Last week, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte announced his plans to reinstate the death penalty, which was abolished in his country in 2006. Duterte says he believes in retribution: If you kill someone, you deserve to die.
Some people are shocked by this rationale, but they shouldn¡¯t be. The death penalty has always been more or less about revenge, though it is sometimes justified as a deterrent. The Japanese government has never clearly explained its adoption of capital punishment except to say that most Japanese people want it. In recent years, some have called for a nationwide debate on the death penalty, including one justice minister who actually signed off on an execution for the purpose of starting such a debate.
Recently, several major newspapers, including The Japan Times, published the name of the man who was sentenced to death for two murders he committed in Ishinomaki, Miyagi Prefecture, in 2010 as a minor. Making this name public breaks a self-imposed rule that people arrested or convicted as minors will not be identified publicly. The ostensible reason for this rule is that the suspect has a chance at rehabilitation, which means he or she could re-enter society at some future date. In the minor¡¯s case, some newspapers claimed that, since the young man in question was condemned to death, there was no possibility of rehabilitation, so it was OK to print his name.
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