Book Review: The culture of capital punishment in Japan by D. T. Johnson

• Author: Yu Du
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/10575677211050426
• Published date: 01 December 2022
• Date: 01 December 2022
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

criminal justice scholars, yet still cover interesting (and increasingly prolific) sociological phenom-

ena. Other early chapters focusing on the entertainment/digilantism nexus have more immediate and

obvious relevance: Favarel-Garrigues’s exploration of the criticism of “moral policing”in Moscow,

for example, assesses online community responses to offline vigilante action, using the internet as a

barometer to gauge public reactions to traditional, physical forms of deviance. While these chapters

could inform criminal justice research (and, to a lesser extent, praxis) in some respect, scholars in this

discipline will be particularly interested in later chapters. Specifically, Dekker and Meijer’swork

highlights the interaction between European police and digital vigilantes who involve themselves

in ongoing investigations and the tensions this often triggers (pp. 281–306). Further, Young’s

work focuses on the rhetoric of mediated mugshots in which she explores whether the routine

posting of offender photographs online is truly for crime prevention reasons or if it has devolved

into something more akin to trolling—a term with a somewhat amorphous meaning that (broadly)

refers to making offensive comments online at someone else’s expense (pp. 307–330). The implica-

tions of both of these chapters for criminal justice scholars and practitioners are clear and should

prompt a reexamination of current ways of operation.

In all, Introducing Vigilant Audiences is a collection that provides interdisciplinary coverage of an

area of shared importance to scholars of the media, technology, sociology, and criminal justice

(among others). The online world will continue to evolve and, as such, the specific examples here

may age with time, giving the collection a natural shelf life. That said, Introducing Vigilant

Audiences should not be seen as a mere collection of case studies; instead, it is a framework for

understanding digilantism as “an extension of public and pre-digital gatherings”(p. 3) that is never-

theless a reflection of the internet aiding a type of vigilantism that has always existed in some form or

another. In doing so, it not only tells us what digilantism “looks like”in the contemporary but also

provides direction that allows readers to extrapolate and recognize potential challenges (and solu-

tions) for the future.

Introducing Vigilant Audiences will be of interest to policymakers and practitioners seeking to

understand emerging online behaviors better. Beyond this, as mentioned, it provides an accessible

entry point for undergraduates and graduates interested in crime and sociological phenomenon in

the emerging online space, especially a work drawing from multiple academic perspectives. The

interdisciplinary scope of Introducing Vigilant Audiences may even be beneficial for more experi-

enced scholars, potentially offering new insights on familiar topics.

ORCID iD

Paul Bleakley https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2512-4072

Johnson, D. T. (2020).

The culture of capital punishment in Japan. Gewerbestrasse, Cham: Palgrave Pivot. 125 pp.

ISBN: 9783030320867.

Reviewed by: Yu Du ,University of Florida

DOI: 10.1177/10575677211050426

Capital punishment has engendered substantial debate, internationally and nationally, about its

morality, constitutionality, closure for victims’families, deterrence and retribution, as well as its

effect on wrongful conviction. As “all happy families are alike, but each unhappy family is

unhappy in its own way,”David Johnson’s book clearly indicates that the retention of death

penalty in Japan confronts both universal problems and its unique ones. Compared to other

470 International Criminal Justice Review 32(4)