Tadashi Imai's scathing indictment of class justice, based on a sensational case before the courts at the time, delivered its own verdict while the actual courts dawdled, adding to the celebrity of the case and in the end perhaps even speeding it to its conclusion. Five youths are arrested on suspicion of a brutal murder. Confessions are extracted through tactics of intimidation by overzealous police, and a verdict of guilty is speedily obtained by a manipulative prosecution. On appeal, all five defendants are exonerated. Imai, who gave the story almost no fictional cover, demonstrated what he took to be a clear miscarriage of justice in which police brutality damaged the lives of innocent young men.