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Covering Capital Punishment: Murder Trials and the Media in Japan

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

David T. Johnson
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There are two ways in which the spirit of a culture may be shriveled. In the first—the Orwellian—culture becomes a prison. In the second — the Huxleyan—culture become a burlesque…Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.

Neil Postman (1985)

Minister of Justice opposes capital punishment or does not want to participate in state killing, he or she can prevent executions simply by not signing execution warrants. A few years ago Minister of Justice Hatoyama Kunio of the LDP (who authorized 13 hangings while serving as Minister for less than a year in 2007-08) suggested that the execution process should be made more automatic by abolishing the Minister's discretion to make these life and death decisions. The execution process should be like a “conveyor belt”, he said, and the Minister should not be allowed to turn the switch off.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 10 , Issue 22 , May 2012 , e1
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Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2012

References

Notes

1 Philip Brasor, “Lay Judge System and the Kanae Kijima Trial,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, May 28, 2012.

2 For a translated interview of Hatoyama Kunio with commentary, see Michael H. Fox, “Why I Support Executions,” Japan Focus, December 19 (originally published in Shukan Asahi on October 26, 2007);.

3 Nempo - Shikei Haishi 2011: Shinsai to Shikei: Seimei o Mitsumenaosu (Tokyo: Impakuto, 2011), pp.216-219.

4 Franklin E. Zimring, The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), p.22.

5 In contrast, criminal sentencing for rape, sexual assault, attempted murder, infliction of injury resulting in death, and robbery resulting in injury has become more severe in the lay judge system than it was in the old system. See Asahi Shimbun, “Seihanzai ni Kibishiku, Shikko Yuyo wa Zoka: Saibanin Seido 3nen,” May 14, 2012.

6 Nancy Benak, “Death Penalty Trials a Painstaking Process,” Associated Press/CBS News, February 27, 2006.

7 Nadya Labi, “A Man Against the Machine,” NYU Law School Magazine, Autumn 2007, p.13.

8 Furman v. Georgia, 408 U.S. 238 (1972).

9 Carol Steiker, “The Marshall Hypothesis Revisited,” Howard Law Journal, Vol. 52, No. 3 (2009), pp.525-555.

10 Mark Levin and Virginia Tice, “Japan's New Citizen Judges: How Secrecy Imperils Judicial Reform,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 19-6-09, May 9, 2009.

11 On Japanese attitudes toward the lay judge system and criminal justice, see Matsumura Yoshiyuki et al, “Saibanin Seido to Keiji Shiho ni tai suru Hitobito no Ishiki: 2011nen Dai2ha Chosa ni tsuite,” Hokkaido Law Review (Hokuho), Vol.62, No.4 (November 2011),

pp.1-86.

12 David T. Johnson, “War in a Season of Slow Revolution: Defense Lawyers and Lay Judges in Japanese Criminal Justice.” The Asia-Pacific Journal. Vol. 9, Issue 26, No. 2 (June 27, 2011).

13 Saeki Masahiko, “Victim Participation in Criminal Trials in Japan,” International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice, Vol. 38, Issue 4 (December 2010), pp.149-165; and Nils Christie, “Victim Movements at a Crossroad,” paper presented at the 13th International Symposium on Victimology, Tokiwa University, Japan, September 1, 2009.

14 David T. Johnson, “Capital Punishment without Capital Trials in Japan's Lay Judge System.” Asia Pacific Journal. Vol. 8, Issue 52 (December 27, 2010). Pp.1-38.

15 For an excellent two-part article on Takami's trial in Osaka and the question of whether hanging is cruel in Japan, see Horikawa Keiko, “Koshukei wa Zangyaku ka,” Sekai, No.825 (January 2012), pp.63-72, and No.827 (February 2012), pp.122-131.

16 In America, too, media coverage of capital punishment tends to present a distorted reality, by focusing disproportionately on crimes committed by minority offenders against vulnerable and “worthy” victims. In this way, the public mandate for capital punishment is sustained by atypical crimes that conform to existing cultural templates about criminal threat and victimization. See Jeffrey Lin and Scott Phillips, “Media Coverage of Capital Murder: Exceptions Sustain the Rule,” Justice Quarterly, 2012 (forthcoming); available here.

17 George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).

18 David T. Johnson, “Where the State Kills in Secret: Capital Punishment in Japan.” Punishment &Society, Vol.8, No.3 (July 2006), pp.251-285 [translated into Japanese by Kikuta Koichi, as “Hisoka ni Hito o Korosu Kokka,” in Jiyu to Seigi, Vol.58, No.9 (September 2007), pp.111-127, and Vol.58, No.10 (October 2007), pp.91-108].

19 Aldous Huxley, Brave New World (1932).

20 The epigraph which opens this article first appeared in Neil Postman's prescient book, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (Penguin Books, 1985), pp.vii, 155.