Published by Global Banking & Finance Review®
Posted on June 27, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 23, 2026
Add as preferred source on GoogleJapan executed Takahiro Shiraishi, the 'Twitter killer', for murdering nine people via social media, marking the first execution since 2022.
By Kantaro Komiya
TOKYO (Reuters) -Japan executed a man on Friday who killed nine people after contacting them on social media, the first use of capital punishment in the country in nearly three years.
Takahiro Shiraishi had been sentenced to death for his 2017 strangling and dismembering of eight women and one man in his apartment in Zama city in Kanagawa near Tokyo. He was dubbed the "Twitter killer" as he contacted victims via the social media platform.
Justice Minister Keisuke Suzuki, who authorised Shiraishi's hanging, said he made the decision after careful examination, taking into account the convict's "extremely selfish" motive for crimes that "caused great shock and unrest to society."
It followed the execution in July 2022 of a man who went on a stabbing rampage in Tokyo's shopping district Akihabara in 2008.
It was also the first time a death penalty was carried out since Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba's government was inaugurated last October.
In September last year, a Japanese court acquitted Iwao Hakamada, who had spent the world's longest time on death row after a wrongful conviction for crimes committed nearly 60 years ago.
Capital punishment is carried out by hanging in Japan and prisoners are notified of their execution hours before it is carried out, which has long been decried by human rights groups for the stress it puts on death-row prisoners.
"It is not appropriate to abolish the death penalty while these violent crimes are still being committed," Suzuki told a press conference. There are currently 105 death row inmates in Japan, he added.
(Reporting by Kantaro Komiya; Editing by Stephen Coates)
Takahiro Shiraishi was executed for killing nine people after contacting them on social media.
He was sentenced to death for strangling and dismembering eight women and one man in 2017.
Capital punishment in Japan is carried out by hanging, and prisoners are notified just hours before their execution.
There are currently 105 death row inmates in Japan, according to Justice Minister Keisuke Suzuki.
Human rights groups have long criticized the practice of notifying prisoners only hours before their execution, citing the stress it causes.
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