Japan executes Osaka pachinko arsonist

Japan executed Sunao Takami on Friday for a 2009 arson attack on a pachinko parlour in Osaka that killed five people, authorities said.

Takami doused the parlour, which was near his home, with petrol and set it on fire, killing four customers and one employee. Pachinko is a popular game that mixes pinball and a slot machine using small steel balls.

The hanging was Japan's first execution since Takahiro Shiraishi, known as the “Twitter killer”, was put to death in June 2025 for murdering and dismembering nine people.

Japan and the United States are the only G7 countries that still use capital punishment. A 2024 government survey found that 83 percent of respondents saw the death penalty as “unavoidable”, although support for abolishing capital punishment rose to 17 percent from nine percent five years earlier.

Japan's death penalty system has faced criticism because death row inmates are typically told only on the morning of their execution that they are about to be hanged. The justice ministry told AFP last year that Japan carried out one execution in 2022, three in 2021, three in 2019 and 15 in 2018. There are around 100 people on death row.

Japanese law says executions must be carried out within six months of a final verdict after appeals are exhausted, but in practice many inmates spend years, and sometimes decades, in solitary confinement.

Japan's justice system has also faced scrutiny over wrongful convictions. Iwao Hakamada spent decades on death row over a 1966 quadruple murder before being released in 2014 and exonerated in 2024 at age 88. A court ruled that investigators had tampered with evidence and said the former boxer had suffered “inhumane interrogations meant to force a statement”.