Published on July 16, 2019.
As a continuation of a chapter first published on July 27, 2017, this essay examines Western media criticism of Japan’s death penalty through the executions of Ozaki Hotsumi, Richard Sorge, and Shoko Asahara.
Referring to CNN, Les Echos, and Le Figaro, it contrasts Japan’s practice with the history of executions in the United States and France, and reflects on Western hypocrisy and the Japanese view of life and death.

July 16, 2019.
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 a man who had lived for communism.
The following is a continuation of the previous chapter, originally published on July 27, 2017.
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 a man who had lived for communism.
According to records, after breakfast at 7 a.m., he wrote a postcard to his wife and returned to his solitary cell, where he was informed that the execution would be carried out.
He died at 8:51 a.m.
Sorge was executed in the same place a little later.
Shoko Asahara, who was executed recently at the Tokyo Detention House, underwent the same procedure as Ozaki Hotsumi seventy years earlier.
He was informed of the execution after breakfast.
Regarding this practice of “notifying in the morning and immediately carrying out the execution,” CNN in the United States and the French newspaper Les Echos criticized it, saying, “Neither the family nor the lawyers were notified, and the prisoner himself was informed for the first time only immediately before the execution.
It imposes psychological pressure on both the prisoner and the family, and is extremely cruel.”
Then how does the United States do it?
Usually, the prisoner is notified one month before the execution and transferred to the execution site.
From then until the execution date, he spends every day unable to sleep.
During that period, he is called a “dead man.”
This seems far more cruel.
On the day before the execution, he is also allowed to meet his family, and for his last supper he can order his favorite food.
When I previously reported from San Quentin, I was told, “Some prisoners order steak or prime rib, but no one eats it.
They just drink water excessively.”
The French newspaper Le Figaro finds it strangely puzzling that “the Japanese affirm the death penalty and that no abolition movement has arisen.”
That was something that the Swiss envoy Humbert once spoke about long ago.
In the Tohoku earthquake, 20,000 people died; in the eruption of Mount Ontake, 63 people died; and in the torrential rains in western Japan, 200 people died.
Japanese children grow up with the Iroha poem, which sings of the impermanence of the world.
They think that sinners being given a place to atone is rather a preferable ending.
In the first place, I do not want to be lectured in a self-important tone by a country that rejoiced in executing as many as 600,000 people by guillotine in the name of revolution.
The same goes for the United States, which rejoiced in the simultaneous execution of 38 people.
It is shameful to pretend suddenly to be a civilized country merely over the death penalty.