JIADEP NOTE: In a rare show of transparency, the execution chamber in the Tokyo Detention Center was opened to reporters. The event has drawn a massive attention from all over the world. Anti-death penalty activists partially welcomed the disclosure, but criticized the absence of the noose, and the non-disclosure of the underground room beneath the trap door where the body falls. Below are some links to foreign newspapers including an article by JIADEP advisor David McNeil.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/japan-opens-up-its-secret-death-chamber-to-the-world-2064036.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/david-mcneill-little-light-has-been-shed-on-these-dark-secrets-in-350-years-2064037.html
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/japan-opens-doors-to-hanging-chamber/story-e6frg6so-1225911015239
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Chiba hopes gallows glimpse spurs debate.
Last stand: The trapdoor holds center position in the gallows chamber at the Tokyo Detention House.
KYODO PHOTO
By MINORU MATSUTANI
Staff writer
Japan Times
The Tokyo Detention House opened its execution chamber to the media Friday, giving the public its first peek at the place where death-row inmates are hanged.
The Justice Ministry organized the tour at the instructions of Justice Minister Keiko Chiba, who is trying to generate public debate on the death penalty. Despite being a longtime opponent of capital punishment, Chiba authorized the executions of two inmates in July and witnessed them in person.
"I decided to show the execution chamber because I thought it would give the public something to discuss about the death penalty," Chiba told reporters after the media tour.
Officials of the detention house and the ministry escorted some 20 reporters to the execution chamber, which is part of a larger structure consisting of a chaplain chamber, front chamber, button chamber and attendant chamber.
Reporters were first briefed in a conference room and then loaded onto a small, curtained bus for the trip to the execution chamber. Reporters were banned from speaking and from bringing anything other than pen and notebook.
Death-row inmates are only notified on the morning of their hanging and executed shortly afterward. The first stop is the chaplain chamber, Justice Ministry Correction Bureau official Satoshi Tomiyama said.
In the chaplain chamber, inmates can receive services from a chaplain appointed by the detention house. The room has a Buddhist altar, but Christian and Shinto arrangements can also be made upon request, Tomiyama said. Tea, fruit or sweets are also offered in the room, he said.
Then they are escorted to the front chamber, where they are given a last chance to speak with the chaplain.
It is in the front chamber where the chief of the detention house formally announces the execution. Inmates are then blindfolded, handcuffed in front and escorted to the execution chamber.
A curtain is the only thing that separates the front and execution chambers, but it is usually closed, and inmates are unable to see the execution chamber and the rope dangling from the ceiling pulley and hooked to the floor.
There was no rope visible Friday because "it is installed only when execution is carried out," Tomiyama said.
In the execution chamber, the inmate's legs are tied, the noose is tightened and the condemned stands on a trap door.
Then three officials enter a side room where there are three buttons. They push them at the same time so they don't know which one actually springs the trapdoor.
In the attendant chamber, where Chiba saw the July hangings, officials view the execution chamber and the room below.
In five minutes after a doctor confirms death, the corpse is lowered and put in a coffin.
Execution chamber at Tokyo Detention House opened to media
http://www.asahi.com/national/update/0827/TKY201008270244.html
August 27, 2010
The Justice Ministry opened the execution chamber at the Tokyo Detention House to the media Friday, allowing reporters to take still and moving images for the first time, under the instruction of Justice Minister Keiko Chiba.
During the 30-minute visit, reporters stepped into the five rooms of the chamber, such as the execution room equipped with a trap footplate and a pulley to hang death row inmates and the so-called ‘‘button room’’ equipped with three buttons to operate the trap footplate. A red square marked the trapdoor where the condemned stands.
The ministry has rarely opened execution chambers, other than inspections by lawmakers, saying, ‘‘It is not appropriate to open the chambers to the public as they are solemn places.’‘
Foreign press were barred from the visit despite repeated requests for access by The Associated Press and other media organizations. The Ministry of Justice gave no clear reason.
The latest move is expected to open a crack in breaking the secrecy surrounding Japan’s capital punishment system and to stir demand for further information disclosure over the death penalty, such as how to pick up death row inmates to hang and how to treat them in their daily lives.
Three other rooms that were shown include the prayer room where prison chaplains talk to an inmate before execution and the inmates can leave a will, a room where the detention house chief officially notifies an inmate of the execution, and one where prosecutors and the detention house chief witness the hanging.
The ministry, however, did not show the rope for hanging an inmate and the space to collect the hanged body of the inmate. It also declined to present where the chamber is located in the detention house ‘‘due to security reasons.’‘
Chiba told a press conference Friday, ‘‘It was the most disclosure we could do after considering the feelings of death row inmates, those who are close to them and prison guards as well as security problems.’‘
Chiba, a former member of the anti-death penalty parliamentarian group, told a press conference last month after attending the executions of two inmates there that she has instructed the detention facility to allow the media to visit the execution chamber, in a bid to stir public debate over the death penalty.
She made the comments at a time when ordinary citizens will be involved in making decisions on capital cases under the lay judge system.
The reporters who visited the chamber belong to the press club at the Justice Ministry, and only pool photographers were allowed to take still and moving images.
Following her first execution order, Chiba also instructed the ministry to establish a panel to study capital punishment.
A total of 17 death-row inmates have been hanged at the Tokyo execution chamber since December 2006, when the facility was remodeled. In the face of criticism over the secrecy surrounding Japan’s execution system, the Justice Ministry started releasing the names of the hanged inmates and the execution places in December 2007. Before that, it did not disclose executions themselves.
As of Friday, there are 107 death row inmates in Japan, whose capital sentences have already been finalized, while seven execution chambers are located in detention houses in Sapporo, Sendai, Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka, Hiroshima and Fukuoka.
In 1989, the U.N. General Assembly adopted an international treaty aiming at the abolition of the death penalty, which Japan has yet to ratify, with the Geneva-based Human Rights Committee in 2008 saying, ‘‘Regardless of opinion polls, the state party (Japan) should favorably consider abolishing the death penalty and inform the public, as necessary, about the desirability of abolition.’‘
A Japanese government survey showed in February that a record 85.6% of respondents consider continuing capital punishment as ‘‘unavoidable.’‘Japan opened up the secretive world of its capital punishment system to the public Friday, offering journalists a rare tour of Tokyo’s main gallows—an apparent effort to stoke debate about a practice widely supported here.
Inmates on death row do not know when they will be executed until the last minute, while family members and lawyers are only told afterward. Even the exact location of the execution site is a secret. According to media accounts, the reporters were taken on a bus with curtains closed so that the location couldn’t be identified.
Anti-execution lawyer Yoshihiro Yasuda has accused Chiba of trading two lives for the opportunity to stir public debate. “Execution is murder. It’s wrong to use the execution to promote review of the death penalty,” he said. “I’m afraid that a public viewing could instead justify the cause, depending on its presentation.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tokyo death chamber to be opened to media
The Japan Times: Saturday, July 31, 2010
Kyodo News
The Justice Ministry will open the execution chamber at the Tokyo Detention House to the media as early as August, Justice Minister Keiko Chiba said Friday.
Secretive practices surrounding the capital punishment system, including executions without prior notice to death-row inmates, their relatives and lawyers, have drawn criticism.
Execution chambers have been closed to the public, including the media, but Chiba has ordered the Tokyo facility to allow media access to stir debate over the death penalty.
She told a news conference after a Cabinet meeting Friday that a panel to study the death penalty will be established in August under her to discuss the overall system of capital punishment.
The announcement came after Chiba, who once belonged to a group of lawmakers against the death penalty, ordered the hanging of two death row inmates and, in an unusual move, witnessed the executions herself Wednesday.
After attending the executions, Chiba said at a news conference, "I felt anew the need to fundamentally discuss the issue of capital punishment."
On Friday, she rejected suggestions she had been pressured by Justice Ministry officials to sign the execution orders, saying: "It's not true. I recognized that I had such a duty when assuming the justice portfolio."
She also said the view she held as a former member of the Japan Parliamentary League against the Death Penalty that abolishing capital punishment is one option "will never change," indicating she remains in favor of its abolition.
The Geneva-based Human Rights Committee urged Japan in 2008 to consider terminating the death penalty regardless of domestic public opinion, which favors its continuation.