Akutsu Eiji is a newspaper reporter. He is working on unsolved case that took place 30 years ago. The case involved a group of people extorting several companies for money. The group sent cassette tapes to the companies. Akutsu Eiji comes across a mysterious cassette tape. Meanwhile, Sone Toshiya lives in Kyoto and runs a tailor shop. He discovers a cassette tape among his late father's possessions. He plays the cassette tape and hears his voice from his childhood days.
~~ Adapted from the novel "The Voice of Sin" (罪の声) by Shiota Takeshi (塩田武士), which in turn was inspired by the extortion case "Glico Morinaga case" (グリコ・森永事件).
The story is based on the life of a japanese composer named Yuji Koseki from Fukushima in the Showa Era.
In 1909, a long-awaited baby boy was born to a family which has run a dry goods store for generations in Fukushima Prefecture. He would later become the talented composer Koyama Yuichi who wrote many famous songs. Although Yuichi was brought up as the heir of the business, he was rather dreamy and considered a child with no redeeming traits by the people around him. However, when he encountered music, it sparked joy and unleashed his gift in composing music through self-study. As a youth, Yuichi secretly put his name down for an overseas songwriting competition. This would change his destiny. He won runner-up for the song he entered for the competition. As a result, he got to know a female student who wanted to be a singer. Despite the long distance between them – Fukushima and Toyohashi – the two of them tied the knot. When they came to Tokyo, they met all sorts of people and weathered a dark period to produce a number of hit songs. However, war broke out and Yuichi had to compose wartime songs at the army’s request. It pained him that young men died in battle after singing the songs he had written. After the war, the country began to recover amid the chaos. The couple made a new era of music in an attempt to encourage the wounded through the power of music.
The murder of Emili, a young girl, leaves the inhabitants of a small Japanese village in shock. The raped body of Emily is found by the four classmates with whom she was playing. The murder is never solved. Emili's mother Asako is torn by grief and puts a curse on the four girls when they claim that they don't remember the killer's face. Each of the girls, in their own way, will do their penance for their silence. Deeply struck by the words of Asako and burdened with her curse, the four girls are forced into adulthood which eventually triggers a tragic chain of events.
Adapted from the novel by Kanae Minato.