Hiroo Ikeda

Ayako, a young woman from a rural fishing village, is sold by her family into a brothel when her father takes ill. There, she is quickly stripped of her innocence and illusions.

A female college student who aims to become a pianist meets a boy who raises a guide dog.

After the war, many filmmakers were expelled from the Japanese film industry due to the Toho Dispute and the Red Purge. Amid such circumstances, there were people who set up their own independent production companies and embarked on film production without relying on corporations. This documentary film focuses on the passionate "spirit of film" of directors such as Satsuo Yamamoto and Tadashi Imai, who, despite many hardships, produced a succession of masterpieces overflowing with humanism and rebellious spirit.

Lawyers, an ex-police investigator and a former judge denounce Japan's criminal justice system as defendants in a high-profile 2003 election-rigging case in Kagoshima explain how detectives tried to extract false confessions on trumped-up charges of vote-buying. Those who buckled under the pressure and confessed spent over a year in prison. All the "suspects" were finally acquitted, but remain permanently scarred by the ordeal. This documentary is a dramatic reminder that indiscriminate arrests and convictions should be fought with the full force of the law.