Japan | Rosary blessed by Pope presented to world’s longest death row inmate Iwao Hakamada

An 88-year-old Japanese man who at one point was the world’s longest-serving death row inmate has been presented with a rosary blessed by Pope Francis.

Archbishop Isao Kikuchi of Tokyo recently visited Iwao Hakamada, a former boxer and convert to Catholicism, to make the presentation of the papal gift to the now officially innocent octogenarian.

Following his release from prison in 2014 because of new DNA evidence – after 48 years on death row – Hakamada still wasn’t officially proclaimed innocent until his definitive acquittal a decade later.

“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,” Archbishop Kikuchi told Crux. “Hakamada is suffering negative psychological effects from long-term confinement and [the] daily fear of execution for half a century.”

Under the Japanese judicial 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 his death.

Hakamada was sentenced to death in March 1968 after being convicted for a 1966 multiple murder involving the slaying of his boss at a soybean paste-making installation, and of 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. The retrial of his case in 2024 found that 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.

Today, Archbishop Kikuchi said, Hakamada is a “wounded man”, while emphasising the stress Hakamada had been under during his long incarceration.

Hakamada has become a symbol of the movement to oppose the death penalty in Japan. Kikuchi explained how in October 2024, during the Synod of Bishops on Synodality, he informed Pope Francis, perhaps the world’s most visible and vocal death penalty opponent, of Hakamada’s definitive acquittal.

Subsequently the Pope sent a note of congratulations and sympathy for the suffering endured to Hakamada, along with a personally blessed rosary, which was shipped to Japan by the Vatican’s Secretariat of State. Kikuchi delivered the rosary and note to Hakamada on 22 February.

“I personally admire [the] determination for justice of Mr. Hakamada himself and also his sister Ms. Hideko,” Kikuchi said. “I sincerely thank God that, finally, his innocence has been proved and justice done. 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,” the Japanese prelate continued.

“At the same time, we will continue to call for the abolishment of the death penalty and continue our support for people under custody. 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.”

In a poignant footnote to the story, one of the judges who heard the 1968 case against Hakamada reportedly had doubts from the start, in part because police presented at the trial blood-stained clothing found in vats of soy bean paste, although the vats had been thoroughly searched before and nothing had been found.

Following this, the judge attempted suicide over his feelings of guilt. He was later baptised as a Catholic and took the same Christian name as Hakamada – Paul – and added Miki, the name of a Japanese martyr.

Source: The Catholic Church, Crux, February 27, 2025

"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."

— Oscar Wilde