Dare mo mamotte kurenai (2009)

Detective Katsuura has a wife and daughter, but trauma from a past case has driven them to live apart, and their marriage is on the verge of divorce. Their daughter plans a trip to reconcile her parents. Katsuura also requests leave and buys a present for his daughter. Meanwhile, a pair of elementary-school-aged sisters are murdered, and an 18-year-old boy emerges as a suspect in the investigation. Katsuura and his colleague Mishima are ordered by their superior, Sakamoto, to protect the suspect’s family. Katsuura’s leave request is revoked, and he reluctantly takes on the assignment. At the same time, a crowd of reporters and onlookers has gathered outside the suspect’s home, creating a commotion. When Sakamoto, Katsuura, and Mishima arrive, the boy is finally arrested and taken away. Amid the chaos, the family members left behind go through divorce and remarriage procedures, change their surnames, and are taken to separate locations for protection and questioning. The suspect’s younger sister, Saori, a middle-school student, is exempted from compulsory schooling and escapes from the house by car under Katsuura and Mishima’s protection. Cameras flash mercilessly at her. At the time, Saori still does not understand what it means when people say, “They’ll follow you for the rest of your life.” Katsuura and Mishima finally manage to shake off the news crews that have been doggedly following them and reach the hotel arranged for them. But before they can even begin questioning Saori, the media discover their location, forcing them to set off in the car again. Because of a staff shortage, Mishima is called back to the suspect’s house and ordered to join the search. With nowhere else to go, Katsuura reluctantly takes Saori to his apartment. When Katsuura returns to the suspect’s house to retrieve Saori’s mobile phone, which she says she left there, he finds the suspect’s mother sitting dazed amid the commotion of the search. As Katsuura finds Saori’s phone and is about to leave, an investigator notices that the mother has not come out of the bathroom. They force the door open and find her inside, having attempted suicide with a family photograph in her hand. Katsuura desperately tries to revive her, but she never draws another breath. In the midst of the turmoil, Saori has now lost her mother too. Back at his apartment, Katsuura struggles with how to tell Saori that her mother has died by suicide. Following the advice of psychiatrist Onoue, he plans to tell her after they move to her home, but Saori learns the truth first through a phone call from her boyfriend, Tatsuro, and is devastated. On top of that, reporter Umemoto tracks down Onoue’s home and confronts Katsuura, insisting that “the families of criminals deserve to be persecuted.” Umemoto remembers Katsuura, whose name came up in connection with the past case. Since the suspect is saying nothing, Sakamoto hopes to get a statement from Saori and use it to advance his own career, so he orders Katsuura to continue protecting her. Meanwhile, a movement is gaining momentum online under the slogan “Condemn the suspect and his family,” with people trying to obtain personal information and expose those connected to the case. With nowhere left to go, Katsuura leaves Tokyo and reaches the pension in Nishiizu where he had planned to stay with his family. The pension’s owners, the Honjos, were the bereaved family in the case that caused the trauma that makes Katsuura’s hands tremble. The Honjos smile and tell him, “We resent the police, but we don’t resent you.” But when Honjo learns that Saori is the family member of a criminal, he sees a parallel with the case involving his own child and vents his complicated feelings to Katsuura. The internet is in what is known as a “flame war”: not only the suspect’s and Saori’s names, photographs, and address, but even information about Katsuura’s family has been posted on message boards, putting them in danger. Then the address of the pension, their hideout, is posted as well, and stones are thrown at its windows. Saori herself was the one who revealed the pension’s location. Katsuura is baffled and asks why she would do such a thing, and Saori shouts, “The detective should have to suffer too!” Honjo tells Katsuura, “She didn’t know where to put her grief, so she took it out on the person in front of her—you.” That night, Tatsuro, having seen the address, comes to the pension. At last, Saori smiles and seems relaxed for the first time in a long while. But while Katsuura and the others are distracted, Tatsuro sneaks Saori out of the pension. In the hotel room he takes her to, he secretly films her and sells the footage to people who post online. Saori is stunned when she realizes Tatsuro has betrayed her. Then the online posters, enraged because someone has tampered with their equipment, come rushing in. Katsuura is injured while shielding Saori from their assault, and she begins to tell him what she saw on the day of the crime.