A woman fights to free her brother from Japan's death row

When a court found Iwao Hakamata innocent in September, the world's longest-serving death row inmate seemed unable to comprehend, much less enjoy, the moment.

“I told him he was justified and he was 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 has been fighting for her brother's retrial since he was convicted of a 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 shines a light on the systemic brutality at the heart of Japan's justice system, where inmates on death row are notified of their hanging only hours in advance and spend years unsure 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 took its toll on Mr. Hakamata.

Since receiving a retrial and being released from prison in 2014, he has lived under Hideko's careful care.

When we arrive at the apartment, he is on his daily walk with a group of volunteers who support the two older siblings. He's anxious around strangers, Hideko explains, and has been in “his own world” for years.

“Maybe there's nothing else,” she says. “This is what happens when you're locked up and crammed into a small prison cell for over 40 years.

“They made him live like an animal.

A 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 discovered. All four were stabbed to death.

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

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

The family's home was searched, as were the homes of their two older sisters, and Mr Hakamata was taken away.

He initially denied all charges, 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, Hakamata was found guilty of murder and arson and sentenced to death. When he was moved to a death row cell, Hideko noticed a change in his behavior.

One prison visit in particular stands out.

“He said to me, 'There was an execution yesterday – there was a person in the next cell,'” she recalled. “He told me to be careful – and since then he has completely changed mentally and 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 that was usually the time when the prisoners were notified of their execution,” he wrote in a book about his experience.

“You begin to feel the most terrible anxiety because you don't know if they will stop in front of your cell. It is impossible to describe how terrible that feeling was.'

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

Hideko could only watch as her own brother's mental health deteriorated over the years.

“Once he asked me, 'Do you know who I am?'

Hideko stepped up as his main spokesperson and advocate. Only in 2014. however, there is a breakthrough in his case.

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

They were discovered a year and two months after the murders and prosecutors said they were his. But for years, Mr. Hakamata's defense team argued that DNA recovered from the clothes did not match his – and argued that the evidence had been tampered with.

In 2014 they were able to convince a judge to release him from prison and reinstate him.

Protracted legal proceedings meant it took last October for the retrial to begin. When it finally happened, Hideko was the one who appeared in court, pleading for her brother's life.

Mr. Hakamata's fate depended on the spots, and specifically how they aged.

The prosecution claimed the stains were reddish when the clothes were discovered – but the defense argued the blood would have turned black after being soaked in miso for so long.

That was enough to convince presiding judge Koshi Cooney, who said “the investigating agency added blood stains and hid the items in the miso tank well after the incident”.

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

Hideko's first reaction was to cry.

“When the judge said the defendant was not guilty, I was happy; I was in tears,” she says. “I'm not a crybaby, but my tears just flowed non-stop for about an hour.”

The court's conclusion that the evidence against Mr. Hakamata was fabricated raises troubling questions.

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

“These abuses have led to the tearing apart of lives and families, as well as wrongful convictions,” Ms. 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 followed the Hakamata case for the past 30 years.

He said one of the reasons it dragged on was that “critical evidence for the defense was not revealed to them until around 2010”.

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

Hideko says the core of the injustice was the forced confession and coercion her brother suffered.

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

“The judges have the final say,” he added. “When a wrongful conviction occurs, it's ultimately because they said so. All too often the responsibility of judges to issue and uphold wrongful convictions is overlooked, glossed over and ignored.”

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

After declaring Mr. Hakamata not guilty, the judge presiding over his retrial apologized to Hideko for how long it had taken to get justice.

A little while later, Takayoshi Tsuda, the Shizuoka police chief, visited her home and bowed before the brother and sister.

“For the past 58 years … we have caused you untold anxiety and burden,” Mr. Tsuda said. “We're really sorry.”

Hideko gave the police chief an unexpected answer.

We believe everything that happened was our destiny,” she said. “Now we won't complain about anything.”

After nearly 60 years of anxiety and heartache, Hideko has designed her home with the express intention of letting some light inside. The rooms are bright and inviting, filled with photos of her and Ivao 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 six siblings, he always seems to be by her side.

“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 goes on.”

She enters Mr. Hakamata's room and introduces their ginger cat, who takes the chair he usually sits on. He then points to pictures of him as a young professional boxer.

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

After Hakamata was released in 2014, Hideko 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 had a cheerful life, he would get better naturally.”

It's the first thing one notices when visiting Hideko's apartment, this bright pink statement of hope and resilience.

It's not clear if it worked – Mr Hakamata still paces back and forth 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 would have been like had it not been for such a spectacular miscarriage of justice.

When asked who she blames for her brother's suffering, she says, “nobody.”

“Complaining about what happened won't get us anywhere.”

Her priority now is to make her brother comfortable. She shaves his face, massages his head, slices apples and apricots for breakfast every morning.

Hideko, 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