MUMBAI – Archbishop Isao Kikuchi of Tokyo recently visited an 88-year-old Japanese former boxer and convert to Catholicism who was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate until his definitive acquittal in 2024, presenting him with a rosary blessed by Pope Francis.
“I was accompanied by a Catholic Lady from Tokyo who had been tirelessly working to support Mr. Hakamada and his sister, Ms. Hideko Hakamada, to prove his innocence, Kikuchi told Crux. “Hakamada is suffering negative psychological effects from long-term confinement and daily fear of execution for half a century.”
Hakamada was sentenced with death in March 1968 after being convicted for a 1966 mass murder involving the slaying of his boss at a soybean paste maker and the man’s wife and two children.
From the beginning Hakamada proclaimed his innocence, claiming that an initial confession was coerced and that case was based on planted evidence.
After 48 years on death row, he was released from prison in 2014 because of new DNA evidence. A decade later, a retrial found police had fabricated evidence against him at the time of his initial conviction and acquitted Hakamada, a ruling which became definitive when the prosecution declined to appeal.
Kikuchi emphasized the stress Hakamada had been under during his long incarceration. Under the Japanese system, the Minister of Justice could have signed an order of execution at any time, which would be communicated to the prisoner only on the morning of their death.
Today, Kikuchi said, Hakamada is a “wounded man.”
Hakamada has become a symbol of a movement to oppose the death penalty in Japan. When Pope Francis, perhaps the world’s most visible and vocal death penalty opponent, visited Japan in 2019, Hakamada was on hand but Kikuchi was unable to arrange a personal meeting with the pontiff.
Kikuchi said that last October during the Synod of Bishops on Synodality, he informed Pope Francis of Hakamada’s definitive acquital and the pope sent a note of congratulations and sympathy for his suffering, along with a personally blessed rosary, which was shipped to Japan by the Vatican’s Secretariat of State.
Kikuchi delivered the items to Hakamada on Feb. 22.
“I personally admire determination for justice of Mr. Hakamada himself and also his sister Ms. Hideko. I sincerely thank God that, finally, his innocence has been proved and justice done,” Kikuchi said.
“But Mr. Hakamada has lost so much. Now he is 88 years old and what he lost, almost 50 years of his life, is so huge. We will continue to call that justice be done and ask for the guidance of the Holy Spirit upon those officials involved in the public justice system of the country so that they could execute proper justice for a good of people.”
At the same time, we will continue to call for the abolishment of the death penalty and continue our support for people under custody,” the Japanese prelate said. “All life is the creation of God and a precious gift of God with dignity.”
“All life has to be protected without any exception from the beginning to the end,” Kikuchi said.
In a poignant footnote to the story, one of the judges who heard the 1968 case against Hakamada had doubts from the start, in part because police presented blood-stained clothing found in the vats of soy bean paste at the trial, although the vats had been thoroughly searched before and nothing had been found.
At one point, the judge attempted suicide over his feelings of guilt. He was later baptized as a Catholic and took the same Christian name as Hakamada’s, Paul, and added Miki, the name of a Japanese martyr.
