September 14, 2004
THOUGHT WE WERE THE ONLY SAVAGES WHO STILL HAD A DEATH PENALTY?:
Takuma hangs for massacre of eight kids at Osaka school: Killer had sought swift justice for '01 Ikeda stabbings (Japan Times. 9/15/04)
Mamoru Takuma, who murdered eight children at an Osaka elementary school in 2001, was hanged Tuesday at the Osaka Detention House, sources said.Posted by Orrin Judd at September 14, 2004 10:00 PMA three-time killer in Kyushu also went to the gallows.
Takuma, 40, was convicted of murder and attempted murder over the stabbing spree at Osaka Kyoiku University Ikeda Elementary School in Ikeda, Osaka Prefecture, on June 8, 2001. In addition to killing the eight children, he wounded 13 other students and two teachers.
Takuma was sentenced to death by the Osaka District Court in August 2003 and his defense team filed an appeal. But Takuma withdrew the appeal toward the end of the following month, finalizing the sentence. At the time, he said he did not want to live on without a purpose. [...]
Also executed Tuesday was Sueo Shinmaki, a 59-year-old mobster who was being held at the Fukuoka Detention House after being convicted of three murders in Kyushu in 1988.
With the day's executions, 46 people have been executed since a roughly 40-month moratorium ended in 1993.
Might this tragedy have been prevented if they'd never dropped the ban on private citizens owning assault knives?
Posted by: mike earl at September 14, 2004 10:24 PMJaps have their problems, but they run a tight ship.
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at September 15, 2004 1:03 AMEarly in '96, in Dunblane, Scotland, Thomas Hamilton, may he rot in hell, killed 16 children between the ages of four and six, and one adult, and further wounded 14 young children and three adults.
He accomplished this with handguns.
Knives, swords, bayonets, etc. may indeed kill, maim and wound, but more slowly, at closer quarters, and with more effort.
Thus, Hamilton shot 34, killing 50%, and Takuma stabbed 23, with a 35% fatality rate.
Pagan Japan is more moral than post-Christian
Europe.
Are the Japanese pagan? I confess to near-total ignorance.
Someone once told me that the Japanese are like the English: islanders and therefore eccentric.
Posted by: Eugene S. at September 15, 2004 3:36 PMA few years ago I read that in Japan there is no set date for an execution. So a condemed criminal never knows whether or not he'll be here tomorrow. I assume that this would be regarded as "cruel and unusual" if ever adopted over here.
I have heard from a Scottish source that Thomas Hamilton was still alive when he arrived at the hospital but that no one would attend to him. The majority of people in the UK favor the return of the death penalty,
Posted by: George at September 15, 2004 6:20 PMMost Japanese are Buddhists, and many are simultaneously Shintoists, at least for certain occasions.
Shinto is definitely pagan, though it's sort of like Ranger Rick -- love the forest. Shorn of emperorism, it's perhaps the only inoffensive religion in the world today.
The rituals remind me of being in a room where everybody has the same obsessive-compulsive disorder, but nothing in Shintoism tells people to persecute anybody.
Posted by: Harry Eagar at September 15, 2004 8:53 PM