Japan on Tuesday executed three people who were on death row, marking the first time the death penalty was carried out under Prime Minister Fumio Kishida s government, Kyodo news agency reported.
Japan is one of the few developed countries to keep the death penalty, and public support for capital punishment remains high despite international criticism, especially from rights groups.
Japan carried out its first executions in two years on Dec. 21 by hanging three death row inmates, one of them a mass murderer, in Tokyo and Osaka Prefecture.
Yasutaka Fujishiro, 65, who killed seven including his aunt in a 2004 knife-and-hammer rampage, was hanged in Tokyo alongside double killers Tomoaki Takanezawa, 54, and Mitsunori Onogawa.