decades under these conditions, and human rights groups have argued that prolonged solitary confinement combined with the same-day execution notice amounts to cruel treatment on its own.
Recent Executions and the 2025 Resumption
Executions have been sporadic. Between 2020 and 2024, only six took place: three in 2020, none in 2021, three in July 2022, and none at all in 2023 or 2024. That pause ended in June 2025, when Japan carried out its first execution since 2022.
These gaps are not a policy shift. They reflect individual justice ministers choosing whether to sign warrants during their time in office. The death row population has stayed above 100 throughout, and new death sentences continue to be handed down. The system remains fully active even during years when no one is executed.
The Hakamada Case and the Push to Abolish
The clearest challenge to Japan’s death penalty in recent years came from the case of Hakamada Iwao, the world’s longest-serving death row inmate. Convicted of murder in 1968 largely on the basis of a confession he said was beaten out of him during twenty days of police interrogation, Hakamada spent more than forty-five years on death row. A court granted him a retrial in 2014 after prosecutors disclosed more than 600 pieces of evidence that undermined the original case. On September 26, 2024, the Shizuoka District Court acquitted him. Prosecutors did not appeal, and the acquittal became final. He was 88 and had developed serious mental illness during his decades of isolation.7Japan Federation of Bar Associations. Comment on the Finalization of the Judgment of Acquittal in the Hakamada Retrial Case
Despite the case, public support for capital punishment remains high. A Cabinet Office survey conducted between October and December 2024 found that 83.1% of respondents said the death penalty is “unavoidable” in some cases, while 16.5% favored abolition. Support has topped 80% in five consecutive government surveys. The Japan Federation of Bar Associations formally called for abolition in a December 2025 letter to the Minister of Justice, asking the government to enact abolition legislation, impose an immediate moratorium, and establish an official review committee.8Japan Federation of Bar Associations. Letter of Request Seeking the Abolition of the Death Penalty System
A sixteen-member expert panel of legislators, academics, and law enforcement officials also presented findings to the Prime Minister concluding that the system’s problems “must not continue in its present form” and recommending a formal government review with executions suspended in the meantime. Progress on those recommendations has been slow. The UN Human Rights Council has repeatedly urged Japan to abolish the death penalty or at least impose a moratorium, citing the secrecy of the process, the same-day notice to inmates, and prolonged solitary confinement. Japan has acknowledged the recommendations but declined to accept them, pointing to public opinion and the government’s position that capital punishment deters the most serious crimes.