His name means "Dove Mountain" you know

Poor Kunio...it turns he's kind of afraid of ordering the death of a human being. Can't we like get a computer to do it? Or maybe ASIMO, if he/it is not otherwise engaged?

Remove justice minister from execution process: Hatoyama
Kyodo News

Justice Minister Kunio Hatoyama proposed Tuesday scrapping the rule requiring the justice minister's signature for executions because "no one wants to put his signature on an execution order."

Under the Criminal Procedure Law, the justice minister is required to sign and issue an execution order within six months after a death sentence is finalized.
"The law should be abided by," Hatoyama told a news conference after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Cabinet resigned. "But no one wants to put his signature on an execution order. "I wonder if there is any way not to delegate the responsibility solely to the justice minister," he said.

Hatoyama called for devising an "automatic and objective" procedure for executing people without having to involve the justice minister.

I had predicted there would be trouble on this issue. Funny thing, though; I thought it was going to be the other way around--that his vulgarity and insensitivity would lead him to sign death warrants with abandon.

But then it probably takes a narrow, pinched, bureaucratic (anyone quoting Hannah Arendt has to leave the room) mindset to order the dispatch of humans, even the utter wastes of human skin on death row (you have to be a multiple murderer to earn a death sentence). Hatoyama's predecessor Nagase Jinen could order hangings with a dry efficientcy, fulfilling every functionary's dream: moving a file from the IN basket to the OUT basket and leaving behind a clean desk.