Japan hangs 'Twitter killer' in first execution since 2022
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
TOKYO — Japan executed a man on Friday who killed nine people after contacting them on social media, the first use of capital punishment in the country in nearly three years.
Takahiro Shiraishi had been sentenced to death for his 2017 strangling and dismembering of eight women and one man in his apartment in Zama city in Kanagawa near Tokyo. He was dubbed the "Twitter killer" because he contacted victims via the social media platform.
Justice Minister Keisuke Suzuki, who authorized Shiraishi's hanging, said he made the decision after careful examination, taking into account the convict's "extremely selfish" motive for crimes that "caused great shock and unrest to society."
It followed the execution in July 2022 of a man who went on a stabbing rampage in Tokyo's Akihabara shopping district in 2008.
It was also the first time a death penalty was carried out since Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba's government was inaugurated last October.
In September last year, a Japanese court acquitted Iwao Hakamada, who had spent the world's longest time on death row after a wrongful conviction for crimes committed nearly 60 years ago.
Capital punishment is carried out by hanging in Japan and prisoners are notified of their execution hours before it is carried out, which has long been decried by human rights groups for the stress it puts on death-row prisoners.
"It is not appropriate to abolish the death penalty while these violent crimes are still being committed," Suzuki told a news conference. There are currently 105 death row inmates in Japan, he added.
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wtf? what happened to execution by samurai sword ...
Its all part of the Europeanisation that Japan suffered through modernization and ending the Satsuma Rebellion where thousands of Samauri's succumbed to modern Western arms and munitions in a one-sided drawn-out slaughter.
However in the 1940's Japanese military officers had no problem beheading American & British POWs and displaced humans who were victims of the Japanese lust for Imperial Expansion.
So maybe it's just reluctance to have to face behavior associated with two of Japan's lowest moments in their history?
Maybe...
maybe nobody volunteered to be his second for seppuku ...
"Capital punishment is carried out by hanging in Japan and prisoners are notified of their execution hours before it is carried out, which has long been decried by human rights groups for the stress it puts on death-row prisoners."
Actually, some would argue that it imposes less stress. Truman Capote (who wrote In Cold Blood) argued that the US system put stress on death row inmates because of the endless appeals that the convicted were allowed. Those on death row always lived in fear of losing the appeals. That Japanese system seems very quick and far less stressful.