Abstract
This article examines how two of Japan’s largest newspapers frame death penalty issues. Through a content analysis of 7,153 Asahi and Nikkei articles in the 66-month period from January 1, 2007 to June 30, 2012, 11 death penalty frames are identified: inevitability, atonement by dying, atonement by living, victims’ rights and emotions, human rights, miscarriage of justice, calls for discussion, life without parole, deterrence, public support, and retribution. In addition to frames, we examined who the main voices are in each article on capital punishment. We found that avoidance and ambivalence are the two main approaches taken by Asahi and Nikkei to cover death penalty issues, and the most surprising finding is the high salience of atonement as a frame for thinking about capital punishment. In Japan, atonement is used to justify (atone by dying) and oppose (atone by living) the death penalty. Although atonement by living in prison and atonement by dying at the gallows imply radically different outcomes, the flexibility of the atonement frame may suggest new possibilities for Japan’s anti-death penalty movement.
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Notes
A few signs of increased information openness did appear before the 2009 reforms. As of 1991, fewer than 60 books had been published on capital punishment in Japan, but by 2008 the number had reached 120 (Hamai 2012). Similarly, officials in Japan’s Ministry of Justice started to announce executions after the fact in 1999, and they began releasing the names of the condemned a few years later. Prior to these policy changes, the Ministry made no pre- or post-execution announcements (Yomiuri Shimbun Shakaibu 2009).
Other descriptions of death penalty discourse in America include Masur 1989, Sarat 2001, Banner 2002, Fleury-Steiner 2004, Clarke and Whitt 2007, Kaplan 2012, and Madeira 2012. Studies of death penalty discourse in other countries include Sarat and Boulanger 2005, Bae 2007, Badinter 2008, Johnson and Zimring 2009, and Hammel 2010.
As of September 30, 2012, the total average weekday circulations for the five largest American newspapers were as follows: Wall Street Journal: 2,293,798; USA Today: 1,713,833; New York Times: 1,613,865; Los Angeles Times: 641,369; and New York Daily News: 535,875. These figures include print, digital, and branded editions (Engle 2012). Thus, Asahi’s combined circulation is 7.5 times that of the New York Times, and Nihon Keizai Shimbun’s is twice that of the Wall Street Journal.
The Nikkei database covers only the national edition, while the Asahi database includes local editions of the paper (Miyazawa 2008, p.74).
Many analysts have stressed the uniform and sanitized nature of media coverage in Japan. Shigeo Abe, who left a career at Nikkei in disillusionment at the paper’s practices to start an investigative magazine called Facta, believes that “Japanese newspapers are the most widely read but among the most ineffective in the world” (quoted in McNeill 2012a). Similarly, Takichi Nishiyama, who left a career at Japan’s third largest national newspaper (Mainichi Shimbun) after he was publically and professionally humiliated for scooping a story describing how Tokyo had secretly agreed to absorb the costs of the reversion of Okinawa from American to Japanese rule in 1972, believes that journalists in Japan generally “see it as their job to protect and legitimize authority, not question it” (quoted in McNeill 2012b). For other critical accounts of the role of the media in Japan, see Asano (1987), Hall (1998), Freeman (2000), Kerr (2001, ch.4), Gamble and Watanabe (2004), and Nishikawa (2009).
When we searched the word shikei in the electronic databases of both Asahi and Nikkei, the articles that include the word kyokkei also appeared as the two words are used interchangeably in Japan to refer to capital punishment.
In Table 2, “other” includes miscellaneous articles in which the word shikei was used metaphorically or in which a cognate word (such as shikei-shu or “death row inmate”) appeared. Also included in the “other” category are articles about war criminals, films, theatrical productions, and book reviews about the death penalty, in addition to brief weekly summaries of news that involved death penalty cases and a few articles in which offenders did not receive a death sentence even though they committed their crimes in hope of getting the death penalty.
By “framing” we mean how capital punishment is socially constructed and represented (Best 2013, p.67).
Hanging is the only method of execution Japan has used since 1873 (Botsman 2005).
Data from Asahi were collected using the online archive Kikuzo, and data from Nikkei were collected using the online archive Nikkei Telecom 21. In total, 174 of the 972 articles in this study (18 %) had more than one frame.
On how individual offenders are expected to behave in Japan (“like a carp on the cutting board”), see David Bayley’s discussion of “the individual and authority” (Bayley 1991, pp.126-151).
At the time of this writing in November 2013, the last post-execution “press conference” was held by Minister of Justice Sadakazu Tanigaki, after the hanging of 73-year-old Tokuhisa Kumagai on September 12, 2013. Of the 13 questions that reporters asked Tanigaki, five concerned the timing of the execution (why Kumagai? why now?), and Tanigaki stated six times that he had made the decision to execute “carefully” (while providing no information about the basis for it). Tanigaki also refused to answer four questions, but in what may have been a slip of his well-prepared tongue, he acknowledged that there are no “standards” (kijun) in Japan for deciding how many people are hanged when the Minister authorizes executions (at present, more than 130 persons on death row are eligible for execution). A complete transcript of Tanigaki’s press conference can be found at http://www.moj.go.jp/hisho/kouhou/hisho08_00458.html (last accessed November 5, 2013).
On ambivalence in public support for capital punishment in Japan, see Sato 2014.
Cognate expressions of “inevitability” include yamu o ezu, shikata nai, shiyo ga nai, …shika nai, and hoka…nai.
The same study, which is based on the Gallup International 2000 Millenium Survey Poll, found that Japan ranked 16th out of 59 countries in public support for capital punishment, with 59 % of respondents answering this question in the affirmative: “Are you personally in favor or against the use of the death penalty?” (Unnever 2010, pp.469, 473). The highest levels of public support for capital punishment were found in Taiwan (83 %), Pakistan (82 %), and Thailand (79 %), while the USA ranked eighth, with 68 % support. The lowest levels were found in Denmark, Spain, Sweden, Ireland, Norway, and Iceland, where public support ranged from 13 to 19 %. The median level of support was found in Argentina, where 43 % of the public said they support capital punishment.
According to the World Values Survey, Japan is one of the most secular nations in the world (www.worldvaluessurvey.org). It is also one of the least Christian, with less than three million Christians out of a population of 127.6 million.
Similarly, Paul Kaplan’s study of “murder stories” in the USA found significant similarities between the ideological narratives constructed by the prosecution and the defense in capital trials. In particular, both invoke the individualistic values of the “American Creed” (Kaplan 2012, p.85).
Life without parole may mean “life without hope” in addition to “new challenges to human dignity” that rival those confronting capital punishment (Hood and Hoyle 2008, p.392).
In Japan at present, a term of life imprisonment with the possibility of parole (muki choeki) means that most inmates spend more than 30 years behind bars, and the mean time served under a life sentence has increased markedly in recent years (Hamai 2012).
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Kita, M., Johnson, D.T. Framing Capital Punishment in Japan: Avoidance, Ambivalence, and Atonement. Asian Criminology 9, 221–240 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11417-014-9189-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11417-014-9189-3