Capital punishment has been unofficially scrapped in Japan with the appointment of a left-wing justice minister who is an outspoken opponent of the country’s controversial system of secret executions.

Keiko Chiba, 61, a lawyer and former member of the Japan Socialist Party, has the final say in signing execution orders for the country’s 102 death-row inmates. Although she has declined to say explicitly whether or not she will authorise them, her 20-year record as an active death penalty abolitionist means that hangings will be put on hold after surging in the past three years.

“A moratorium is important, but also important is a public debate, and she has called for that too,” said Makoto Teranaka, executive director of Amnesty International Japan.

Japan is the only industrialised democracy, apart from the United States, to maintain capital punishment. Campaigners opposed to the death penalty also say that it is carried out in a manner 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 from being raised in parliament. The condemned prisoner is told of his imminent execution only a few hours before it is carried out. His family are informed afterwards, when they are invited to collect his remains.

A report published by Amnesty International last week presented evidence that the stress of not knowing which day would be their last was driving some condemned Japanese prisoners insane, but 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,” Kate Allen, the director of Amnesty International UK, said.

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 reached 15, the highest in 33 years.

One of the problems is that, in Japan, a life sentence means 30 years and courts are not permitted to 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 formal abolition of capital punishment.

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