EXCLUSIVE: Japanese broadcaster Wowow has announced that it’s producing a live-action series based on Riku Onda’s best-selling mystery novel The Aosawa Murders (Eugenia), set to star Yukino Kishii, known internationally for her role in recent Cannes title All The Lovers In The Night.
The six-episode series is scripted by Naoko Adachi (What Did You Eat Yesterday?) with Go Furukawa (Kaneko’s Commissary) as lead director. Hayato Kawai, whose credits include Disney+ series Gannibal, also directs.
The series will premiere on Sunday, November 8, airing and streaming weekly on Wowow.
The story opens with a mass poisoning at the home of a prominent family in a Japanese coastal city and follows the impact of the event on a novelist, who was among the first at the scene and later wrote a book about the case; a blind girl who was the family’s sole survivor; and a writer investigating the case.
Yukino Kishii, in her first role for Wowow, plays the role of Makiko Saiga – a woman who witnessed the mass poisoning at the age of eleven and later wrote a novel about it – and who freely changes her voice and manner of speaking depending on whom she is talking to
Wowow has also revealed first-look photos of Kishii in this challenging role (see above) – showing her playing the character in two different time periods: in the 1980s when as a twenty-something Makiko went from door to door listening to the people whose lives the case had upended; and in the 2000s, now in her forties, when she is confronted about the truth of the case by a freelance writer.
In addition to All The Lovers In The Night, which premiered in Cannes Un Certain Regard and has sold widely internationally, Kishii’s credits include Small, Slow But Steady (2022) – for which she won several acting honours including Best Actress at the Japan Academy Film Prize – and Japan-Taiwan co-production Sinsin And The Mouse.
Kishii commented on her casting in the series: “I had been reading Onda-sensei’s novels since junior high school, so the offer made me very happy – and put just as much pressure on me. When I heard the scripts would be by Naoko Adachi, who always renders the world from so many angles, I felt that with her I might be able to dive into this story.”
Published in English as The Aosawa Murders, Onda’s 2005 novel Eugenia won the 59th Mystery Writers of Japan Award for Best Novel, and has sold a cumulative 380,000 copies in Japan.
The novel has been translated into six languages (English, German, French, Spanish, Italian and Korean) and was selected as a New York Times Notable Book of 2020; featured among The Guardian’s best recent crime and thrillers of 2020; and won first place in the international category of the German Crime Fiction Prize in 2022.
Naoko Adachi, who has adapted the novel, is one of Japan’s most highly regarded screenwriters. In addition to TV Tokyo hit series What Did You Eat Yesterday?, her credits also include NHK morning drama Welcome Home, Mone and upcoming historical drama Gyakuzoku no Bakushin. She also previously worked with Kishii on NHK’s Farewell Hospital (2024) and Farewell Hospital 2 (2026).
Takeo Kodera, a producer for Kadokawa, which published the original Japanese version of the novel, brought the project to Wowow, which produced with the cooperation of Kadokawa Daiei Studio. Masaki Yamada, Chief Producer at the Drama Production Department of Wowow’s Content Production Division, said he was attracted to the work because: “The question is not ‘who did it?’ but ‘why do people go on being driven mad and damaged by this case?’’ — and there is that sense that the reader is somehow participating in the story.”
Commenting on the adaptation, Onda said: “Since publication in 2005 I had received many offers to adapt the novel, including from overseas, so for the adaptation to be decided in the book’s 20th-anniversary year – just as the complete edition was published – is deeply moving.”
Adachi commented: “I feel Eugenia is a story that drags readers and viewers out of the safe seat of the ‘bystander’. You are pulled into the case whether you like it or not, and as the story goes on you can no longer say for certain that what you saw is the truth exactly as you saw it.”
Wowow is handling international rights to the series and will be presenting it to buyers at the upcoming TIFFCOM and ATF markets in Tokyo and Singapore later this year.
