24 February 2025 :
Japanese public support for the death penalty has exceeded 80% for the fifth consecutive time in a poll conducted by the Cabinet Office every five years, underscoring strong public backing for the system in the country.
The Cabinet Office released the results of its 2024 public opinion survey on the death penalty Feb. 21, revealing that 83.1% of respondents believe that the capital punishment is inevitable, an increase of 2.3 percentage points from the previous poll.
The survey was conducted between October and December 2024 targeting 3,000 people aged 18 and over, and valid responses were received from 1,815 people, or 60.5%.
The polling method was changed from interviews in previous surveys to mailed questionnaires.
Although the questions remained the same, the Cabinet Office noted that they cannot make a simple comparison with previous results.
According to the results, the most common reason for supporting capital punishment, with multiple answers allowed, was "the feelings of crime victims and their families cannot be appeased" at 62.2%. This was followed by "heinous crimes should be paid for with one's life" at 55.5% and "abolishing the death penalty would lead to an increase in atrocious crimes" at 53.4%.
Attention was drawn to changes in public perceptions following the acquittal of former death row inmate Iwao Hakamada, 88. Hakamada spent decades on death row over the killing of a family of four in Shizuoka Prefecture, only to be acquitted in a retrial in September 2024.
While the trend of support for death penalty remained unchanged, the rate of respondents who believe "the death penalty should be abolished" increased by 7.5 points to 16.5% from the previous survey. Among those advocating for abolition, the most cited reason was "it is irreversible if there is a mistake in the trial," which increased by 20.3 points to 71.0%.
Furthermore, 34.4% of those who said capital punishment was inevitable answered that "If circumstances change, it may be acceptable to abolish the death penalty in the future."
Asked what they would think if life imprisonment without parole were newly introduced, 61.8% of all respondents said the death penalty should still not be abolished, while 37.5% said it should be.
