MARKS

Sai’s adaptation of a novel by Takamura Kaoru has two distinct but converging strands. One centres on Mizusawa, a young man who survived his family’s group suicide on Mount Kitadake 19 years ago and a subsequent incarceration in a mental hospital where he was sexually abused. The other centres on a series of identical but apparently unrelated murders in Tokyo: first a yakuza is found dead in a classy residential district, then the corpse of a Ministry of Justice official turns up in a less classy district, both with small but lethal wounds to the skull. The police investigation, which involves ‘lone wolf’ Aida Yuichiro, is riven by factional disputes and fails to prevent a third murder, although it emerges that the victims all had oblique connections with one lawyer.