Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. [Reuters]
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. [Reuters]

Japan on Friday executed a man in his 50s who set fire to a pachinko parlor in Osaka in July 2009, killing five people.

The Justice Ministry announced that morning that it had carried out the execution of death-row inmate Takami Sunao, 58, according to Kyodo News and the Asahi Shimbun.

Justice Minister Hiraguchi Hiroshi ordered the execution.

It was Japan's first execution in one year and two months, since June last year, and the first since Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi took office.

Takami was convicted of dousing a pachinko parlor near his home in Konohana Ward, Osaka, with kerosene and setting it ablaze on July 5, 2009, killing four customers and one employee and injuring 10 others.

He turned himself in and was arrested the day after the attack.

His defense attorneys argued that Takami had "limited criminal responsibility" due to the influence of delusions, but the court rejected the claim. The Osaka District Court, in its first ruling in 2011, and the Osaka High Court, on appeal in 2013, both found that Takami had full criminal responsibility. In 2016, the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence, ruling that "the influence of delusions was not significant."

The previous execution in Japan was that of Shiraishi Takahiro, a man in his 30s known as the "Twitter serial killer," who was put to death in June 2025 after being sentenced to death for murdering nine people he had met through social media in Zama, Kanagawa Prefecture.


jshan@heraldcorp.com