Japan executes man for 2009 gaming parlour arson attack

Japan has executed a man who killed five people in a gaming parlour fire in 2009, making this the first time in more than a year that the country has enacted the death sentence.

Sunao Takami, 58, had doused the pachinko gaming parlour near his home in Osaka with gasoline and set it alight, killing four customers and one employee.

A six-member jury and a panel of three judges rejected the defence's argument that Takami was mentally ill at the time of the crime, and sentenced him to hang in 2011.

Japan and the United States are the only G7 countries that still impose capital punishment, with death row prisoners in Japan typically being notified of their hanging just a few hours in advance.

"We ordered the execution after careful and thorough consideration," Justice Minister Hiroshi Hiraguchi said on Friday.

This is the first execution carried out under the Takaichi administration.

In June last year, Japan executed Takahiro Shiraishi, dubbed the "Twitter killer", who murdered and dismembered nine people in 2017.

Shiraishi's killings came to light in October 2017, when police found body parts in the Japanese city of Zama, near Tokyo, when they were searching for one of the victims.

Surveys suggest there is strong public support for the death penalty in Japan.

Rights groups, however, have criticised authorities for leaving death-row inmates in solitary confinement for long periods of time, and also pointed to a lack of transparency as to when executions are carried out.