Justice Minister in Death Penalty Retreat

Japan's new justice minister was forced into an embarrassing retreat yesterday, less than 24 hours after he said he would refuse to sign execution orders because he opposes the death penalty.

Seiken Sugiura, who was given the post in a cabinet reshuffle on Monday, said he would carry out his duties with "careful consideration" after he was reportedly given a dressing down by the prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi. "The comment was an expression of my feelings as an individual and was not made in relation to the conduct of the duties and responsibilities of a justice minister," he said. "I would like to correct my statement because I would regret any misunderstandings I might have caused with the remark."

But his remarks fuelled speculation that Japan, one of two G7 nations - the other is the US - to retain the death penalty, would review its stance on capital punishment. "In the long term I have the feeling we will move towards abolition," he said after his appointment.

Japan implemented an unofficial moratorium on executions between November 1989 and March 1993 because anti-hanging justice ministers refused to sign execution orders. Japan executes only a handful of people a year. It executed two people in 2004, compared with 59 in the US, according to Amnesty International. There are currently 77 people on death row in Japan, and only one person has been hanged this year.

But the United Nations, the European Union and Amnesty International have frequently criticised Japan's retention of the death sentence and the secretive way in which it is carried out.

Inmates, who often spend years, sometimes decades, on death row, are only told they are to be executed shortly beforehand; their relatives are informed afterwards so that they can collect the body. Hangings are usually carried out during parliamentary recesses to ward off protests from abolitionist MPs. Public support for the death penalty, recorded at 81% in a poll conducted earlier this year, rose following high-profile crimes such as the 1995 gas attack on the Tokyo subway in which 12 people died, and the murder of eight schoolchildren in 2001 by Mamoru Takuma, who was hanged last year.

Mr Sugiura's appointment, however, is expected to lend weight to the campaign for abolition. The Japan Federation of Bar Associations has urged the government to suspend executions and abolitionist MPs plan to submit a bill that would replace the death sentence with life in prison.

Despite his apparent climbdown, Mr Sugiura indicated that his opposition to the death penalty could influence his conduct. "Personally I believe that nobody should be able to take away somebody else's life," he said. "Even those who have been sentenced to death for whatever reason - they are still human beings."