This essay sharply challenges Western media narratives that condemn Japan’s method of capital punishment as cruel.
Beginning with the executions of Hotsumi Ozaki, Richard Sorge, and Shoko Asahara, it examines American and French attitudes toward the death penalty, recalls the history of mass executions carried out in the name of revolution, and explores the Japanese view of life, death, and atonement.

2019-04-05
I do not want to be lectured in a high-handed manner by a country that, in the name of revolution, delighted in guillotining as many as 600,000 people.

I am reposting a chapter I published on 2018-07-27 under the title:
“His execution was carried out on November 7 of that year, the anniversary of the Russian Revolution.
It was a small gesture of consideration toward one who had lived for communism.”
What follows is a continuation of the previous chapter.

His execution was carried out on November 7 of that year, the anniversary of the Russian Revolution.
It was a small gesture of consideration toward one who had lived for communism.
According to the record, after breakfast at 7 a.m., he wrote a postcard to his wife, returned to his cell, and was then informed that the execution would be carried out.
Death was confirmed at 8:51 a.m.
Sorge was executed a little later in the same place.
Shoko Asahara, who was executed recently at the Tokyo Detention House, underwent the same procedure as Hotsumi Ozaki had 70 years earlier.
He too was informed of the execution after breakfast.

Regarding this practice of “informing in the morning and carrying it out immediately,” CNN in the United States and the French newspaper Les Echos criticize it, saying:
“Neither the family nor the lawyer was informed, and the prisoner himself was told only immediately before the execution.
This places extreme psychological pressure on both the prisoner and the family, and is extraordinarily cruel.”
Then how is it done in the United States?
Normally the prisoner is informed one month in advance and transferred to the execution chamber.
From then until the day of execution, he spends each day unable to sleep.
During that period, he is called a “dead man.”
That seems far more cruel to me.
On the day before the execution, he is allowed to meet his family, and for his last meal he may order his favorite food.
When I once reported at San Quentin, I was told:
“Some ask for steak or prime rib, but nobody eats it.
They just keep drinking water.”

The French newspaper Le Figaro seems strangely puzzled that “the Japanese affirm capital punishment and that no abolition movement has arisen.”
That is what the Swiss minister Humbert once said.
In the Great East Japan Earthquake, 20,000 people died.
In the eruption of Mount Ontake, 63 people died.
In the heavy rains in western Japan, 200 people died.
Japanese children grow up with the Iroha song, which sings of the transience of the world.
They regard it rather as a desirable ending that a sinner is given a place in which to atone.
I do not want to be lectured in a high-handed manner by a country that, in the name of revolution, delighted in guillotining as many as 600,000 people.
The same applies to the United States, which delights in executing 38 people at once.
To strike the pose of a suddenly civilized nation over something like capital punishment is disgraceful.