Synopsis
Stumbling over the ground, he raises his right hand overhead, as if to catch something hanging in the air, then brings it to his chest. With his left hand he grazes over the earth, as if scooping up its breath, then brings it to his chest and places it over his right hand.
A young boy, with his eyes closed, moves his lips as if chanting something…
When magazine reporter Kotaro Makino meets Shizuto Sakatsuki, Shizuto has been roaming the country ‘mourning’ the dead. Kotaro, due to his speciality in reporting on the most heinous of murders and crimes of passion, is called E-gu-no, Erotic-GrotesqueMakino,
behind his back. Unable to believe in the goodwill of others, a suspicious Kotaro cannot fathom the actions of Shizuto and begins to question his motives for mourning. “What’s the point of doing what you do?” Thinking he must expose the truth, he begins to investigate those close to Shizuto....
At around that time, Shizuto’s mother, Junko Sakatsuki is suffering from terminal cancer of the stomach.
Hospital treatment has been unsuccessful and she has decided to receive terminal care and await death at her home. Junko’s husband, Takahiko, who has suffered from childhood with a phobia of interpersonal relationships and who even finds it hard to look at someone’s face while talking to them, quits his job so he can focus on caring for her wife. Their daughter and Shizuto’s younger sister, Mishio, returns home after learning of her mother’s illness. After a while, it is found out that she is pregnant but she says that she has broken up with the father. This casts a shadow over Shizuto.
Yukiyo Nagi is recently released from prison having served 4 years for murdering her husband. Her husband, Sakuya Komizu, was known as ‘The Reincarnation of Buddha’ for his part in hiding a woman who had been the victim of domestic violence. Yukiyo has no relatives and nowhere to go. In addition, the husband she killed with her own hands has become like a haunting presence and has started to whisper in her ear. At a loss as to what to do, despite swearing she would never set foot there again, Yukiyo visits a town in the Tohoku region, and it is there she meets Shizuto who has come to the place she killed Sakuya to mourn him. Shizuto asks the trembling Yukiyo. “When he was alive, who did he love and who loved him? Was he appreciated by someone?” Puzzled by his true intentions, Yukiyo, unable to confess to the truth of murdering her husband, decides to join Shizuto on his
journey….
The stage is set for Shizuto, ‘The Mourner’, and the drama of those around him interwoven with life and death, love and hate and crime and forgiveness.