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Hideko Hakamata, 91, fought half her life to free her brother, the world's longest-serving death row inmate.
When a court declared Iwao Hakamata innocent in September, the world's longest-serving death row inmate seemed incapable of understanding, let alone savoring, the moment.
“I told him he had been acquitted and he remained silent,” Hideko Hakamata, his 91-year-old sister, told the BBC at her home in Hamamatsu, Japan.
“I couldn’t tell if he understood or not.”
Hideko had been fighting for her brother to be retried 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.
Mr. Hakamata's case is remarkable. But it also highlights the systemic brutality that underpins Japan's justice system, where death row inmates are only informed of their hangings hours in advance 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 exacerbates 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 a heavy toll on Mr. Hakamata.
Iwao Hakamata has been living with his sister Hideko since he was granted a rare retrial in 2014.
Since he was retried and released from prison in 2014, he has lived under Hideko's close custody.
When we arrive at the apartment, he goes on his daily outing with a group of volunteers who support his two elderly siblings. He is anxious around strangers, Hideko explains, and has lived in “his own world” for years.
“Maybe there’s nothing we can do about it,” she said. “This is what happens when you are locked up and crammed into a small prison cell for over 40 years.
“They made him live like an animal.”
Life on death row
A former professional boxer, Iwao Hakamata was working in a miso processing factory when the bodies of his boss, the man's wife and their two teenage children were found. All four had been stabbed to death.
Authorities charged Mr Hakamata with murdering the family, burning down their house in Shizuoka and stealing 200,000 yen (£199; $556) in cash.
“We had no idea what was happening,” Hideko says of the day in 1966 when the police came to arrest her brother.
The family home was searched, along with that of their two older sisters, and Mr. Hakamata was taken away.
He initially denied all accusations, but later gave what he described as a forced confession after beatings and interrogations that lasted up to 12 hours a day.
Two years after his arrest, Mr. Hakamata was convicted of murder and arson and sentenced to death. It was when he was transferred to a death row cell that Hideko noticed a change in his behavior.
One prison visit in particular stands out.
“He told me: 'there was an execution yesterday, it was a person in the next cell,'” she remembers. “He told me to be careful, and from then on he completely changed mentally and became very quiet.”
Before being sentenced to death for four murders and arson in 1968, Iwao Hakamata (left) was a professional boxer.
Mr. Hakamata is not the only one suffering from life on Japan's death row, where inmates wake up each morning not knowing whether it will be their last.
“Between 8:00 and 8:30 a.m. was the most critical time, as this was usually the time when prisoners were informed of their execution,” wrote Menda Sakae, who spent 34 years on death row before be exonerated, in a book about his experience.
“You start to feel terrible anxiety, because you don't know if they're going to stop in front of your cell. It's impossible to express how horrible that feeling was.”
James Welsh, lead author of a 2009 Amnesty International report on conditions on death row, noted that “the daily threat of imminent death is cruel, inhumane and degrading.” The report concluded that detainees were at risk of suffering “significant mental health problems.”
Hideko could only see the deterioration of her own brother's mental health over the years.
“He once asked me, 'Do you know who I am?' I said, 'Yes, I do. You're Iwao Hakamata,' 'No,' he said, 'you have to be here to see another person.' ).
Hideko became his main spokesperson and defender. However, it was not until 2014 that there was progress in his case.
Hideko, 91, says she always felt the need to protect 'her little brother'
A key piece of evidence against Mr Hakamata was red-stained clothing found in a miso tank 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 the DNA found on the clothes did not match his – and claimed the evidence had been covered up.
In 2014, they managed to convince a judge to release him from prison and grant him a new trial.
Due to the length of the legal proceedings, it was not until last October that the retrial began. When it finally happened, it was Hideko who appeared in court, pleading for her brother's life.
Mr. Hakamata's fate depended on the stains, and more specifically on their aging.
The prosecution had claimed the stains were reddish when the clothes were recovered, but the defense argued the blood would have turned blackish after being immersed in miso for so long.
That was enough to convince presiding judge Koshi Kunii, who said “investigating authorities added bloodstains and hid the items in the miso tank well after the incident.”
Justice Kunii further concluded that other evidence had been fabricated, including an investigation file, and declared Mr Hakamata innocent.
Hideko's first reaction was to cry.
“When the judge declared that the accused was not guilty, I was delighted; I was in tears,” she said. “I'm not one to cry, but my tears flowed non-stop for about an hour.”
Hostage justice
The court's conclusion that the evidence against Mr. Hakamata was fabricated raises troubling questions.
Japan has a 99 percent conviction rate and a “hostage justice” system that, according to Kanae Doi, director of Human Rights Watch in Japan, “deprives those arrested of their rights to the presumption of innocence and a prompt and fair release on bail. hearing and access to a lawyer during interrogation.
“These abusive practices have led to the destruction of lives and families, as well as wrongful convictions,” Doi noted in 2023.
David T Johnson, a sociology professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa whose research focuses on criminal justice in Japan, has been following the Hakamata case for 30 years.
He said one of the reasons it was dragging on was because “the critical evidence for the defense was not disclosed to them until around 2010.”
The failure was “egregious and inexcusable”, Mr Johnson told the BBC. “The judges continued to send the case back further, as they often do in response to requests for a new trial (because) they are busy, and the law allows them to do so.”
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Hideko campaigned for years for a retrial of her brother
Hideko says the heart of the injustice lies in the forced confession and coercion her brother suffered.
But Mr Johnson says false accusations don't happen because of a single mistake. On the contrary, these problems are compounded by failures at all levels – from the police and prosecutors to the courts and Parliament.
“The judges have the last word,” he added. “When a wrongful conviction occurs, it's ultimately because they said so. Too often, the responsibility of judges in producing and maintaining wrongful convictions is overlooked, evaded and ignored.”
In this context, Mr. Hakamata's acquittal was a watershed moment – a rare moment of retrospective justice.
After declaring Mr. Hakamata innocent, the judge presiding over his retrial apologized to Hideko for the time it had taken to get justice.
Soon after, Shizuoka police chief Takayoshi Tsuda visited her home and bowed to his brother and sister.
“Over the past 58 years… we have caused you indescribable anxiety and burden,” Mr Tsuda said. “We are very sorry.”
Hideko gave an unexpected answer to the police chief.
“We think everything that happened was our destiny,” she said. “We won’t complain about anything now.”
The pink door
After nearly 60 years of anxiety and heartbreak, Hideko furnished her home with the express intention of letting in some light. The rooms are bright and welcoming, filled with photos of her and Iwao alongside family friends and supporters.
Hideko laughs as she shares memories of her “cute” little brother as a baby, looking through black and white family photos.
The youngest of six siblings, he always seems to be standing next to her.
“We were always together when we were kids,” she explains. “I always knew I had to take care of my little brother. And so it continues.”
She enters Mr. Hakamata's room and introduces their ginger cat, who occupies the chair he usually sits on. Then she shows photos of him as a young professional boxer.
“He wanted to become champion,” she said. “Then the incident happened.”
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Iwao Hakamata, 88, was acquitted in September 2024
After Mr. Hakamata was released in 2014, Hideko wanted to make the apartment as bright as possible, she said. So she painted the front door pink.
“I thought if he was in a bright room and led a happy life, he would recover naturally.”
It’s the first thing one notices when visiting Hideko’s apartment, this bright pink declaration of hope and resilience.
It's unclear whether it worked – Mr. Hakamata continues to pace for hours, just as he did for years in a prison cell the size of three single tatami mats.
But Hideko refuses to dwell on the question of what their lives might have been like without such a blatant miscarriage of justice.
When asked who she blames for her brother's suffering, she replies: “No one.”
“Complaining about what happened won’t get us anywhere.”
His priority now is to ensure his brother's comfort. She shaves his face, massages his head, cuts apples and apricots for his breakfast every morning.
Hideko, who spent most of her 91 years fighting for her brother's freedom, says this was their fate.
“I don't want to think about the past. I don't know how long I'll live,” she says. “I just want Iwao to live a peaceful and quiet life.”
Additional reporting by Chika Nakayama
