The new Japanese Government has in effect suspended the death penalty by appointing an outspoken opponent of capital punishment as Justice Minister.

Keiko Chiba, 61, a lawyer and former member of the Japan Socialist Party, has the final say in signing execution orders for Japan’s 102 death row inmates.

Although she has declined to say explicitly whether or not she will authorise them, her 20-year-long record as a death penalty abolitionist makes it a certainty that hangings will be put on hold.

“A moratorium is important, but also important is that there is a public debate, and she has called for that too,” said Makoto Teranaka, executive director of Amnesty International Japan. “We’re pleased [at Ms Chiba’s appointment] and we expect progress during her term.”

Japan is the only industrialised democracy, apart from the United States, to maintain capital punishment, which is controversial not only in itself but for the manner in which it is carried out. According to campaigners against the death penalty, the whole process is designed to avoid public scrutiny.

Once final appeals have been exhausted, death-row inmates can meet only their lawyers and immediate family members. Hangings are usually carried out during parliamentary holidays to prevent the subject being raised in parliament. Condemned prisoner are told of their imminent execution only a few hours before it is carried out. Their families are informed afterwards when they are invited to collect the remains.

A report published by Amnesty International last week said that the stress of not knowing which day would be their last was driving some condemned prisoners insane, but that they were being executed anyway, in violation of international law.: “Japan’s death row system is driving prisoners into the depths of mental illness but they are still being taken and hanged at only hours’ notice in an utterly cruel fashion,” said Kate Allen, the director of Amnesty International UK.

According to information gathered by Amnesty, the use of the death penalty is in decline across the world, with an average of three countries abolishing it every year over the past decade, including Ukraine, Chile, Greece, Turkey, the Philippines and Argentina. Thirty-five countries, including Russia and South Korea, retain capital punishment in theory, but have abolished it in practice.

Between 1989 and 1993, and 2005 and 2006, there were no executions in Japan, because the incumbent justice ministers refused to sign the necessary documents. Last year, however, the number of executions was 15, the highest in 33 years.

Opinion polls by the Justice Ministry suggest that most Japanese support capital punishment, although abolitionists say that the slanted wording of the questions produces a misleading result – and that, because of the secrecy in which the executions are carried out, few people have thought much about the moral issues.

Previous justice ministers who has refused to sign have usually been devout Buddhists. Ms Chiba, by contrast, is a human rights advocate and secretary-general of the Amnesty International group in the Japanese Diet. Before joining Yukio Hatoyama’s Democratic Party of Japan, she began her career in the now defunct Socialist Party. She is one of five ministers in the new cabinet known to support abolition.

One of the problems is that in Japan a life sentence means 30 years, and courts cannot impose it without the possibility of parole. Some activists believe that only if the law is changed so that life can mean life will public opinion tolerate the abolition of capital punishment.

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