The cast of Kanae Minato’s Confessions is bound together by a chain of vengeance, guilt, and delusion, told through a mosaic of first-person “confessions” that constantly destabilize what we think we know. Each voice reveals private motives and blind spots, sharpening the novel’s exploration of Perception vs. Reality. At the center stands a grieving teacher and the two students who killed her child, surrounded by enablers, bystanders, and would-be saviors who all help turn a tragedy into a psychological catastrophe.
Main Characters
The story revolves around a teacher and her two students, whose actions and confessions drive the novel’s dark plot of revenge and psychological torment.
Yūko Moriguchi
Yūko Moriguchi is the middle school science teacher and single mother whose opening confession in Chapter 1 sets the machinery of Revenge in motion, with her final account in Chapter 6 revealing the depths of her design. Grief-tempered into ice, she wields her intellect and training to sidestep the law and construct a long-term punishment she believes will force her students to grasp the weight of a life taken. Her plan targets the boys who killed her daughter—Shūya Watanabe and Naoki Shitamura—while also implicating the adults around them, including her former fiancé Masayoshi Sakuranomi, whose HIV-positive blood becomes the lynchpin of her psychological warfare. As she moves from compassionate educator to meticulous avenger, Yūko exposes the limits of Justice and the Law, redefining “teacher” as both moral judge and executioner.
Shūya Watanabe
Shūya Watanabe, “Student A,” is a brilliant, emotionally vacant boy whose craving for recognition—especially from his estranged mother, Jun Yasaka—curdles into cruelty. The mastermind behind the “prank” that kills Manami Moriguchi, he narrates Chapter 5, revealing a prodigy’s contempt for ordinary people, a talent for electrical inventions, and a chilling ability to treat life-and-death as puzzles to solve. He manipulates Naoki Shitamura, underestimates Yūko Moriguchi, and briefly binds himself to Mizuki Kitahara as a confidante-turned-girlfriend, only to discard her when she threatens his self-mythology. As bullying and isolation escalate after Yūko’s initial gambit, Shūya’s pursuit of a grand statement to win his mother’s attention culminates in a mass-casualty plan—one Yūko anticipates and reroutes into a devastating personal reckoning.
Naoki Shitamura
Naoki Shitamura, “Student B,” is an ordinary, insecure boy whose need to belong makes him the pliant accomplice who ultimately causes Manami’s death. Seen through the confessions of his mother and sister in Chapter 3 and Chapter 4, he spirals under the twin pressures of Shūya’s manipulation and the belief—planted by Yūko—that he has been infected with HIV. Unlike Shūya, Naoki is consumed by Guilt and Atonement, retreating into hikikomori isolation as his mother’s enabling denial feeds his paranoia and self-loathing. His fear, shame, and dependency metastasize into violence that turns inward and then outward, culminating in a matricide that completes Yūko’s dark lesson about consequence.
Supporting Characters
These characters provide additional perspectives and are crucial to the development of the main plot and themes.
Mizuki Kitahara
Mizuki Kitahara, the class president and narrator of Chapter 2, observes the classroom’s descent after Yūko resigns and becomes both participant and witness to its mob dynamics. Drawn to darkness and convinced she can understand and redeem Shūya, she shifts from onlooker to accomplice, only to pay with her life when she challenges his narrative of himself and his mother. Her perspective reveals the seductive logic of complicity and the peril of mistaking insight for control.
Naoki's Mother
Naoki’s Mother narrates Chapter 3, embodying the smothering denial at the heart of Motherhood and Family Dysfunction. Refusing to see Naoki’s culpability, she recasts him as a fragile innocent and Yūko as a villain, a delusion that accelerates her son’s collapse. When reality intrudes, her desperate turn to murder–suicide is stopped only by Naoki’s own violence, making her the final victim of the lie she nurtured.
Yoshiteru Terada (Werther)
Yoshiteru “Werther” Terada, the earnest teacher who replaces Yūko, imagines himself a TV-drama savior and models his methods on Masayoshi Sakuranomi. His naïve interventions misread bullying and embolden abusers, and Yūko deftly exploits his idealism to push Naoki toward a breaking point. As a foil to Yūko, he exposes how feel-good pedagogy shatters against real trauma and calculated malice.
Masayoshi Sakuranomi (The Saint)
Masayoshi Sakuranomi, Manami’s father and Yūko’s former fiancé, is a celebrated reformer of troubled youth whose ideal of forgiveness contrasts Yūko’s punitive creed. Dying of AIDS, he inadvertently becomes a tool in Yūko’s plan when his infected blood is woven into her bluff, and his own quiet act—swapping the milk cartons—reveals a last attempt to halt the cycle of vengeance. His legacy poses the novel’s unresolved question: can atonement exist where recognition of harm is absent?
Minor Characters
Manami Moriguchi
The four-year-old daughter whose death ignites the plot; her absent presence measures the cost of every choice Yūko and the boys make.
Shūya's Mother (Jun Yasaka)
A brilliant engineer who abandoned her son, she is the lodestar of Shūya’s obsession and the final target of Yūko’s redirected revenge.
Character Relationships & Dynamics
Yūko Moriguchi’s relationship with her students reframes the classroom as a battleground where pedagogy becomes prosecution. With an intimate grasp of Shūya Watanabe’s vanity and Naoki Shitamura’s neediness, she designs punishments tailored to their flaws—isolating Shūya within his own grandiosity and weaponizing Naoki’s guilt—thereby asserting a moral authority the legal system, in her view, cannot.
Shūya and Naoki form a classic manipulator–pawn pairing. Shūya recruits Naoki by offering belonging and intellectual excitement, then discards responsibility when tragedy strikes; Naoki, desperate for friendship, absorbs the blame until fear and shame corrode his sanity. Their mothers’ failures mirror and magnify this dyad: Jun Yasaka’s abandonment fuels Shūya’s performative amorality, while Naoki’s mother’s cosseting denial traps her son in perpetual childhood, making him both agent and victim of harm.
Around them, would-be saviors and confidantes become accelerants. Mizuki Kitahara mistakes intimacy with Shūya for influence, only to be treated as an expendable audience when she punctures his myth. Yoshiteru “Werther” Terada’s televised idealism offers simplistic answers to complex damage, making him easy prey for Yūko’s manipulations and underscoring how institutions fail when they prize appearances over accountability. Counterposed to these dynamics is Masayoshi Sakuranomi, whose faith in rehabilitation offers a path not taken—one Yūko rejects as naïve in a world where recognition and remorse are missing.
The classroom itself stratifies into factions—bullies and bystanders, outcasts and moral entrepreneurs—revealing how collective cowardice abets individual cruelty. As confessions crisscross and contradict, alliances fracture and reform, leaving each character trapped in the gap between who they are and who they need to be seen as—until Yūko forces that gap to close with consequences no one can outrun.