Tokyo, 10 November, /AJMEDIA/
Japan’s justice minister has come under fire for remarks widely seen as making light of his role in providing final authorization for executions of death-row inmates.
Yasuhiro Hanashi, who took the post in August, told a political gathering on Wednesday that the role of justice minister is an “obscure” position whose occupants can only makes the headlines by signing off on decisions to hang inmates.
“Serving as justice minister won’t help raise much money or secure many votes,” said Hanashi, a lawmaker from Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s Liberal Democratic Party.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno met Hanashi Thursday morning and warned him against “careless” remarks, the minister told reporters after the meeting.
Hanashi said he apologized for making the comments and giving the wrong impression about the duties of a justice minister.
He later said in a parliamentary committee meeting that he wants to retract his Wednesday remarks.
A former police bureaucrat, Hanashi has yet to authorize any executions as justice minister.
Japan was among 18 countries in the world that carried out executions last year, according to the rights group Amnesty International. A total of 108 countries did not have the death penalty as of the end of the year, it said.
Hanashi was also criticized by opposition parties, with Seiji Osaka, a Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan lawmaker, saying the minister does not understand “the importance of his post” and is “unfit” to be in the Cabinet.
A sixth-term House of Representatives lawmaker representing a constituency in Ibaraki Prefecture, northeast of Tokyo, Hanashi previously served as senior vice minister of justice and senior vice minister of agriculture, forestry and fisheries.
