One woman fights to free her brother from death row in Japan

When Iwao Hakamata was acquitted in September, the world’s longest-serving death row inmate seemed unable to grasp, let alone enjoy, the moment.

“I told him he was justified and he kept quiet,” Hideka Hakamata, his 91-year-old sister, told the BBC at her home in Hamamatsu, Japan.

“I couldn’t tell if he understood or not.”

Hideka has been fighting for her brother’s trial since he was convicted of quadruple murder in 1968.

In September 2024, at the age of 88, he was finally acquitted, ending Japan’s longest legal saga.

The case of Mr. Hakamata is remarkable. But it also sheds light on the systemic brutality at the heart of Japan’s justice system, where death row inmates are told they will be hanged only hours before they are hanged and spend years not knowing whether each day will be their last.

Human rights experts have long condemned such treatment as cruel and inhumane, saying it increases prisoners’ risk of developing serious mental illness.

And more than half his life spent in solitary confinement awaiting execution for a crime he did not commit has taken its toll on Mr. Hakamata.

After his case was reviewed and released from prison in 2014, he lived under Hideko’s close supervision.

When we arrive at the apartment, he plays daily with a volunteer group that supports two older siblings. Hideka explains that he worries about strangers and has been in “his own world” for many years.

“Maybe you won’t help,” she says. “This is what happens when you are locked up and squeezed into a small prison cell for over 40 years.

“Forced to live like an animal.”

Former professional boxer Iwao Hakamata was working at a miso processing plant when the bodies of his boss, the man’s wife and their two teenage children were found. All four were stabbed to death.

Authorities accused Mr Hakamata of murdering the family, setting fire to their Shizuoka home and stealing 200,000 yen (£199; $556) in cash.

“We had no idea what was going on,” Hideka says of the day in 1966 when the police came to arrest her brother.

The family home was searched, as well as the homes of their two older sisters, and Mr. Hakamat was taken away.

He initially denied all charges, but later gave a confession he described as coerced after being beaten and interrogated for up to 12 hours a day.

Two years after his arrest, Mr. Hakamata was convicted of murder and arson and sentenced to death. When he was transferred to death row, Hideka noticed a change in his behavior.

One prison visit in particular stands out.

“He told me that there was a shooting yesterday – it was a person in the next cell,” she recalls. “He told me to take care – and since then he has completely changed mentally and has become very quiet.”

Mr Hakamata is not the only one affected by life on death row in Japan, where inmates wake up each morning not knowing if it will be their last.

“Between 08:00 and 08:30 in the morning was the most critical time, because it was usually when the prisoners were notified of their punishment,” he wrote in the book about his experience.

“You start to feel the worst anxiety because you don’t know if they will stop in front of your camera. I can’t express how awful that feeling was.”

James Welsh, lead author of Amnesty International’s 2009 report on conditions on death row, noted that “the daily threat of imminent death is cruel, inhumane and degrading.” The report concluded that the prisoners were at risk of “significant mental health problems”.

Hideka could only watch as her own brother’s mental health deteriorated over the years.

“One day he asked me, ‘Do you know who I am?’ I said, “Yes, you are Iwao Hakamata,” he said, “you must be here to see another person.”

Hideka became his main representative and protector. However, only in 2014 there was a breakthrough in his case.

A key piece of evidence against Mr. Hakamata was red-stained clothing found in a bowl container at his workplace.

They were found a year and two months after the murders, and the prosecution said they belonged to him. But for years, Mr. Hakamata’s defense team argued that DNA recovered from the clothing did not match his – and argued that the evidence had been planted.

In 2014, they were able to convince a judge to release him from prison and retry the case.

Lengthy legal proceedings meant that the retrial did not start until October last year. When it finally happened, Hideka appeared before the court, pleading for her brother’s life.

Mr. Hakamata’s fate depended on the spots, and especially on how they aged.

The prosecution argued that the stains were reddish when the clothes were found, but the defense argued that the blood would have turned black after being submerged in the bowl for so long.

This was enough to convince presiding judge Kosha Kuniya, who said “investigating authorities added bloodstains and hid items in the bowl container after the incident took place”.

In addition, Judge Cooney found that other evidence had been fabricated, including the investigation report, and found Mr. Hakamat not guilty.

Hideko’s first reaction was to cry.

“When the judge said the defendant was innocent, I was ecstatic, I was in tears,” she says. “I’m not a tearful person, but the tears flowed non-stop for about an hour.”

The court’s finding that the evidence against Mr. Khakamata was fabricated raises troubling questions.

Japan has a 99% conviction rate and a system of so-called “hostage justice” that, according to Kanae Doi, the Japan director of Human Rights Watch, “denies those arrested their rights to a presumption of innocence, a speedy and fair release on bail. hearing and access to a lawyer during questioning’.

“These abuses have led to the destruction of lives and families, and to wrongful convictions,” Mr. Doi noted in 2023.

David T. Johnson, a sociology professor at the University of Hawaii at Mānoa whose research focuses on criminal justice in Japan, has followed the Hakamata case for the past 30 years.

He said one of the reasons it took so long was that “critical defense evidence was not disclosed to them until about 2010.”

The failure was “egregious and inexcusable,” Johnson told the BBC. “The judges continued to hear the case, as they often do in response to petitions for review (because) they are busy and the law allows them to do so.”

Hideka says the core of the injustice was the forced confession and the coercion her brother was subjected to.

But Mr. Johnson says false accusations don’t happen because of a single mistake. Instead, they are compounded by failures at all levels, from the police to the prosecution, the courts and parliament.

“The judges have the final say,” he added. “When there is a wrongful conviction, it is, after all, because they said so. All too often, the responsibility of judges to deliver and uphold wrongful convictions is neglected, silenced and ignored.”

Against this background, Mr. Hakamata’s acquittal was a watershed moment – a rare moment of retrospective justice.

After Mr. Hakamata was found not guilty, the judge presiding over the retrial apologized to Hideko for how long it had taken for justice to be served.

After a while, Takayoshi Tsuda, the police chief of Shizuoka, visited her home and bowed to her brother and sister.

“For the past 58 years … we have caused you indescribable anxiety and burden,” Mr Tsuda said. “We are truly sorry.”

Hideka gave an unexpected answer to the police chief.

“We believe that everything that happened was our destiny,” she said. “We won’t complain about anything now.”

After nearly 60 years of anxiety and heartache, Hideka decorated her home with the clear intention of letting some light inside. The rooms are bright and inviting, filled with photos of her and Iwao with family friends and fans.

Hideka laughs as she shares memories of her “cute” younger brother as a child, flipping through black-and-white family photos.

The youngest of six siblings, he always seems to stand by her side.

“We were always together as children,” she explains. “I always knew I had to take care of my little brother. And yes, it continues.”

She walks into Mr. Hakamata’s room and introduces them to the red cat, who takes the chair he usually sits on. Then he points to a picture of him as a young professional boxer.

“He wanted to be a champion,” she says. “Then the incident happened.”

After Mr. Hakamata was released in 2014, Hideka wanted to make the apartment as bright as possible, she explains. So she painted the front door pink.

“I believed that if he was in a bright room and living cheerfully, he would naturally get better.”

It’s the first thing you notice when you visit Hideko’s apartment, that bright pink expression of hope and resilience.

It’s unclear whether it worked – Mr Hakamata still spends hours pacing back and forth, as he did for years in a prison cell the size of three dads.

But Hideka refuses to dwell on the question of what their lives might have been like had it not been for such a blatant miscarriage of justice.

When asked who she blames for her brother’s suffering, she answers: “nobody.”

“Complaining about what happened will not lead to anything.”

Now her priority is to ensure the comfort of her brother. She shaves his face, massages his head, slices apples and apricots for breakfast every morning.

Hideka, who has spent most of her 91 years fighting for her brother’s freedom, says it was their fate.

“I don’t want to think about the past. I don’t know how long I will live,” she says. “I just want Iwao to live a peaceful and quiet life.”

Additional reporting by Chika Nakayama