Japan executes man who killed five in Pachinko parlour fire
This is the first time since June 2025 that the country has enacted capital punishment.
Japan has carried out its first execution in over a year, putting to death a man responsible for the deaths of five individuals in a 2009 gaming parlor blaze.
Fifty-eight-year-old Sunao Takami was executed after being convicted of setting fire to a pachinko parlor near his Osaka residence. He had doused the establishment with gasoline, resulting in the deaths of four customers and one employee.
In 2011, a jury of six and a three-judge panel dismissed the defense's claim of Takami's mental illness at the time of the crime, sentencing him to death by hanging.
Japan and the United States are the sole G7 nations that still utilize capital punishment. In Japan, death row inmates are typically informed of their impending execution only a few hours beforehand.
Justice Minister Hiroshi Hiraguchi stated on Friday, "We ordered the execution after careful and thorough consideration."
This marks the first execution conducted under the Takaichi administration. The previous execution occurred in June of last year, when Takahiro Shiraishi, known as the "Twitter killer," was put to death for murdering and dismembering nine people in 2017. Shiraishi's crimes were uncovered in October 2017 when police discovered human remains in Zama, a Japanese city near Tokyo, while investigating the disappearance of one of his victims.