RETHINKING THE SIGNIFICANCE OF DEATH PENALTY IN JAPAN, BY HARUKA


Author: Haruka

First-year student at the University of Tsukuba

Publication permission was granted on December 21, 2021.


I was interested in the idea that execution might be a blessing, not a punishment. I tried to think about the meaning of the death penalty and punishment from the perspective of both the victims and criminals. In Japan, the death penalty exists is now used. Japan is one of the few countries in the world that has the death penalty. I do not feel that there is any significance in the current death penalty system. I would like to explain two reasons why I feel this way.


The first reason is that I think it is difficult to say that the death penalty is in sympathy with the bereaved families of the victims. I do not think that the families of the victims necessarily want the death of the murderers. Even if the murderer dies, it does not mean that the person who has been killed will be returned to them. If it were me, at least I want to know how the murderer feels about the incident, and I think the purpose is to make them aware of their crime and feel sorry for themselves. I think it is important to think about the reasons and background of the incident and clarify them so that we can use them to prevent such murders and other brutal incidents from happening in the future. When the death judgment is confirmed, the public feels that the case is closed. The people who support were screaming for the death penalty will say, “Oh, that’s good,” when the verdict comes down. As a result, most of them will forget about the case (Akimoto, 2012). It is likely to be thought that that solves everything. However, in the end, only the victim’s family will be left with painful feelings.


The second reason is that the text says that the death penalty has a deterrent effect, but I wonder if that is true. Certainly, there are people for whom punishment is a way to avoid committing crimes. However, these days, some people commit crimes because they want to die by killing someone, and it could have been anyone. This is called “extended suicide,” and a recent example is the “Keio Line knife man passenger stabbing case (Usui, 2021). In this way, the death penalty is ineffective for those whose goal is to be executed. On the contrary, the system of the death penalty has given birth to new crimes.


For these reasons above, I doubt the death penalty is significant in Japan. I felt that it would be better to use the system of life imprisonment rather than the death penalty. In that way, the possibility of false accusations in the death penalty system can be addressed. The opinions of the families of the victims vary, and the opinions of the public on the death penalty system are also diverse. Therefore, this is an issue that we should continue to think about without thinking that it does not concern us.


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