Japan executes man who killed five in Pachinko parlour fire

Japan executed Sunao Takami, 58, who set fire to a pachinko parlour near his Osaka residence with gasoline in 2009, killing four customers and one employee. A six‑member jury and a panel of three judges dismissed the defence’s claim that Takami was mentally ill at the time of the offence and sentenced him to death in 2011. Japan and the United States remain the only G7 nations that retain capital punishment; in Japan, death‑row inmates are usually informed of their hanging only a few hours beforehand. “We ordered the execution after careful and thorough consideration,” Justice Minister Hiroshi Hiraguchi said on Friday. This is the first execution carried out under the Takaichi administration. In June past year, Japan executed Takahiro Shiraishi, dubbed the “Twitter killer”, who murdered and dismembered nine people in 2017. Shiraishi’s crimes came to light in October 2017 when police recovered body parts in the city of Zama, near Tokyo, while searching for one of the victims. Surveys indicate strong public backing for the death penalty in Japan. Rights groups, however, have criticised authorities for keeping death‑row prisoners in solitary confinement for extended periods and for the lack of transparency surrounding the timing of executions.