Japan has carried out its first execution under the current government, hanging a man convicted of a deadly arson attack. The convict, 58-year-old Sunao Takami, murdered five people in a 2009 pachinko parlor fire. He was sentenced to death in 2011 after his appeal for leniency based on mental instability was rejected. Japan is one of the few developed nations that still enforces the death penalty, alongside the United States. The execution was announced just hours before it was carried out, a practice common in Japan. Justice Minister Hiroshi Hiraguchi stated the decision followed careful consideration, marking the first execution since Prime Minister Sanae Takagi’s government took office. The last execution in Japan occurred in June of the previous year.