Photo/Illutration The container for a tape recording of the exchange between a death row inmate and staff at the Osaka Detention House (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

“The Last Day of a Condemned Man,” a novel by French writer Victor Hugo (1802-1885), makes me feel as if I am awaiting my own execution.

The protagonist’s dying wish is to be called “Papa” by his young daughter one last time, but it is a wish unfulfilled.

The work conveys Hugo’s misgivings about capital punishment, a state-sanctioned practice of killing a person as a punishment for a crime. A passage in his later work “Les Miserables" goes to the effect that people can remain indifferent to the death penalty until they see the guillotine.

Seeing and knowing lead to thinking.

A recent issue of The Asahi Shimbun ran a story about a rare audio recording of a death row inmate two days before his execution by hanging. It was taped in 1955 at the Osaka Detention House.

Meeting with his sister for the last time, the condemned man asks her to loudly call his name. The sister obliges, and the man calls to her in reply, “'Nesan' (big sister) ...”

The recording also includes what is presumed to be the moment of the execution: Shortly after a Buddhist priest starts chanting a sutra, a loud bang is heard--the sound of the trapdoor springing open in the execution chamber.

This tape is invaluable because the reality of executions in Japan is hidden behind a heavy veil, so to speak--quite unlike in the United States, where families, reporters and others are allowed to witness executions.

This secrecy in Japan is said to be one of the factors holding the nation back from engaging in active public discourse on whether to keep the death penalty or not.

Discussion is also rendered difficult by people’s uncertainty about the feelings of the bereaved families of victims.

Trying to put myself in their shoes, I am sure I would want the perpetrator to be punished to the severest extent of the law, but does that have to include capital punishment?

Later in life, Hugo was elected to the French National Assembly, where he crusaded against the death penalty as a barbaric practice.

Including France, all major nations in Europe abolished the death penalty by the end of the 20th century.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Sept. 29

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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