Japan's district and high courts ordered an unprecedented 30 defendants to be executed during 2003.

Another 56 death row inmates also lost appeals or decided not to contest death sentences that courts had handed out to them.

Some say the record 86 death sentences confirmed or handed out this year confirms the increasingly violent trend Japanese crime has adopted in recent years, as well as a tendency to pay more attention to the wishes of the victims or their bereaved families.

News of the rapid increase in death sentences came as a group of politicians ditched party lines to come up with a bill urging the abolition of the death penalty.

The bill argues for life sentences without parole as an alternative to having offenders pay the ultimate price for their crimes.

(Mainichi and wire reports, Japan, Dec. 30, 2003)