No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
In April 2010, The People's Republic of China executed four Japanese citizens who had been convicted of trafficking methamphetamines. They were the first Japanese to be executed in China since the two countries normalized diplomatic relations in 1972. At the time of their demise the condemned men—Akano Mitsunobu, Takeda Teruo, Mori Katsuo, and Ukai Hironori—were ages 65, 67, 67, and 48, respectively. All were killed by lethal injection in a province (Liaoning) that borders North Korea—the nation which may have been the source of the drugs—and all were either members of the yakuza or drug mules for them.
1 Philip Brasor, “China Executions Should Have More Japanese Talking.” The Japan Times, April 18, 2010.
2 The Daily Yomiuri, “Govt's Tepid Response over Executions Draws Ire.” April 10, 2010.
3 Quoted in Susan Stumme, “China Executes Three Japanese Drug Smugglers.” Agence France Presse, April 10, 2010.
4 Shanghai Daily, “Japanese Executed, 3 More on Death Row.” April 7, 2010.
5 Tagusari Maiko, “Statement on Imminent Execution of Japanese Citizens by China.” Center for Prisoners' Rights Japan, April 10, 2010.
6 Quoted in The Daily Yomiuri, “Govt's Tepid Response Over Executions Draws Ire.” April 10, 2010.
7 Quoted in The Daily Yomiuri, “Govt's Tepid Response Over Executions Draws Ire.” April 10, 2010.
8 A Nikkei newspaper poll released two weeks after the executions revealed that two out of three Japanese voters disapproved of Prime Minister Hatoyama, and nearly 60 percent thought he should resign if he fails to resolve a feud over a U.S. airbase in Okinawa by the end of May. See Isabel Reynolds, “Japan PM Support Falls As Base Row Heats Up,” The Washington Post, April 26, 2010.
9 David Barboza, “China Executes Briton Despite Appeals for Mercy.” The New York Times, December 30, 2009; and Loretta Chao, “China Ignores Appeals, Executes Briton.” The Wall Street Journal, December 30, 2009.
10 Reuters, “China Executes Briton Over Drugs; Brown Slams Decision.” December 29, 2010.
11 The Sociology of Georg Simmel, edited and translated by Kurt Wolff (Free Press, 1965).
12 David T. Johnson and Franklin E. Zimring, The Next Frontier: National Development, Political Change, and the Death Penalty in Asia (Oxford University Press, 2009), p.233.
13 Andrew J. Nathan and Bruce Gilley, China's New Rulers: The Secret Files (New York Review Books, 2nd edition, 2003), p.218.
14 Johnson and Zimring, The Next Frontier, p.238.
15 Bill Schiller, “In China, a Quiet Push Against Executions.” Toronto Star. March 29, 2009.
16 When executions are secret and unreported in the media (as they frequently are in China and some other nations), Amnesty's totals significantly underestimate execution volume. See Johnson and Zimring, The Next Frontier, p.234.
17 Japan might also have protested the killing of three senior citizens, though this would have been a hard sell coming from a government that has executed many geriatric residents of its own death rows. See Johnson and Zimring, The Next Frontier, p.87; and Amnesty International, “Japan: Hanging by a Thread: Mental Health and the Death Penalty in Japan” (September 10, 2009), link.
18 Nishimura Daisuke, “Death Row Inmate: China Trial ‘Shoddy’.” asahi.com. April 3, 2010.
19 See, for example, Susan Trevaskes, Courts and Criminal Justice in Contemporary China (Lexington, 2007); Hong Lu and Terance D. Miethe, China's Death Penalty: History, Law, and Contemporary Practices (Routledge, 2007); and Klaus Muhlhahn, Criminal Justice in China: A History (Harvard University Press, 2009).
20 As of April 2010, 58 nations retain the death penalty and 32 of them retain it for drug offenses, including 16 nations in Asia: China, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Pakistan, North Korea, South Korea, Bangladesh, Laos, Taiwan, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, and Brunei-Darussalam. Of these 16, only China, Vietnam, Singapore, and perhaps Malaysia execute drug offenders on a regular basis. See Patrick Gallahue and Rick Lines, “The Death Penalty for Drug Offences: Global Overview 2010,” International Harm Reduction Association (forthcoming).
21 According to Article 6(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, “In countries which have not abolished the death penalty, sentence of death may be imposed only for the most serious crimes in accordance with the law in force at the time of the commission of the crime and not contrary to the provisions of the present Covenant and to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This penalty can only be carried out pursuant to a final judgment rendered by a competent court” (emphasis added). See also Katie Lee, “China and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights: Prospects and Challenges,” Chinese Journal of International Law, Vol.6, No.2 (2007): 445-474.
22 Journalist Philip Brasor, summarizing the views of former Judge Kitani Akira, wonders if Japan's government lacks the “moral authority” to protest Chinese executions because its own judges are too afraid of acquitting the guilty and too little worried about the possibility of sending innocent persons to death (“China Executions Should Have More Japanese Talking,” The Japan Times, April 18, 2010). Although these are reasonable concerns, Japan's low acquittal rates are mainly the result of prosecutors' conservative charging policy, not judges' reluctance to acquit. See David T. Johnson, The Japanese Way of Justice: Prosecuting Crime in Japan (Oxford University Press, 2002), chapter 7.
23 Asian nations voted on the United Nations moratorium resolution as follows. In favor: Australia, Cambodia, East Timor, Nepal, New Zealand, the Philippines, and Sri Lanka. Opposed: Bangladesh, Brunei Darussalam, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar, North Korea, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Singapore, and Thailand. Abstained: Bhutan, Laos, South Korea, and Vietnam. Thus, all of the retentionist Asian nations except Vietnam opposed the resolution, and all of the completely abolitionist nations in Asia except Bhutan supported it. The seven “abolitionist de facto” Asian jurisdictions were split: Sri Lanka supported the resolution, Brunei Darussalam, the Maldives, Myanmar, and Papua New Guinea opposed it, and Laos and South Korea abstained. See Johnson and Zimring, The Next Frontier, p.343.
24 Roger Hood and Carolyn Hoyle, “Abolishing the Death Penalty Worldwide: The Impact of a ‘New Dynamic‘”, in Crime and Justice: A Review of Research, edited by Michael Tonry (University of Chicago Press, 2009), Vol.38, pp.1-63.
25 David T. Johnson and Franklin E. Zimring, “Death Penalty Lessons from Asia,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 39-1-09, September 28, 2009. Available here.
26 Franklin E. Zimring, Jeffrey Fagan, and David T. Johnson, “Executions, Deterrence, and Homicide: A Tale of Two Cities,” Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, Vol.7 Issue 1 (March 2010), p.7.
27 Ian Buruma, Bad Elements: Chinese Rebels from Los Angeles to Beijing (Vintage, 2001), p.135; and Johnson and Zimring, The Next Frontier, p.418.
28 University of Hong Kong Professor of Sociology Borge Bakken, in his review of Astrid Maier's Die Todesstrafe in der VR China [The Death Penalty in the People's Republic of China], in China Journal, Vol.57, January 2007, pp.180-182. Similarly, New York University Professor of Law Jerome A. Cohen believes “the Chinese government is so embarrassed by the number of executions it carries out that the precise figure is one of its most closely-guarded secrets” (“Law in Political Transitions: Lessons from East Asia and the Road Ahead for China,” New York University Journal of International Law and Politics, Vol.37, p.427).
29 Johnson and Zimring, The Next Frontier, p.284.
You have
Access
Open access