On this date in 1995, Kimura Shuji was hanged in Japan.

It remains the norm in that ancient land to hale a man to the gallows with little more than an hour’s warning, having kept him in a state of unremitting apprehension of that moment for the space of decades. Given that norm, this day’s hanging was distinguished by little save an accidental, heartbreaking particular.

According to a report by the International Human Rights Federation (this page has links to .pdf versions of the report in both English and French):

when his mother and sister in law visited him on the morning of the day of execution, they were told by an officer ‘could you come again at noon since we are very busy at the end of the year?’ When they returned they were told that he had already been executed during the morning. The officer made no mention of the time of his execution. His family members said that although he had asked the detention house to inform them they had not done so. In addition, he had hurriedly written a short letter to his family during the few minutes just before his execution

On this day..

• 1739: Elizabeth Harrard
• 1929: Peter Kudzinowski
• 1782: Patrick Dougherty, robber
• 2014: A day in aborted death penalty moratoriums around the world
• 1689: William Davis
• 1875: Henry Wainwright, Whitechapel murderer
• 1893: Frederick Wyndham, unrepentant patricide
• 1692: A batch at Tyburn, escorted by the Ordinary of Newgate
• 1838: The first hangings of the Lower Canada Rebellion
• 1936: Aberra Kassa and Asfawossen Kassa, Ethiopian royalty
• 1624: Marco Antonio de Dominis, posthumously
• 1855: The slave Celia, who had no right to resist