Setting the tone, Masumura's film opens with a dramatic flashback into the past, before shifting to the present day, where a brutal murder initiates an urgent police investigation. Shaping up to be a police crime procedural, the story however veers away from this well worn path. The mystery murder becomes an absorbing multi faceted drama, a dark brooding tale of revenge, manipulation and instability, fermented in the social upheaval of the post war years....