Confessions by Kanae Minato is a psychological thriller novel with horror elements. More specifically, it is an “iyamisu” or “ew mystery,” a subgenre of Japanese mystery stories that delves into dark—sometimes grotesque—elements of human nature. An international bestseller, Confessions unfolds in multiple narrative formats from several characters’ perspectives as it details the murder of middle school homeroom/science teacher Yūko Moriguchi’s four-year-old daughter, Manami, by two of Moriguchi’s students. Unimpressed with Japanese laws regarding juvenile crimes, Moriguchi decides to exact vengeance before she retires. The novel explores themes surrounding blame and revenge, the pitfalls of perception, the nature of motherhood, and facing the consequences of one’s actions.

Minato was a homemaker and home economics teacher prior to becoming an author. Confessions, her debut novel, was adapted into an Oscar shortlisted film of the same name in 2010. The novel sold three million copies in Japan and won numerous awards, including the Radio Drama Award, Detective Novel Prize for New Writers, and Japan’s National Booksellers’ Award. While popular in Japan, Minato’s only other novel translated into English is Penance (2009).

This guide references the Mulholland Book/Little, Brown and Company (2008) edition translated by Stephen Snyder.

Content Warning: Confessions depicts extreme bullying, child abuse, murder, mental health crises, a bombing, and murder-suicide. The text contains some stigmatizing language surrounding HIV/AIDS and the misgendering of a character; this guide reproduces such language only through quotations.

Plot Summary

Confessions unfolds in six chapters told from six different characters’ perspectives: teacher Yūko Moriguchi; her students Mizuki Kitahara, Naoki Shitamura, and Shūya Watanabe; and Naoki’s mother and sister, Mrs. Shitamura and Kiyomi Shitamura. Each chapter also takes on a different format, from speeches to letters to narration/flashbacks.

Moriguchi’s ex-fiancé, Masayoshi Sakuranomi, had a troubled background and a wild youth. As an adult, he became a lauded and celebrated teacher who was later diagnosed with AIDS. Because of this, he broke off his engagement with Moriguchi, who was pregnant; she became a single mother to their daughter, Manami, who occasionally accompanied her mother to the middle school where she teaches. One day, four-year-old Manami was found in the school pool, drowned. Although the incident was declared accidental, Moriguchi suspected foul play and discovered the murderers were two of her students, Shūya and Naoki, who electrocuted Manami via one of Shūya’s inventions and then dropped her in the pool. Contemptuous of the Japanese juvenile penal code, Moriguchi vowed vengeance. In the present, she exposes their crime to the class in her retirement speech and places Sakuranomi’s blood in the killers’ milk (a mandatory school beverage) in an attempt to transmit HIV to them.

During the new school year, Naoki stops coming to school, and Shūya, ostracized for the murder and his presumed HIV status, becomes the target of bullying. Werther, the teacher who replaces Moriguchi, exacerbates the bullying. Mizuki, a student sympathetic to Moriguchi and against the extreme bullying, becomes the target of bullying herself when she is forced to kiss Shūya. She eventually befriends him; both of them realize the milk did not contain blood at all but keep that a secret. Shūya ends the bullying by threatening the bullies with his own blood and saliva. Meanwhile, Werther forces Mizuki to accompany him to Naoki’s house for regular home visits. These visits are ostensibly to convince Naoki to return to school, but really, they boost Werther’s ego. By the end of Mizuki’s account, Naoki experiences a psychological crisis and kills his mother. He never learns that he did not acquire HIV.

Naoki’s time as a hikikomori (shut-in) is told through the conflicting perspectives of himself, his mother, and his sister. Upset about his assumed acquisition of HIV, Naoki locks himself in his room and becomes increasingly obsessed with household cleanliness while neglecting his personal hygiene. Concerned, his mother—unaware of the milk incident or Naoki’s fears about HIV—takes him to a psychologist. Later, his mother drugs him so she can cut his hair; upon discovering what she did, Naoki is distraught, believing his dirty hair and odor are proof of his aliveness. Afterward, he bathes before going to a nearby store and smearing his blood on some of the products. At home, Naoki reveals his presumed HIV status to his mother and confesses his intent to kill Manami—he knew she was still alive when he dropped her in the pool. His motivation was to one-up Shūya, who had rejected Naoki’s friendship. Aghast, his mother decides to kill herself and Naoki, but only Mrs. Shitamura dies.

Shūya’s motivation to kill stems from his past. His mother, a gifted electrical engineer, gave up her career when she married and had him. She abused Shūya due to her regret about losing her career, but she still taught Shūya advanced science. She abandoned him after her divorce, but Shūya dreams of reconnecting with her through his inventions. When the “Lunacy Incident” (a case involving a child murderer) overshadows his science fair success, he turns to crime for sensational news coverage. When Naoki interferes with Manami’s murder and Moriguchi refuses to go public with the truth—thereby refusing him the attention he seeks—Shūya is furious. He celebrates his presumed HIV acquisition, believing an illness will bring his mother back. However, when he finally visits the university where his mother works, he learns that she has remarried and forgotten him. Distraught, he is triggered when Mizuki—now his girlfriend—voices his mother’s abandonment as such, and he kills her.

Shūya intends to blow up his school with a phone-controlled bomb as a final effort to gain his mother’s attention. When the bomb seemingly fails to detonate, Moriguchi calls, revealing that she knows everything and had been manipulating Werther all along. She explains that while she initially placed blood in the milk, Sakuranomi discovered her plan and replaced the milk with new cartons. With Sakuranomi dead, Moriguchi exacted her final revenge—she moved Shūya’s bomb to his mother’s laboratory. When he detonated it, he killed his mother. After witnessing Naoki’s and Shūya’s matricides, Moriguchi considers her revenge complete.