Miyazaki, 45, earned the nickname for his obsession with cartoons with sexual content and pornography.

Although defence lawyers contended he was mentally ill, Japan's Justice Minister Kunio Hatoyama said he had signed the execution order to send Miyazakai and two other convicted murderers to the gallows yesterday to 'realise justice'.

He said he was aware that Miyazaki's defence counsel had been preparing to seek a re-trial with a fresh psychiatric test.

Miyazaki was arrested in July 1989 while trying to take pictures of a naked girl outdoors and the details that emerged from his case stunned Japan.

He confessed to having killed four girls, aged four to seven, in Tokyo and its suburbs and eating some of the remains of two of them.

He had mutilated the bodies of his victims, slept next to their corpses and drunk their blood.

He sent letters to the media under a woman's name claiming responsibility for the crimes and sent a box containing the remains of one girl to her family.

'The atrocious murder of four girls to satisfy his sexual desire leaves no room for leniency,' Chief Justice Tokiyasu Fujita said in January 2006 when he upheld his death sentence.

During the nearly two-decade judicial process, Miyazaki never uttered a word of remorse about killing his victims.

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE