“Villain” Author Enters a World of Rage

“The scope of my fictional worlds expanded with Villain.”

Yoshida on location in Okinawa in September 2015. © Ikari Production Committee

“Sometimes murders happen without any clear motive.”

The cast and crew at a press conference in July 2016. Director Lee Sang-il is on the left of the front row. Behind him is Yoshida Shūichi. (Photograph by Ōtani Kiyohide)

(Clockwise from upper left: After losing his wife, Maki Yōhei (Watanabe Ken), a fishing cooperative employee in Chiba, has brought up his daughter alone; having been brought back home by her father from Tokyo, where she was working in the sex industry, Aiko (Miyazaki Aoi) falls in love with Tashiro Tetsuya (Matsuyama Ken’ichi) , a man who recently started working alongside Maki. Fujita Yūma (right, Tsumaki Satoshi), who works at a major advertising firm, is drawn to Ōnishi Naoto (Ayano Gō) when they meet in Shinjuku, and the two men start living together. Komiyama Izumi (Hirose Suzu) has moved to a small island in Okinawa with her mother when she encounters a backpacker calling himself Tanaka Shingo (Moriyama Mirai) on an inhabited island and finds herself drawn to this mysterious stranger. © Ikari production committee.

Most of Yoshida’s works have been translated into Chinese and Korean.