Hirofumi Rokugawa

Bad at sports, Takeshi and Ryo, a gay couple, get together with Akira and Mitsuo, another gay couple, to participate in a beach volleyball tournament all the while Ryo is set to meet a man he met on a dating site. As the tension grows, Takeshi's older sister, Rika, shows up with her lover, Yuichi, who was the captain of the volleyball club in high school.

1960s Japan—economic boom, Olympic pride, and a crackdown on “public morals.” An anti-prostitution law targets women but spares male sex workers, the so-called “blue boys.” When police arrest the doctor performing their sex reassignment surgeries, the sensational “Blue Boy Trial” begins. Three transgender women take the stand, igniting a national debate on identity, medicine, and happiness—long before the language of LGBT existed. Though the court ruled surgery legal, the verdict cast a shadow: no such operations would occur in Japan for 29 years. Half a century later, this buried history still reverberates in the lives of sexual minorities.

The first installment of a two-part theatrical adaptation of The Hakkenden.