Death penalty and I

Do not worry. I never commit crime.

The story begun when I was a primary school student. When I was as old as my adviser's children*1. At the time, I believed that the meaning of penalty is for punishment. However, basic concept was "education". I was very shocked to read that.

15 years ago, Japanese society was shocked by Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway. The crime was unique because it was conducted by a cult which was called Aum Shinrikyo. The most terrible things of them was the executives were graduated from representative universities in Japan. They developed the poison gas by themselves. The terrorism was the first case of poison gas after World War II.

They are soon arrested. At the time, I cannot imagine except for death penalty to them. Until a few years ago, I never had chance to change the way of thinking. One reason of my thinking seems to come from their image developed by mass media. I thought that they are so foolish that they cannot stop the crime. My point of view was completely changed by books of Haruki Murakami.

Since I know the surrounding environment, I started to doubt the meanings of death penalty. Of course, they should take responsibility of their crime. Families of victims of the gas attack, however, often think that the authority could have taken actions before the fatal situations. For example, in advance of the incident, a family of lawyer who had been fighting disappeared. Later a member of Aum Shinrikyo confessed that they killed them. Families of victims are frustrated by the laziness of the authority. They did not investigate the incident because of conflict between the lawyer and the authority.

It is very easy and simple to just deliver judgement on them. However, I cannot ignore the lack of function of society to prevent the crime. I cannot help feeling that the structure of society results in the incident and death penalty is just ignorance of the problem of society. How can we blame the inappropriate actions of the authority?

Unfortunately, however we can blame the authority or any others, we cannot change the past. I was also shocked to know Sarin gas attack. The more time has passed, however, the more it become difficult to understand what happens. I think I cannot answer this question forever.

Underground

Haruki Murakami gave interviews to people who were involved by the gas attack

*1:Strictly speaking, I was slightly older when they were taken in the picture.