Even after being sent to prison for murder, Iwao Hakamada at first trained like the prizefighter he was. Fellow death-row inmate Kazuo Ishikawa used to watch him shadowbox and punch the walls of his cell till his knuckles turned bloody.
The pain seemed to mean little to him, Ishikawa recalls. "He was very strong."
Today, Hakamada, now a stooped, fleshy 79-year-old, strolls daily through the streets of his native Shizuoka Prefecture communing with ghosts. After 48 years in jail, the large majority of it in solitary confinement waiting for his execution, he is temporarily free but appears to have retreated deep inside his own head. He answers questions about his ordeal in the third person, if at all.