The Asahi Shimbun received a brown paper envelope in October from a man who said he was an 89-year-old former prison guard living in the Kanto region.

He said he had read an Asahi article (https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/14726564) about a death-row inmate and wanted to give his opinion on capital punishment.

He said that one day, when he oversaw security at the Osaka Detention Center from around 1975 to 1977, his boss whispered to him that an inmate’s execution date had been decided.

The former guard said he thought he was ready for such a day, but the reality of the situation made his entire body tense.

“I felt a shiver going down my back for a moment,” he wrote in the 12-page letter.

During his time in charge of security at the prison, three separate men convicted of murder-robbery were executed.

About five days before each execution, the former guard received word that the justice minister had signed the order to carry out the death sentence.

In Japan, hanging has been the only method of execution since 1873.

Officers adjusted the length of rope depending on the condemned inmate’s height and weight, he said.

The officers also mentally prepared for the execution during the roughly five-day period.

He said that he himself would deeply sigh when alone and repeatedly told himself in front of a bathroom mirror, “Keep calm.”

His colleagues gave him the nickname “Kshitigarbha” (a Bodhisattva who looks after the underworld).

“(The prisoners and I) are both human, so we had a relationship of trust to a certain extent,” the former guard wrote. “If I looked different than usual, even just a little, they would know that their execution day was coming soon.

“Then unexpected situations could occur. So, I was desperate not to upset them.”

The head of the detention center would tell the inmates about their execution times 24 hours beforehand. From there, things happened in a flurry, he said.

He said he arranged for the inmates to meet people for the last time and held farewell parties with other death-row inmates.

He also asked the inmates what they wanted as their last meal.

“We used money from donors to provide food that the attendees wanted to eat, such as sushi and soba noodles,” he said.

He said officers strengthened their patrols to prevent suicides. They took turns watching the inmate in a single room.

He said some inmates cleaned up their surroundings and wrote wills in the hours before their deaths.

He said the inmates couldn’t sleep and kept writing and rewriting their wills until dawn.

On the day of the execution, the former guard took the inmate in question to the execution chamber.

The three inmates he witnessed were “brave people,” he said.

“They stayed calm and walked to the chamber without help,” he wrote.

One of them asked to shake his hand, he said.

“(His hand) was cold like ice because he may have turned white,” the former guard wrote.

He witnessed the executions in a room below the gallows.

“I don’t want to talk about details because that would be like beating the dead with a whip,” he wrote.

Typically, officers who witness an execution were allowed to go home early. But if he went home in the daytime, his family would suspect that someone was hanged.

Therefore, he would waste time until he could go home in the evening.

He said he had never told other people, even his family, about the things he wrote about in the letter, he said.

The Asahi article prompted him to describe his experiences.

Currently, inmates are informed that their death sentences will be carried out on the morning of the execution.

“I experienced the in-advance announcement. Is it good, or is it bad?” he wrote. “I thought it is now or never that I can contribute to the discussion about executions, even if only a little.”

He said he wanted to describe what officers felt.

“We had prepared when we became prison guards. But still, most people wanted to be involved in correctional education. Nobody happily carried out an execution. We just thought of it as a task and worked behind the scenes.”

He said when he goes to a shrine or a temple, he prays for death-row inmates.

He said one officer he knows who has witnessed many executions has repeatedly completed the Shikoku 88 temple pilgrimage.

Yasuhiro Hanashi on Nov. 11 resigned as justice minister after coming under fire over a remark he made about the death penalty.

“I want the public to know more about the reality of executions,” the former guard said after the resignation. “If you know that, you would not make such a careless remark.”