Frail and pale, Kenjiro Ishii sits tucked into a wheelchair at a senior citizens home in Tamana, a small hot-springs resort in southern Japan.

Wrapped in striped pajamas, the 91-year-old Japanese man is one of only four death-row inmates who escaped the execution gallows when he was granted amnesty in 1975. Three other convicts had their sentences reduced to life imprisonment.

Ishii was convicted of murder and robbery with an accomplice, Takeo Nishi, in the shooting deaths of two people in 1947. Ishii admitted the shootings but claimed they were committed in self-defence.

"Japanese courts do irresponsible things," he said of his sentence.

The convict survived decades on death row to tell the tale. Although he is too frail to talk much after recent brain surgery, he is a leading icon in the campaign against the death penalty in Japan.

"Should and could we decide to take people's lives only by statistics? Should we go ahead with executions if we have support from a majority of people?" asked Shota Nakamura, a student at Yokohama's Kanto Gakuin University. "There is a tendency in Japan to belive that the majority is right."

Japan's government has cited an 80-per-cent public approval rating as one of the reasons to retain the death penalty despite international protests.

The country conducts executions by hanging. Death-row inmates are not informed when their lives are to end. They only know their day has come when guards drag them out of their cells on the morning of the execution.

Currently, 105 criminals are awaiting execution in Japan. According to the international human rights watchdog Amnesty International, 73 men and women have been hanged in Japan since the country stopped a moratorium on capital punishment in 1993.

Faced with criticism about the secrecy surrounding Japan's executions, the Justice Ministry this year decided to release more information on the prisoners. Previously, it had given only the number of people hanged, but now it releases the executed prisoners' names, their crimes and where the executions take place.

It had previously argued that disclosing details would disturb the inmates and their family members.

Despite the seemingly broad approval for the death penalty, there is pressure for a change. A group of lawyers has been pushing for a moratorium on capital punishment and life imprisonment without parole as a maximum sentence.

As long as the nation's judicial system has flaws, the death penalty should be banned, Nakamura argued.

Nakamura belongs to a group of law students who have joined a worldwide effort to prove the innocence of Ishii and Nishi by re-examining court documents and other materials related to their case.

Supporters of the two men - who include Helen Prejean, the nun whose activism against the death penalty inspired the movie Dead Man Walking - claimed the men had been coerced into confessions by police brutality and were wrongly convicted. They demand a retrial.

Ishii said he was forced to sit with his legs folded, was beaten with a wooden sword and handcuffed during hours of interrogation after his arrest.

Nishi was hung upside down from a beam with a bucket of water placed beneath his head, Ishii said. After serving 28 years on death row, Nishi, who claimed he was not involved in the crime, was executed.

Ishii's case touched on many problems regarding criminal cases in Japan, such as coercion of confessions and lengthy interrogations that include psychological and physical torture, Nakamura said.

Iwao Hakamada, a 72-year-old former professional boxer on death row, has also requested a retrial, claiming he was forced into confessing a murder-robbery in 1966. His defence team appealed to a district court for the second time after his plea was rejected by the Supreme Court in March.

Last week, members of the United Nations' human rights panel criticized Japan's death penalty, calling for its abolishment at a meeting in Geneva.

In September, the European Union expressed deep concern over the accelerated pace of executions in Japan.

But Japan has rejected repeated calls from the international community to reintroduce its death penalty moratorium.

Concerns were also growing that death sentences and wrongful convictions might increase with a new lay judge system involving citizens, which is to be implemented next year.

Doubts have also been cast on whether tough sentences act as a deterrent to heinous crimes or promote remorse.

"People reflect on their wrongdoings when they have future ahead of them," Hidenori Ogata, a former gangster who was sentenced to death for killing four people, wrote in a response to a survey conducted by an anti-death penalty group.

"I gave up feeling mercy for the victims and their families in return for accepting the death penalty," he said.