Iwao Hakamata documentary charts the life of an ex-prisoner, from youth to death row to acquittal

A documentary about the life of Iwao Hakamata, recently acquitted of a 1966 quadruple murder and released from death row, will be shown in cinemas nationwide from Saturday.

The film was directed by Chiaki Kasai, 49, who covered the case as a journalist in Shizuoka Prefecture for more than two decades.

“I want the audience to feel what Hakamata wants to tell them through the portrayal of his daily life,” she said.

For 2.5 hours, ‘Ken to Inori: Hakamata Iwao no Shogai’ (‘Fists and Prayers: The Life of Iwao Hakamada’) looks back on the life of the 88-year-old former prisoner. (“Hakamada” is the spelling used in the film’s official English title.)

Using archival footage and selections from approximately 400 hours of video footage that Kasai has recorded over the years, the film follows Hakamata’s life from his youth to the day he was acquitted by the Shizuoka court last month.

The film contains audio tapes of interrogations by investigators, the course of the trial, his life when he was active as a boxer and how he now lives with the ‘detention syndrome’, developed during his years in prison.

The documentary also includes original footage filmed in the car Hakamata drove home from the Tokyo detention center when he was released following the court’s 2014 decision to grant him a new trial.

“He was surprisingly quiet and seemed to be peering out the window and around him,” the director recalls.

Kasai had interviewed Hakamata and his sister, Hideko, as a reporter for a media outlet in Shizuoka Prefecture and also as a freelance journalist. She tried to make it into a film not only about a man “on death row who may have been falsely accused,” but also about “a person named Iwao Hakamata.”

“From the way he now walks around the city with detention syndrome, it seems that this former boxer is still fighting in his heart,” she said.

Because Kasai had lived in the same apartment building as Hideko for a while, he was able to film Hakamata “in its usual state up close.” She added: “This is the culmination of two decades of reporting.”

Hideko, 91, saw the film and told Kasai: “Iwao talks a lot in the film.”

The film will be shown in 48 theaters from Hokkaido to Okinawa Prefecture.