A Fugitive from the Past

, also titled Straits of Hunger or Hunger Straits, is a 1965 Japanese crime drama film directed by Tomu Uchida and starring Rentarō Mikuni, Sachiko Hidari and Ken Takakura. It is based on the 1962 novel Kiga kaikyō by Tsutomu Minakami. Plot In 1947, two ex-convicts on parole murder pawnbroker Sasada and his family in Iwanai, Hokkaido island, take his money and set fire to the house to cover the tracks. They escape together with a third man, Inukai, to Shimokita peninsula. The murderers' dead bodies later wash up on the shore after the Tōya Maru ferry accident, but policeman Yumisaka becomes suspicious because they are not listed as passengers. He believes that the missing Inukai killed his two accomplices while crossing the strait between the islands. Meanwhile, Inukai is sheltered by a prostitute, Yae, and gives her a large sum of money in return, which enables her to start a new life. When Yumisaka questions Yae, she pretends that her customer was not Inukai. He follows Yae to Tokyo, where he loses her trace. 10 years later, Yae, who works as a prostitute in a brothel, recognises Inukai in a newspaper article. Inukai now lives as a respectable citizen in Maizuru under the name Tarumi, who received press coverage for donating money to reintegrate former criminals. She visits him to thank him for his help ten years ago, but he pretends not to know her or having heard the name Inukai before. When she identifies him by his crippled thumb, he kills her in panic. He then strangles his servant Takenaka, who had surprised Inukai kneeling over Yae's body, and disposes of the corpses in the sea. When Yae's and Takenaka's bodies are found, detective Ajimura rejects his colleague's notion of a shinjū, instead suspecting a crime because of Yae's broken neck. Yae's father tells Ajimura that ten years ago a policeman named Yumisaka had questioned him in search of a man whom his daughter had met. Ajimura contacts Yumisaka, who was forced to resign from the police force because of his obsession with the case, for help. In a series of interrogations, Inukai finally admits that he kept Sasada's money as a means to escape his life in poverty, but denies having been involved in the murders themselves. Knowing that the police have no evidence on him, he insists that he will only speak about Yae when the police believe his story up to this point.