One of Japan's most notorious serial killers, who murdered and mutilated four little girls and reportedly drank the blood of one of his victims, was hanged Tuesday along with two others, bringing the number of executions in Japan to 13 in just six months.
The hangings marked an acceleration of executions in Japan, where a pro-death penalty justice minister and rising fears over violent crime _ such as the recent deaths of seven people in a stabbing rampage in Tokyo _ have combined to boost acceptance of capital punishment.
The most prominent execution Tuesday was that of Tsutomu Miyazaki, 45, who was convicted of killing and mutilating four girls aged four to seven in the late 1980s. His name has long been synonymous with heinous crime in Japan.
He burned the body of a 4-year-old and left her bones on her parents' doorstep. He also wrote letters to the media and victims' families taunting police. Japanese newspaper reports said he ate part of the hand of one of his victims and drank her blood.
The two others executed Tuesday were Shinji Mutsuda, 45, who had been on death row for the murder and robbery of two people, and Yoshio Yamasaki, 73, who was convicted of killing two people for insurance money, the Justice Ministry said in a statement.
The three executions brought to 13 the number of inmates hanged in the past six months under Justice Minister Kunio Hatoyama, an outspoken supporter of the death penalty. In contrast, only one inmate was executed in all of 2005.
Capital punishment faces little opposition in Japan, where the secretive justice system can allow murder convicts to languish on death row for decades before they are suddenly hanged without advance notice.
"There are people who want to abolish it, but that is a minority view. The majority want it maintained," Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said Tuesday. "I feel there is no need to change it, but we must also keep an eye on world opinion."
The human rights group Amnesty International, however, deplored the increasing rate of executions, which it said were "proof that Japan is moving to routinely execute inmates in large numbers." The group demanded that Japan abolish capital punishment.
Hatoyama, who took office last August, has denied his ministry is purposely picking up the pace of hangings, and said it is merely providing for swift administration of justice. Three men were executed in December, three more in February and another four in April.
In 1997, Tokyo District Court found Miyazaki guilty of killing four girls in 1988 and 1989, and sentenced him to death. The Tokyo High Court upheld the sentence in 2001, and the Supreme Court followed suit on Jan. 17 this year, exhausting Miyazaki's appeals.
Miyazaki also was convicted of the abduction and sexual assault of a fifth girl.
The murders and Miyazaki's arrest dominated Japanese headlines, along with the discovery that his home was filled with a collection of thousands of violent pornographic videos, animated films and comic books stacked floor-to-ceiling.
The case triggered concerns that many young people had become desensitized to human suffering through the repeated viewing of graphic images in videos and comics.
Mutsuda also was hanged at the Tokyo detention center for killing two men and robbing them of 30 million yen (US$278,000) in 1995 and 1996. Yamasaki was executed in Osaka for murders committed in 1985 and 1990.
Japan has 102 death row inmates after Tuesday's hangings, the ministry said.
The government began to release the names of those executed and their crimes in December, easing its secrecy policy in an apparent move to gain understanding and support for capital punishment.
