July Kirby Seminar

In this Kirby Seminar, Associate Professor Mai Sato will explain that the body of the executed is the obvious and inevitable outcome of the death penalty.

However, to reduce the death penalty to the act of taking away life does not capture the full extent of the punishment. The death penalty begins when an individual is labelled by the State as worthy of death. Individuals live, often for years, under the death sentence. Focusing on Japanese prisoners, this presentation examines what is often an invisible, hard to research, aspect of the death penalty: how individuals live on death row. Much of the Japanese death penalty process is invisible. The Government does not release information on how prisoners are executed, the treatment of death row prisoners or the process of selecting who on death row is to be executed.

This presentation uses rare photographs of penal institution in Japan obtained by an NGO and findings from a survey of individuals on death row conducted by the Japan Federation of Bar Associations. It analyses the experiences of individuals on death row glimpsed from photographs, and a survey describes how access to both data were achieved and examines aspects of the death penalty that remain invisible.

Join us live or register for the webinar below