Norio Nagayama, former death-row convict, sent to Mr. Iwao Hakamada from prison, “Contents of a New Year’s greeting card in his own handwriting.

I’ll be absolutely fine.”

The acquittal of Mr. Iwao Hakamada, 88, was confirmed on October 9. After 58 years since his arrest, his daily life has finally returned to normal. We wondered how Mr. Hakamada has been living his life in the month or so since his arrest.

He wakes up in the morning and goes for a drive in the afternoon in the car of a supporter. My days are the same as they were before the verdict. But when I am out and about, people say to me, ‘Congratulations, Mr. Hakamada. Whenever someone says to him, “Congratulations, Mr. Hakamada,” he simply replies, “Oh, thank you. He doesn’t seem very happy. Despite the joy of his supporters and the public, Mr. Hakamada does not seem to care much about his acquittal,” said one of his supporters.

This reaction reflects the tragedy of the case. Mr. Hakamada, who was forced to live in solitary confinement for 48 years despite his innocence, was forced to spend his days not speaking to anyone. Every day, he lived in fear of the death penalty. ……

While in prison, Mr. Hakamada had some small interactions with inmates. In 1968, when Mr. Hakamada was transferred to the Tokyo Detention Center to appeal his death sentence, Nagayama killed four people in Tokyo, Kyoto, Hakodate, and Nagoya in a series of pistol shootings. After his arrest, Nagayama was transferred to the same Tokyo Detention Center as Hakamada. Mr. A, who was in the Tokyo Detention Center at the time, reveals, “I received a New Year’s greeting card in 1988.

Nagayama used to call out to Mr. Hakamada on his way to and from exercise time, ‘Hakamada-san, you will be fine. He would say to her, ‘Hakamada-san, you’re going to be fine. Hakamada replied, ‘Thank you. At the time, Nagayama was in the new building of the Tokyo Detention Center, and Hakamada’s cell was on the third floor of the New North Building, a short distance from there. The New North Building later housed Shoko Asahara of the Aum Shinrikyo cult and Tomohiro Kato, who was involved in the Akihabara street riots, for a time.”

”Be a revolutionary with yourself.”

Former death row prisoner Nagayama sent a New Year’s greeting card to Mr. Hakamada in prison every year.’ After Mr. Hakamada’s release in 2002, the actual cards were found in cardboard boxes sent from the Tokyo Detention Center to his home in Hamamatsu City. They were nengajo (New Year’s cards) from 1983, 1986, and 1988, respectively. The cards are accompanied by short sentences, but it is difficult to understand the meaning of the sentences. A sociologist familiar with Nagayama explains.

“It reads like an invitation to ‘become a revolutionary with me. “It reads as an invitation to become a revolutionary with him, saying, ‘I have committed a crime, but because I am a criminal, I can see the truth of society. Let’s fight together.

Former Nagayama, who was one of the few people Hakamada communicated with while in prison, was sentenced to death in 1990 and was executed in 1997 at the Tokyo Detention Center. According to a former defendant who was on the same floor as Nagayama, he put up a fierce fight when he was taken from his cell to the execution site.

We hope that Mr. Hakamada, who has been isolated from society for most of his life, will live out the rest of his days in peace.