A Japanese man who was wrongfully convicted of murder and spent over 40 years on death row has been awarded $1.4 million in compensation, a court official confirmed on March 25.
The payout, equivalent to 12,500 yen ($83) for each day 89-year-old Iwao Hakamada spent in detention, is the highest of its kind in Japan, according to local media.
Hakamada, a former boxer, was exonerated last year of a 1966 quadruple murder after decades of advocacy by his sister and supporters.
His case highlighted issues within Japan’s criminal justice system, where retrials are rare and death row inmates receive execution notices just hours before they take place.
On Monday, the Shizuoka District Court ruled that Hakamada should receive 217,362,500 yen ($1.44 million), the same court that had acquitted him in September after determining police had tampered with evidence. The court also condemned the “inhumane interrogations” he endured, which were aimed at forcing a confession that he later retracted.
While Hakamada’s legal team welcomed the compensation, they argued it was insufficient compared to the suffering he endured since his 1966 arrest. Lawyer Hideyo Ogawa acknowledged the payout as a form of recognition but stated that no amount could truly make up for the nearly five decades of hardship. His prolonged time on death row—living under constant threat of execution—has severely impacted his mental health, with his lawyers describing him as “living in a world of fantasy.”
Hakamada was initially convicted of robbing and murdering his boss, the man’s wife, and their two teenage children. Though he denied the charges, police claimed he later confessed. During his trial, he maintained his innocence, arguing that his confession was coerced. More than a year after the crime, investigators presented blood-stained clothes as key evidence—later ruled to have been fabricated by authorities.
Now living with his sister and supported by activists, Hakamada is the fifth death row inmate in Japan’s post-war history to be granted a retrial, with all previous cases resulting in exoneration.
Japan remains one of the few developed countries, alongside the U.S., that still enforces the death penalty, a policy with strong public support.
Despite Hakamada’s acquittal, Japan’s justice minister reaffirmed in October that abolishing capital punishment would be “inappropriate.”
