The International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) and its member organization Center for Prisoners’ Rights (CPR) strongly condemn the latest execution in Japan – the first carried out under Sanae Takaichi, who has been Prime Minister since 21 October 2025.
Paris, Tokyo, 21 August 2026. Sunao Takami, a 58-year-old man convicted of killing five people in a pachinko parlor arson in Osaka in 2009, was executed by hanging at Osaka Detention House today.
In 2011, a six-member jury and a panel of three judges rejected the defense’s argument that Takami was mentally ill at the time of the crime. In Japan’s recent history, there have been executions of death row inmates with suspected mental illnesses.
Today’s execution is the sixth since 2020 and the first since June 2025. There are currently 100 prisoners (including six women) on death row.
FIDH and CPR urge the government to take concrete steps towards the abolition of the death penalty, by implementing the recommendations that states and United Nations (UN) human rights mechanisms have made for many years. These recommendations include: the declaration of an official moratorium on the use of the death penalty; the ratification of the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; the commutation of all death sentences to prison terms; and the alignment of conditions for death row inmates to international standards.
FIDH and CPR also urge the Japanese government to abstain in the upcoming UN General Assembly’s biennial resolution on a moratorium on the use of the death penalty. Japan has consistently voted against such resolution in the past.
FIDH, a founding member of the World Coalition Against the Death Penalty (WCADP) and a member of its Steering Committee, and CPR, a member of the WCADP, oppose the death penalty for all crimes and in all circumstances.
