Japan has executed a 58-year-old man who was found guilty of killing five people in a Pachinko parlour in 2009. Sunao Takami doused the parlour near his home in Osaka in gasoline and set it alight, killing four customers and one employee.
The defence tried to argue that Takami was mentally ill at the time of the crime, but a jury and three judges rejected this argument. Takami was sentenced to hang in 2011. Usually, death row prisoners are notified of their hanging a few hours before it takes place.
"We ordered the execution after careful and thorough consideration," said Justice Minister Hiroshi Hiraguchi (via BBC News).
Japan and the United States are the only two members of the G7 that still impose capital punishment. Surveys have found that there is strong public support for the death penalty in Japan.
Takami's death comes more than a year after the last execution in Japan. In June 2025, the so-called Twitter killer Takahiro Shiraishi was executed, after murdering and dismembering nine people in 2017.
