One woman’s fight to free her brother from Japan’s death row

When the court ruled that Iwao Hakamata was not guilty in September, the world’s longest-serving death row inmate seemed to understand, but not happy about the moment.

“I told him he was innocent, and he just kept quiet,” 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 has been fighting for his brother’s retrial since he was charged with four counts of murder in 1968.

In September 2024, at the age of 88, he was released – the end of Japan’s longest prison sentence.

The story of Mr. Hakamata is amazing. But it also sheds light on the brutality of Japan, where death row prisoners are only given hours of notice of their executions, and spend years unsure whether each day will be their last.

Human rights experts have long criticized the practice as cruel and inhumane, saying it increases prisoners’ risk of serious mental illness.

And the time he spent more than half of his life in solitary confinement, waiting to be executed for a crime he was not given, hurt Mr. Hakamata a lot.

Since he was granted a retrial and released from prison in 2014, he has been under the care of Hideko.

When we get to the house, they go out every day with a group of volunteers who help the two older brothers. He is worried about strangers, Hideko explains, and has been “in his own world” for years.

“Maybe it can’t be helped,” he says. “This is what happens when you are locked up in a small prison cell for more than 40 years.

“They made him look like an animal.”

Former boxer, Iwao Hakamata was working at an eye makeup factory when the bodies of his boss, the man’s wife and their two young children were found. All four had been stabbed to death.

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

“We didn’t know what was happening,” Hideko says of that day in 1966 when the police came to arrest his brother.

The family’s house was searched, along with the houses of their two older sisters, and the Hakamatas were taken.

He initially denied all charges, but later gave what he described as a forced confession following beatings and interrogations that lasted 12 hours a day.

Two years after his arrest, Hakamata was charged with murder and arson and sentenced to death. It was when he was moved to the room where he was about to be killed that Hideko noticed a change in his behavior.

A visit to one of the prisons is amazing.

“He told me, ‘there was a murder yesterday – it was a man in the other room’,” he recalls. “He told me not to worry – and from then on, he changed his mind and kept quiet.”

The Hakamata are not the only ones who have lost the lives of people who were killed in Japan, where prisoners wake up every morning not knowing if they will be the last.

“Between 08:00 and 08:30 in the morning was the most painful time for them, because that’s usually when the prisoners were informed of their execution,” Menda Sakae, who spent 34 years on death row before being prosecuted, wrote in the book. what happened to him.

“You start to worry a lot, because you don’t know if he’s going to stand in front of your cell. It’s impossible to describe how painful that was.”

James Welsh, lead author of Amnesty International’s 2009 report on the conditions of death row, said that “the daily threat of imminent death is cruel, cruel and degrading”. The report said prisoners were at risk of “serious psychological problems”.

Hideko could only see how his brother’s health was deteriorating as the years went by.

“One time he asked me ‘Do you know who I am?’ I said, ‘Yes, I do.’ [to his cell].”

Hideko became his main advocate and advocate. However, it wasn’t until 2014 that there was a big change in his story.

The main evidence against Mr. Hakamata was the red clothes that were found in the miso tank at his workplace.

They found them a year and two months after the murder and the defendant claimed they were his. But for years Mr Hakamata’s defense team said DNA recovered from the clothes did not match his – and said the evidence was planted.

In 2014, he persuaded a judge to release him from prison and sentence him to a new trial.

The long delay meant it took until last October for the retrial to begin. After that, Hideko was the one who appeared in court, pleading for his brother to be killed.

Hakamata’s future was in check, especially as he aged.

The defendant said that the stains were red when the clothes were cured – but the defendant said that the blood would have been black if it had been soaked in the mask for a long time.

That was enough to convince the chief judge Koshi Kunii, who said that “the investigating officer added blood stains and hid the material in the miso tank well after the incident”.

Judge Kunii also found that some evidence had been falsified, including an investigative report, and declared Mr Hakamata innocent.

The first thing Hideko did was cry.

“When the judge said that the accused is not guilty, I was very happy and I was crying,” he says. “I’m not a tearful person, but my tears just kept coming for an hour.”

The court’s opinion that the testimony against Mr. Hakamata is fabricated, raises serious questions.

Japan has a 99% death rate, and a system known as “slave justice” which, according to Kanae Doi, director of Human Rights Watch in Japan, “denies people with the presumption of innocence, swift and fair reparations.” .to hear, and get advice during the interview”.

“These atrocities have resulted in the destruction of lives and families, as well as wrongful convictions,” Doi said in 2023.

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

He said one reason they persisted was that “evidence important to the defense was not disclosed to them until the 2010s”.

The failure was “gross and unwarranted,” Mr Johnson told the BBC. “Judges keep pushing the case, as they often do in response to their complaints (because) they are busy, and the law allows them to do that.”

Hideko says that the core of the injustice was the forced confession by his brother.

But Mr Johnson says false accusations are not the result of a single mistake. In fact, they are compounded by failures at all levels – from the police to prosecutors, courts and parliament.

“The judges have the final word,” he added. “When wrongful convictions occur, it is, in the end, because they said so. Too often, the role of judges in forming and maintaining wrongful convictions is ignored, ignored, and neglected.”

Against this backdrop, Mr Hakamata’s acquittal was watered down – a rare moment of retroactive justice.

After finding that Mr. Hakamata was innocent, the judge who tried the case apologized to Hideko for the time it took for justice to be done.

A little while later, Takayoshi Tsuda, the chief of police in Shizuoka, arrived at his home and knelt before his brother and sister.

“For the past 58 years … we have brought you unspeakable worries and burdens,” Tsuda said. “I’m sorry.”

Hideko gave an unexpected answer to the police chief.

“We believe that everything that happened is our future,” he said. “We don’t worry about anything now.”

After almost 60 years of worry and sadness, Hideko has renovated his house with the intention of bringing light into it. The rooms are bright and impressive, filled with pictures of him and Iwao with family friends and supporters.

Hideko laughs as she shares memories of her “cute” little brother as a baby, flipping through black and white family photos.

The youngest of his six siblings, he seems to always be by his side.

“We were always kids when we were kids,” he explains. “I always knew I had to take care of my little brother.

He entered Mr Hakamata’s room and showed him their ginger cat, who was sitting on the chair where he always sat.

He said: “He wanted to be an expert.” “Then the incident happened.”

After Mr. Hakamata was released in 2014, Hideko wanted the building to be brighter, he explains. So she painted the front door pink.

“I believed that if he was in a bright room and had a happy life, he would naturally be fine.”

It is the first thing one sees when visiting Hideko’s house, a bright pink expression of hope and courage.

It is unclear whether it has worked – Mr Hakamata is still pacing back and forth for hours, just as he has done for years in the huge prison of three single mats.

But Hideko refuses to dwell on the question of what their lives would have been like if it hadn’t been for such a miscarriage of justice.

When asked who he blames for his brother’s suffering, he replied: “nothing”.

“Complaining about what happened won’t get us there.”

His goal now is to make his brother comfortable. He shaves his face, massages his head, cuts apples and apricots for breakfast every morning.

Hideko, who has spent most of his 91 years fighting for his brother’s rights, says this was their destiny.

He said: “I don’t want to think about the past. “I just want Iwao to live a peaceful and quiet life.”

Additional reporting by Chika Nakayama