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The 49th Year  
experimental documentary, forthcoming in 2025

People say that the social standards of a country can be understood by looking inside their prisons—that a prison is a mirror that reflects society. From the moment I get up and go to the factory until I return to my cell, I’m managed very systematically; in other words, this is an extremely supervised society. (Toshihiko Kamata, 1999)

The 49th Year is an experimental long documentary film based on the letters of the Japanese anarchist and activist Toshihiko Kamata. He is serving a life sentence for his involvement in a series of bombing attacks by the Black Helmet group in 1971 in Tokyo. After the "Christmas Tree Attack" injured seven people including one policeman, he spent eight years on the run before he was arrested. After several years in the Tokyo Detention Center, he is currently serving his sentence in Miyagi prison in Sendai.

Kamata’s letters tell of his militant past, his everyday life in prison – a world invisible to us –and his observations of the situation in Japanese society and the Western world. They chronicle how labor, social relations and communication have changed over the past 40 years since his imprisonment. In his singular philosophical and poetic style, he shows us not only the harsh reality of prison life, but also shares his thoughts and dreams, a deep love of life and an unbroken enthusiasm for art, cinema and literature.

His philosophical and poetic reflections enter into a dialogue with observations of everyday life in urban and rural Japan – Tokyo, Sendai, Akita, Fukushima and Yamaguchi Prefecture – places and landscapes associated with his biography.

The film offers a rare intimate glimpse into a complex intellectual universe in isolation. The 49th Year examines the relationships between social invisibility and power, subjectivity and ideology, individual action and political change. Writing as a strategy of resistance, and a form of participation in society.


text: Toshihiko Kamata
voice over: Makiko Watanuki
camera: Yoshio Kitagawa, Heidrun Holzfeind
additional camera: Yukiko lioka, Miki Shigenori, Neo Sora
sound: Gerd Funabiki-Senz, Taku Unami, Robert Becraft, Young Chang Hwang
line producers: Keijiro Suzuki, Hanae Takahashi
editing: Bettina Blickwede, Heidrun Holzfeind
English translations: Norie Fukuda
research, coordination, advice: Koyo Yamashita, Makiko Watanuki, Mariko Mikami, Norie Fukuda
titel & credit design: Karin Holzfeind

thank you: Toshihiko Kamata, Makiko Watanuki, Koyo Yamashita, Norie Fukuda, Mariko Mikami, Koichiro Osaka, Taku Unami, Ryoko Hirano, Andrew Williams, Hiroyuki Matsushima, Karin Holzfeind, Martin Ebner, Kyoko Ebata, Vika Mno, Ruth Kaaserer, Lotte Schreiber, Katharina Coponi, Christoph Draeger and the former comrades of the Kuro Hero Group as well as their family members who met with me and gave me their invaluable insights

financial support: Grenzgänger Stipendium / Robert Bosch Stiftung, BMKOES, Land Tirol, Land Kärnten, Künstlerinnenprogramm Berliner Senat, Tokyo Arts Council, Film i Västerbotton

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