In Japan, if you are sentenced to death, you are not told when. Not the year. Not the month. Not the night before. The guards come in the morning, and it happens within hours, and your family finds out afterwards.
Iwao Hakamada woke up like that for forty-six years. He was innocent.
In 1966, four members of a family were stabbed to death in Shizuoka Prefecture and their house was set on fire. Hakamada — a former professional boxer working at the miso factory next door — was arrested and interrogated for twenty-three days, the legal maximum, with no right to a lawyer in the room. On day twenty he confessed. He retracted it immediately and never stopped retracting it for the next fifty-eight years.
At trial, prosecutors produced forty-five signed confession documents. The court ruled forty-four of them inadmissible — and convicted him anyway, on the one left over. One of the three judges believed he was innocent, was outvoted two to one, and was then required to write the death sentence himself. He resigned from the bench and said nothing for forty years.
Then, fourteen months after the murders, five items of bloodstained clothing surfaced in a vat of fermenting miso.
In September 2024, at eighty-eight years old, Iwao Hakamada was acquitted. The judge found that investigators had put the blood on the clothes and planted them.
SOURCES
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ADPAN (Anti-Death Penalty Asia Network) — case record: the 23-day detention, interrogation hours, and the 45 confession documents
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The Japan Times, 2008 — Judge Norimichi Kumamoto’s account of the deliberation and his dissent
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The Japan Times, 2014 — “Epic miscarriage of justice”
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CNN, September 2024 — acquittal coverage and Judge Kunii Koshi’s finding on fabricated evidence
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Innocence Project — DNA testing on the miso-tank clothing, 2008 – 2012
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NPR and CBC, September 2024 — acquittal reporting and Hideko Hakamada’s campaign
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Banchō Sarayashiki — the kabuki play, in continuous performance since the eighteenth century; and Hokusai’s print of Okiku from his Hyaku Monogatari series
Iwao Hakamada and the Miso Tank Evidence: The Case at a Glance
In June 1966, a senior manager of a miso company in Shizuoka Prefecture, his wife and two of their children were stabbed to death, and their home was set on fire. Iwao Hakamada (also spelled Hakamata), a former professional boxer who worked at the company, was arrested that August. After weeks of interrogation without a lawyer present he signed a confession. He retracted it at trial and maintained his innocence for the rest of his life.
The key evidence appeared more than a year after the killings: five items of bloodstained clothing found in a tank of fermenting miso at the factory. Hakamada was sentenced to death in 1968, and the Supreme Court confirmed the sentence in 1980. He spent decades on death row, becoming the world’s longest-serving death row prisoner, while his sister Hideko campaigned for his freedom.
In 2014 the Shizuoka District Court granted a retrial and released him. On 26 September 2024 he was acquitted. Presiding judge Kunii Koshi found that investigators had fabricated evidence: experiments showed bloodstains could not have stayed red after more than a year in miso, and the court concluded the stains had been added and the clothes hidden in the tank. In 2025 he was awarded about 217 million yen in compensation.
- Crime: June 1966, Shizuoka Prefecture
- Sentenced to death: 1968 (confirmed 1980)
- Released: 2014
- Acquitted: 26 September 2024
Explore more cases in our guide to Japanese True Crime Cases, or meet the myths in Japanese Urban Legends, Yokai & Folklore.
Part of our guide: Japanese True Crime Cases
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