What percentage of Japanese citizens agree with the death penalty?
In Japan, more than 80% of its people agree with the death penalty in their country. Only 9% of them think the system should be entirely abolished in
any cases. You can see that a vast majority of Japanese citizens think the death
penalty is adequate.
“Poll
Reveals More than 80% Support Death Penalty in Japan.” Nippon.com, 4 Feb. 2020,
www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h00640/poll-reveals-more-than-80-support-death-penalty-in-japan.html.
“Over
80% Accept Death Penalty in Japan as “Inevitable”: Government Poll.” Mainichi
Daily News, 18 Jan. 2020,
mainichi.jp/english/articles/20200118/p2a/00m/0na/010000c.
I trusted the numbers because they are from the poll officially held by Japanese government. And also it's on the website of Mainichi daily news company, one of the foremost media in Japan.
I think there's reason to be rather suspicious about the results of the poll that's described here because it was conducted by Japan's Cabinet Office. In other words, it was not a poll conducted by an independent, unbiased entity. As the government itself supports and carries out the death penalty, it is in their interest to show that the Japanese public fully supports the status quo. One can manipulate the results of surveys through the types of questions that one asks. It's important to try to find polls that ask the questions in different ways to see if the same results would emerge. The title of the Mainichi news article, "Over 80% Accept Death Penalty in Japan as “Inevitable”," should make you have some doubts. To feel that something is "inevitable" does not necessarily mean that you believe it should be carried out. "Inevitable" may mean that you just don't see any alternative. If questions were asked that offered alternatives to the death penalty, which might include something called "restorative justice" perhaps the results would be different. I think the purpose of the Cabinet Office poll may not have been to honestly assess Japanese public opinion on the issue, but rather to try to deflect international criticism by showing that it has widespread public support, when actually the support may be "manufactured."
ReplyDeleteThis is such an interesting trend. I feel that Japanese people tend to agree on death penalty bacause of the "responsibility culture". In other words, those who commit 迷惑 will be accused of breaking the 和, not to mention the accountability for brutal crimes. Perhaps the Japanese don't consider human rights that much but rather, the value of the individual in terms of how much it's valued in the collective sense. It is cruel that the government might be luring the public through data, but the Japanese collectivism is also at play, I suspect.
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