The country of Japan had 107 people on death row as of December 21, 2021.[1]
| Name | Crime | Time on death row | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shinji Aoba | Perpetrator of the Kyoto Animation arson attack, where 36 people died. | Aoba committed the arson due to the belief that the animation studio had plagiarized his work. | ||
| Masumi Hayashi | Committed a mass poisoning at a 1998 summer festival by putting poison in a pot of curry. The poisoning killed two children and two adults. | |||
| Yoshitomo Hori | Murdered married couple Kazuo and Satomi Magoori during a robbery of their pachinko parlor in Owariasahi on June 28, 1998. | He was linked to the crime years later via DNA. Hori later participated as an accomplice in the murder of Rie Isogai, for which he was sentenced to life imprisonment. | ||
| Hayato Imai | Murdered at least three elderly patients at a nursing home from November to December 2014, where he worked as a nurse. | |||
| Chisako Kakehi | Murdered three elderly men, including her husband, with cyanide from 2007 to 2013. | Additionally suspected in the murders of seven other men, but has not been charged. | ||
| Hiroko Kazama | Together with her husband, Gen Sekine and a third accomplice, murdered at least four people who wanted to purchase dogs from their home in Kumagaya from April to August 1993. | The trio were suspected of several other murders, but were never charged. Sekine died on death row in 2017, and the accomplice, Eikō Yamazaki, turned state's witness. | ||
| Kanae Kijima | Convicted for poisoning three would-be husbands and suspected of four more, spanning from 2007 to 2009. | Also known as "The Konkatsu Killer", for her frequenting of "konkatsu" (marriage-hunting) websites. | ||
| Mami Kitamura | Murdered four people between September 18 to 20, 2004. | All four member of the family were part of the Kitamura-gumi gang. | ||
| Jitsuo Kitamura | ||||
| Takashi Kitamura | ||||
| Takahiro Kitamura | ||||
| Futoshi Matsunaga | Defrauded, tortured and murdered seven to nine people between 1996 and 1998. | His accomplice, Junko Ogata, received a life sentence. | ||
| Kazuhiro Ogawa | Murdered 16 people in an arson attack on an adult video arcade. | Ogawa told police that he started the fire after deciding to kill himself, but he got scared, and ran away as smoke filled his room. | ||
| Takayuki Ōtsuki | Murdered, robbed and raped 23-year-old Yayoi Motomura and murdered Motomura's 11-month-old daughter, Yuka. | Sentenced to death although he was not of the age of maturity (20 years of age in Japan) at that time (18 years). Successfully re-sentenced to death after the prosecution team successfully appealed his initial sentence of life imprisonment. | ||
| Murdered two policemen and another person during a shootout with police in a holiday lodge below Mount Asama. | He is a member of the United Red Army and was involved in the murder of 14 other members of the terrorist organization. | |||
| Takahiro Shiraishi | Murdered nine people, mostly suicidal young women he met through Twitter. | Three of his victims were high school students. He has stated his desire not to appeal his sentence. | ||
| Yoshinori Ueda | Perpetrator of the "Osaka Dog Lover Murders", in which he fatally poisoned five people with suxamethonium. | |||
| Satoshi Uematsu | Perpetrated a mass stabbing that led to the deaths of 19 disabled people. | Uematsu was a former worker at the care facility where the incident occurred. | ||
| Shigeru Yagi | Orchestrated the fatal poisonings of two customers at his hostess club in Honjō from 1995 to 1999. | His three female accomplices were also convicted and received lesser sentences. Additionally attempted to murder a third man and is suspected to be involved in a third suspicious death dating back to 1989. |