Justice

On a snowy spring evening, attorney Kinugawa Ryūtarō receives a visit from an old friend, the playwright Kiyogawa Jun. Their conversation turns to a hotel attendant charged with murdering a viscount. Kinugawa believes the man innocent, but a confession, unexplained money, and conflicting accounts make the case dangerous.

Kiyogawa knows something that could change everything. Yet telling it publicly would threaten lives beyond the defendant’s. As the two friends argue, professional duty and personal loyalty pull them toward incompatible answers to the same question: what does justice require?

Hamao Shirō’s tightly drawn legal story preserves the full evidentiary debate, the witness account, and the letter that transforms its meaning. This complete English translation follows the Japanese directly, retaining the unsettling conclusion. Notes clarify name readings, textual anomalies, and the story’s historical legal and medical language. AI-assisted translation.