The death penalty in Japan works through a tightly controlled sequence: a court imposes a death sentence for a serious crime (almost always murder), the prisoner is held in solitary confinement while appeals and retrial petitions run their course, and eventually the Minister of Justice signs an execution order. The prisoner is hanged, usually within hours of being told it is happening. Family and lawyers learn about it afterward.
Japan is one of the few developed democracies still carrying out executions. As of late 2024, 106 people were on death row, and the most recent execution took place in June 2025.
What Can Get You Sentenced to Death
Japan’s Penal Code lists more than a dozen capital offenses, but in practice nearly every death sentence involves murder. Article 199 covers homicide and allows a sentence ranging from five years’ imprisonment to death, so judges have wide discretion.1Japanese Law Translation. Penal Code
Other death-eligible crimes include leading an insurrection against the government (Article 77), conspiring with a foreign state to attack Japan (Articles 81 and 82), arson of an occupied building (Article 108), causing a deadly flood (Article 119), derailing a train or sinking a vessel resulting in death (Article 126), poisoning a public water supply and causing death (Article 146), and robbery resulting in death, including robbery combined with sexual assault (Articles 240 and 241). Article 11 of the Penal Code specifies hanging as the method and requires that condemned prisoners be detained in a jail until execution.1Japanese Law Translation. Penal Code
A death-eligible charge is not the same as a death sentence. Japanese courts decide whether to impose it using the Nagayama Criteria, a framework the Supreme Court set out in 1983 in the case of Norio Nagayama, who murdered four people. Judges weigh nine factors: the malice behind the crime, the defendant’s motive, the cruelty of the method, the number of victims, the social impact, the wishes of the victims’ families, the defendant’s age, prior criminal history, and any remorse shown.
The number of victims carries heavy weight in practice. A single-victim murder rarely brings a death sentence unless the killing was unusually brutal or the defendant has a violent record. Multiple victims sharply increase the likelihood. The criteria function less as a formula than as a structured way for judges to justify why death is unavoidable in a given case.
Life on Death Row
Condemned prisoners in Japan are held in solitary confinement in cells of roughly five square meters. Windows are smaller than in standard cells and let in little natural light. Each cell has a sink, a toilet, and a desk. Cameras watch around the clock, and guards control the lights, which stay on from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.
The routine is severe. From waking until evening inspection, inmates must remain seated. They cannot speak, make noise, pace, or look around without permission. They leave the cell only for showers (about 15 minutes, two or three times a week) and exercise in a small concrete yard (about 30 minutes, at the same frequency). Shoes are not allowed outside the cell; inmates go out barefoot or in slippers.
Contact with the outside is tightly restricted. Close family members can visit under surveillance. Mail is censored. Computers, printers, and television are forbidden. Prisoners may keep only three books at a time, subject to approval, and can listen to the radio but cannot choose the station. Many families cut off contact over the years, whether from shame or the psychological weight of an open-ended wait.
How long that wait lasts varies enormously. Article 475 of the Code of Criminal Procedure says the Minister of Justice must issue the execution order within six months of a judgment becoming final, but that deadline is almost universally ignored and carries no enforcement mechanism.2Japanese Law Translation. Code of Criminal Procedure – Act No. 131 of 1948 Actual waits have ranged from about one year and four months to more than 18 years, averaging roughly six years and eight months.
When an Execution Can Be Paused
Article 479 of the Code of Criminal Procedure requires the Minister of Justice to suspend an execution if the condemned person is found to be insane, and to suspend it for a condemned woman until after she gives birth.2Japanese Law Translation. Code of Criminal Procedure – Act No. 131 of 1948 Once the condition resolves, a new ministerial order is required before the execution proceeds. Observers have pointed out that little is publicly known about how mental fitness is actually evaluated or by whom, a gap that matters given that years of solitary confinement can themselves cause serious psychological deterioration.
The Execution Order and Same-Day Notice
Every execution starts with a written order signed by the Minister of Justice. Once signed, the date is kept from the public, the inmate, and the family. The condemned person is told on the morning of the execution, usually only hours before being taken to the gallows.
Two death row inmates challenged this practice in a lawsuit filed in Osaka District Court in 2021, arguing that same-day notice was psychologically torturous and left no time to consult lawyers.3Death Penalty Information Center. Death-Row Prisoners in Japan Sue Over Same-Day Notice of Executions The court dismissed the suit in April 2024, finding the practice had “a certain rationality” for maintaining order and stabilizing inmates emotionally. The government’s position is that advance notice would trigger emergency legal challenges and unbearable anticipatory dread. Critics argue that the uncertainty itself is a form of torture, because every set of footsteps outside the cell could signal the end.
Inside the Execution Chamber
The execution facility contains several connected rooms. In the main chamber, a square marked on the floor shows where the inmate will stand, directly over a trapdoor. A ceiling-mounted pulley holds the rope. An adjacent room has a Buddhist altar and statue, where the inmate can spend a brief final moment. In a separate room, three prison officers each press a button at the same time to trigger the trapdoor.
Only one of the three buttons is actually connected to the mechanism, and none of the officers knows which. The design spreads the psychological weight of the act so no individual can be certain they caused the drop. The inmate is blindfolded and positioned on the trapdoor before the buttons are pressed. The drop is designed to cause rapid loss of consciousness, though there have been documented cases of prolonged strangulation over the years.
A physician confirms death. The Ministry of Justice then issues a public statement, usually naming the person executed and the crime. Beyond that, the government discloses almost nothing about the procedure. Executions are closed to the public, lawyers, and the press. Family members and lawyers are notified only after the fact, and the family may claim the remains; if they decline, the state handles cremation.
Retrials and the Risk of Executing an Innocent Person
The risk of a wrongful execution is not hypothetical. Iwao Hakamada, a former boxer convicted of a quadruple murder in 1966, spent 46 years on death row before a court granted a retrial in 2014 based on DNA evidence that did not match him or the victims. In September 2024, the Shizuoka District Court acquitted him, ruling that the blood-stained clothing used to convict him had been fabricated by investigators long after the killings.4Death Penalty Information Center. Japanese Exoneree Awarded $1.4 Million in Compensation After Spending 46 Years on Death Row His original conviction rested heavily on a confession he later retracted, saying it had been extracted through 20 days of coercive interrogation.
Hakamada was only the fifth death-sentenced prisoner to receive a retrial in postwar Japan. All five were exonerated. But between 2017 and 2021, roughly one percent of retrial applications from convicted persons were granted.4Death Penalty Information Center. Japanese Exoneree Awarded $1.4 Million in Compensation After Spending 46 Years on Death Row Article 435 of the Code of Criminal Procedure allows a retrial only if the evidence at trial was false or fabricated, a witness committed perjury, or clear new evidence would produce an acquittal or a conviction for a lesser crime.2Japanese Law Translation. Code of Criminal Procedure – Act No. 131 of 1948 Meeting that bar from a five-square-meter cell with no computer and censored mail is an enormous obstacle.
After Hakamada’s exoneration, Japan’s justice minister announced in March 2025 that a panel of legal experts would examine whether the retrial system needs reform.
Where Japan Stands Internationally
Japan has repeatedly voted against UN General Assembly resolutions calling for a worldwide moratorium on executions. UN standards define solitary confinement as 22 or more hours a day without meaningful human contact, classify anything beyond 15 consecutive days as “prolonged,” and forbid solitary confinement imposed solely because of a prisoner’s sentence. Japan’s death row conditions appear to conflict with all three. The UN Human Rights Committee also flagged concerns in 2008 and 2014 about defendants sentenced to death without exercising their right to appeal.
Domestically, government surveys consistently show more than 80 percent of the Japanese public supports keeping the death penalty. That level of support has made abolition a political nonstarter, and no serious legislative effort to end capital punishment is on the horizon.