The Devil’s Disciple

A prisoner accused of killing a beautiful woman writes to an old friend who now serves as a prosecutor. Once closer than brothers—and lovers of a kind—the two men are bound by memories of student life, sleepless nights and a troubling intellectual influence.

The letter begins as an accusation against the friend and becomes a confession of the prisoner’s own cruelty. A devoted wife, a recovered first love and a broken chain of memory draw him into a case in which intention and outcome have become dangerously confused. He insists that he probably did not commit the murder for which he is held. Why can he offer no stronger denial?

Hamao Shirō’s psychological crime tale unfolds entirely through the prisoner’s appeal, preserving the uneasy distance between his self-justification and the facts he recalls.