In March 1993, three men were executed in Japan. The executions of Tachikawa Shujiro, Kondo Seikichi and Kawanaka Tetsuo, which are reported to have taken place in detention centres in Osaka and Sendai on 25 and 26 March, were the first in three years, and ended a de facto moratorium on executions which had lasted since late 1989. Kawanaka Tetsuo is reported to have been suffering from mental illness, and his lawyer had been preparing an appeal for a retrial. The Osaka Detention House authorities were aware of this, and it would appear that he was executed before all avenues for review or commutation of his sentence were exhausted, in contravention of Japanese law.
