Despite the United Nations calling on Japan to abolish the death penalty, an overwhelming majority of the Japanese population continues to support capital punishment, according to a recent survey.

The government survey on Japan’s death penalty system found that 83.1 percent of Japanese favor it, up by 2.3 percentage points from the last survey five years ago.

That marks the fifth consecutive time that public support of the death penalty surpassed 80 percent in similar polls.

The survey also showed that those opposed totaled 16.5 percent, an increase of 7.5 percentage points, representing the highest figure since 1994, when polling with almost identically worded questions began.

The results of the survey, which is taken every five years, were published by the Cabinet Office on Feb. 21.

More than 70 percent of U.N. member nations have abolished capital punishment.

But Japan is in the minority of countries that retains the death penalty despite the repeated calls for its abolishment from the United Nations.

The government has cited consistently high public support for capital punishment as the basis for its continuation. 

But critics have long pointed out that the results should not be taken at face value because the polls are taken with the public largely kept in the dark about the treatment of death row inmates and other details.

The government survey was conducted in October through a questionnaire sent to 3,000 people aged 18 or older nationwide.

There were 1,815 valid responses, or 60.5 percent of the total.

The Cabinet Office said the outcome of the latest survey cannot be compared with the previous six polls in the same manner, given that the responses in those were all gathered through in-person interviews.

On the death penalty, respondents were asked to select from either of the two answers: the death penalty is “unavoidable” or “should be abolished.”

Of the respondents endorsing the death penalty, the ratio of those who believe capital punishment “should be continued in the future” rose to 64.2 percent, up 9.8 percentage points from the last survey.

The share of people who replied that that death penalty “can be abolished in the future if circumstances change” dropped 5.5 percentage points to 34.4 percent.

As for reasons for supporting the death penalty, 62.2 percent chose “families of victims will be able to have closure,” while 55.5 percent picked “perpetrators of abominable crimes should make amends with their own life.”

The survey also discovered that 53.4 percent believe that “heinous crimes will rise if capital punishment were renounced.”

In the survey, respondents were allowed to choose multiple answers.

Of opponents of the death penalty, 71.0 percent, up by 20.3 percentage points, selected “it would be irreparable if a miscarriage of justice took place” as a reason for disapproving of the system, making it the most common answer in the bloc.

The steep rise in the share of respondents citing this reason may be due to the acquittal in a retrial in September of Iwao Hakamata, who had been on death row for decades, in connection with the murder of four people in 1966.

In the high-profile case, Hakamata was granted a retrial, making him one of only a handful of capital inmates who have won a new trial.

Other reasons for objecting to capital punishment were “it would be better to keep a convict alive to have them make amends,” picked by 53.3 percent, and “taking a life of an individual should not be condoned even if it is by a state,” cited by 35.0 percent.

While the latest survey showed once again the public’s high support for capital punishment, many critics cast doubt on the validity of the government surveys.

They say such a poll was taken among members of the public who were unable to formulate a well-informed opinion about the death penalty due to a lack of information disclosure by the government.

This includes disclosing how executions by hanging are conducted, why some death-row inmates have yet to be executed despite their long incarceration while the death sentence to others had been carried out, and prison officers bearing an enormous psychological burden from dealing with capital inmates.

These are the musings of a panel that reviewed the capital punishment system last year and published a host of proposals on the theme in November.

The panel, formed at the initiative of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, a longtime critic of the death penalty, included Diet members, relatives of victims, a former prosecutor-general and other experts in both camps.

One issue the 16-member panel found problematic is that the two answers given in the government survey to choose from about the death penalty: “abolish” or “unavoidable,” rather than “abolish” or “retain.”

The current setup, panelists argued, may steer respondents who have some reservations about the death penalty to select “unavoidable,” failing to fully capture nuanced views.

Mai Sato, professor of the death penalty and criminal justice system at the University of London’s Birkbeck’s Institute for Crime and Justice Policy Research, said she believes that those endorsing capital punishment include many who readily approve of the status quo because they have never given serious thought to the topic.

Sato, who is not a member of the panel, conducted a death penalty survey in 2015 involving the same sample  with identical wording as in the government survey taken in 2014.

But Sato’s version asked additional questions and sent and collected the questionnaire by surveyors, unlike in-person interviews in the government survey.

Her survey research, too, found more than 80 percent thought the death penalty is “unavoidable,” just like in the government survey.

But it also showed that 71 percent of those who supported the death penalty thought that they would accept its abolition if the government decided on that.

Sato’s study also examined how strongly respondents approved of the death penalty, asking them to select from five answers, including “Neither approve nor disapprove.”

The finding showed that 27 percent believe the “death penalty system must be definitely maintained” while 46 percent selected the “death penalty system should be maintained if asked to choose.”

Sato noted that many advanced nations have abolished capital punishment not because of public opinion, but because of their political leaders’ decision to scrap it from a human rights perspective.

She said what matters is not the proportion of people who view the death penalty as “unavoidable,” but whether the public is ready to embrace the end of capital punishment.

“The death penalty cannot be abolished if its abolition is likely to lead to a loss of public faith in the criminal justice system,” she said. “More studies should be commissioned to look into this aspect.”

The Justice Ministry defended the government survey, saying the response options are reasonable and criticism of the questions "as leading" is misplaced.

“Question wording was finalized by experts after reviewing draft proposals,” a ministry official said. “The criticism that little information has been disclosed by the government about the death penalty does not apply.”

At the end of 2024, there were 106 inmates on death row in Japan. The last time the death sentence was carried out was in July 2022, the longest period without an execution since the government began announcing the carrying out of executions in 2007.