The Liberal Democratic Party-led government appears reluctant to disclose the criteria under which it chose to execute three men Thursday, the first hangings since Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took power in December.
Some observers speculate that two of them were picked out of the more than 130 on death row because they had withdrawn their appeals and that executions may be revived on a regular basis.
In December 2009, a lawyer visited Masahiro Kanagawa, 29, one of the people hanged Thursday, at a detention center in Mito, Ibaraki Prefecture, to discuss an appeal after he was sentenced to death. He remembers being struck by Kanagawa's calmness.