The Death Penalty in Japan: Will the Public Tolerate Abolition?

247 Pages·2014·1.99 MB·English

by  Mai Sato (auth.)

The Death Penalty in Japan
Mai Sato
The Death Penalty
in Japan
Will the Public Tolerate Abolition?
Mai Sato
London, United Kingdom
King’s College London, UK, 2011
ISBN 978-3-658-00677-8 ISBN 978-3-658-00678-5 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-658-00678-5
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Foreword

In The Death Penalty in Japan: Will the Public Tolerate Abolition?, Mai Sato
provides a significant theoretical contribution to the debate on the death penalty.
While countless scholars and international organisations – particularly outside
the US – approach the death penalty primarily from a human rights perspective,
Sato attempts to engage with the justifications for retention that follow a socio-
legal approach, based on subjective legitimacy: in other words, popular support.
Across abolitionist jurisdictions, and within supranational and national bodies
that oppose the death penalty, abolition is seen as a matter of principle, with the
doctrine of inalienable human rights – such as the right to life – drawn on to
provide the absolute justification for abolition. However, governments in many
retentionist countries argue that total prohibition is not yet established as a hu-
man rights norm, and that international treaties can only be binding to those that
choose to be bound by them. They cling to their sovereign right to determine
their own laws and criminal justice practices, often citing in their defence popu-
lar support for the ultimate punishment.
Japan’s official justification for the retention of the death penalty is public
opinion, with the government claiming that it cannot abolish the death penalty
while the public strongly supports it. Sato argues that, although this approach
may be theoretically coherent, it requires reliable evidence about how retention
actually affects public perceptions of the system’s legitimacy. In other words, the
Japanese government can defend its approach to the death penalty only if the
surveys it relies on capture public attitudes on the subject accurately. The ques-
tion addressed by this book is: to what extent can the Japanese government de-
fend its approach to the death penalty based on “popular support”? Is the reten-
tion of the death penalty so central to popular trust in the criminal justice system
that abolition would result in the erosion of political and judicial legitimacy?
Building on the theoretical framework of trust and legitimacy, the book
makes an important empirical contribution – both quantitative and qualitative –
to our understanding of the drivers of support for the death penalty. Sato carried
out three different types of surveys with methodological rigour and resourceful-
ness. The first – a conventional large-scale online survey (N=20,000) conducted
in Japan – measured the drivers of punitive responses to the death penalty by
8 Foreword
focusing on socio-demographic indicators. The second was an experimental
survey, involving two sub-samples (N=500x2) of the first larger survey. The
experimental survey focused on two possible drivers of punitivity: information
and retributive attitudes. Following the research conducted in the US on the
Marshall Hypothesis, and the broader “cognitive deficit” literature in the UK, she
explores the role of information about this punishment – in particular, how it is
applied – in support for the death penalty. This part of the empirical endeavour
also attempted to test whether support for the death penalty is merely a reflection
of broader retributive attitudes.
The third empirical component comprised an innovative methodology, in-
spired by deliberative polling, aimed at measuring the influence of deliberation
on punitivity. Participants were assembled and instructed on the Japanese death
penalty system, encouraged to discuss what they were learning and exchange
opinions on the issue, answer pre- and post-consultation surveys, and finally take
part in a follow-up interview. Most UK research on public opinion and punitivity
has either argued that public opinion is insulated from penal policy, or revealed
public ignorance about penal policy and identified “cognitive deficit” as one
driver of penal populism. While Sato’s second empirical project was based on
the “cognitive deficit” model, the third project attempted to go one step further
by paying particular attention to dialogue and the deliberation process, creating
what Habermas called a ‘public sphere’.
Public opinion scholars, and academics with an interest in legitimacy, will
find much to appreciate in this book. It brings together – persuasively and elo-
quently – a wide literature on survey methods, public opinion, trust, legitimacy,
and the death penalty, as well as original research. While the book adopts Japan
as a case study, it is applicable to most retentionist countries that present public
support for the ultimate penalty as an obstacle to abolition. It should therefore be
of interest to death penalty scholars worldwide, and to NGOs and international
organisations, who may find it useful to employ arguments other than those
based on human rights to engage in dialogues and démarches in various coun-
tries, whose elites profess to be ready for abolition or reform, but claim to resist
such change due to public opinion. Ultimately, though, the power of this book is
in demonstrating that, in Japan, government rationale for retention is based on
very shaky grounds. Replication of Sato’s work in other jurisdictions, such as
China, may show that Japan is not alone in this regard, and that this more prag-
Foreword 9
matic approach, alongside a continuing plea for governments to respect the hu-
man rights of their citizens, might just persuade further countries to embrace
abolition in the next decade or so.

Professor Carolyn Hoyle
Director, Centre for Criminology, University of Oxford
Acknowledgement

This book is largely based on my PhD thesis. Many people helped me during my
time as a doctoral student at King’s College London. First, my biggest thank you
goes to Professor Mike Hough. Without Mike’s guidance and encouragement
throughout the three years of my PhD, I would not have been able to start and –
more importantly – finish my thesis. The time and attention you gave away gen-
erously in reading and commenting on my work were invaluable in helping me
see it through to completion. You have been the best supervisor any PhD student
could wish for! Sincere thanks are also due to Dr Takeshi Honjo, Mr Masato
Kimura, and Ms Tomoko Maeshima for their collaboration in carrying out the
deliberative consultation.
My thank yous continue into my post-PhD phase, when I felt as if the thesis
was being most useful as a stand beneath my computer screen. My heartfelt
thanks are due to Professor Carolyn Hoyle and Professor Ian Loader at the Cen-
tre for Criminology, University of Oxford, for taking their time in carefully read-
ing through my work. I am truly grateful to Professor Helmut Kury for his advice
and enthusiasm for the book. I am also grateful to Dr Michael Kilchling at the
Max Planck Institute for putting me in touch with Springer.
Professor Roger Hood, Professor David Johnson, Dr Borge Bakken, and
Professor Koichi Hamai, have all given me their valuable time by commenting
on the whole or part of this book. A very special thank you to Mr Tom Ellis for
his kindness and patience: I would not otherwise have met so many scholars in
this field at such an early stage of my PhD, and I am sorry I have still not pro-
duced the ‘response chapter’…
Many thanks to Anita Wilke at Springer for her helpful suggestions and pa-
tience; and to Ian Hearnden for his relentlessly efficient and detailed editing, and
for spotting my Japanese accent and making it sound just right.
Thank you to my parents for their continued support and understanding of a
daughter who is always away from home, and for air-mailing me – without fail –
newspaper cuttings whenever executions occurred in Japan. Thanks are also due
to my lovely friends (you know who you are) who kept me company whenever
the writing-fairy was away. Thank you also to Dr Thomas Tapmeier for all the
time you spent in getting the book template to work with your ancient laptop.
12 Acknowledgement
Lastly, I am grateful to the following institutions for funding my surveys:
Suntory Foundation, Research Foundation for Safe Society, Great Britain Sasa-
kawa Foundation, Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, University of London and
King’s College London.
Dr Mai Sato