True! Death penalty was abolished in 1981 after the president François Mitterand was elected.

There were attempts to abolish death penalty in the early 1900 but the public opinion was not ready. Funny I wonder how they where prepared to squeeze church from the state

During the second word war Marechal Pétain refused to pardon around fifty persons (scary). From 63 to 1981 five persons were condemned.

What really surprised me is the report about no press coverage. And you name it! Japan is an advanced country. By advanced I mean civilized, with an art on people relations, caring about peace, having refined culture. I wouldn’t find it less mature but I find this point odd and bold.

As of personal beliefs I wouldn’t dare defining human as such a beautiful thing hence killing sounds human. This is a wide discussion but trying to sum it up; i would say that you cannot substitute men’s justice to god’s.

By the way, now more and more people are in favor of death penalty, because there was an atrocious murder committed by an 18-year old boy. He had an intention of raping some woman, entered the house while she was with her baby, menaced her and, because she resisted hard, killed her and afterwards raped her. What’s worse, he killed the baby as she cried a lot.

After getting arrested, he even commented to his friends that he would be out of prison after 7, 8 years as was often the case with those criminals, so he was aware of what he had done. His lawyers tried to defend him, resorting to the “lack of mental capacity” that was the only exception to the death penalty, and then, he started talking about “doraemon” at the court in front of the bereaved family, after 7 years of trial…

In many cases, people are against the death penalty, saying it’s not humane etc., but when some people commit atrotious crimes, then their opinion shifts easily. So… it’s difficult to measure the maturity of the nation only by the death penalty.