Japan on Tuesday executed a man who killed seven people in a car crash and stabbing in a crowded Tokyo shopping district in 2008.
Justice Minister Yoshihisa Furukawa told reporters that Tomohiro Kato was hanged at the Tokyo detention center earlier Tuesday.
Japan retains the death penalty despite growing international criticism. Furukawa said the death penalty is a justified response to continuing heinous and violent crimes, and abolishing it is not appropriate at this time.
Furukawa said Kato carefully prepared to carry out the mass killings, “a brutal act that led to extremely serious consequences and had a great impact on society.”
In the attack, Kato drove his truck down a street in Akihabara’s electronics shopping area, plowed into a crowd of people and killed three pedestrians in June 2008. He then got out of the vehicle and stabbed four people to death. He wounded or injured 10 other people.
Surveillance footage broadcast by national broadcaster NHK afterward showed Kato buying hunting knives two days before the attack, laughing with a store worker and at times making stabbing hand motions. Media reports also say he posted on Internet message boards several desperate messages and warnings that he planned to kill people in a mass attack.
Kato, 39, was sentenced to death in 2011 by the Tokyo District Court, and the Supreme Court rejected his appeal in 2015.
Furukawa denied Tuesday’s hanging was linked to the death of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe earlier this month, which shocked a nation known for strict gun control and low crime.
Tuesday’s hanging was the second by the government of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who took office in October.
There are now 107 people on death row in Japan, including 61 who are seeking retrials, Furukawa said.
Japan and the United States are the only two countries of the Group of Seven advanced nations that retain the death penalty. A survey by the Japanese government showed that the vast majority of the public supported the executions.
Executions are carried out in high secrecy in Japan, where prisoners are not informed of their fate until the morning they are hanged. Since 2007, Japan has begun releasing the names of those executed and some details of their crimes, but disclosures are still limited.
Three prisoners were hanged in 2021.
In 2018, Japan hanged 15 people, including the cult’s guru Aum Shinrikyo and 12 former followers, convicted of a sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway that killed 13 people and sickened thousands.
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