"When I was asked to do the story, I didn't think of it as a different concept for TV because I'm using most of the same crew and team I dealt with in the movie industry, so on that level the approach wasn't different," Kurosawa says.

"However, the structure is different. I was told it would be a five-part framework, broadcasting one episode a week."

It's a testament to his reputation that the Venice Film Festival still wanted for its programming this year, followed by another screening at the also well-regarded Toronto International Film Festival.

The entire work was also shown last month during the Hong Kong Asian Film Festival with Kurosawa in attendance. (However, for its general release here, Edko Films has split into two parts, with a first half of 170 minutes out on Thursday and the remaining 124 minutes on December 20.)

"When Venice offered to show it, that was the first time I thought about it," Kurosawa says. "Then I wondered, 'How do I change a five-part story into one'?"

Ultimately, he didn't do much other than cut an introductory flashback that appears at the beginning of each TV episode. Shot in his usual sombre tone and measured pace of narrative, is not typical primetime fare. But its five separate tales deliver twists and complicated pathos despite a limited budget and small-screen format.

Based on a story by Kanae Minato (her novel , which uses a school setting to comment on Japanese social hierarchy, was adapted by Tetsuya Nakashima into an acclaimed film last year), is the kind of disturbing, psychological case study that perfectly fits Kurosawa's oeuvre.

"I know that before she became a novelist, Minato used to be a schoolteacher. is also set in a school. She often does that. The relationship between students and teachers, teachers and parents, and children and parents in her stories are very complicated."

begins with the murder of a young girl at her school. Four of her classmates see the suspect's face, but none can provide a useful description to the police. This angers the grieving mother who confronts the friends and demands that each pays a penance for her daughter's death. What that restitution would be she leaves for the individual to decide.

The narrative then jumps 15 years to the future. The grown-up classmates now live separate lives, but are all still scarred by the incident in different ways. The first four stories explore these damaged characters, one per episode with the only constant being Kyoko Koizumi as the dead girl's mother who appears at some point as a spectre from the past.

Kurosawa presents each section in a dramatically different way. One girl has sublimated the guilt into a physical ailment which becomes a weird fetish for her husband. Another keeps up a strict and emotionally detached regimen using kendo as a defence mechanism in more ways than one. A third girl becomes a virtual hermit who allows paranoia to lead to more tragedy. The fourth decides it's an amoral world so she's going to live an amoral and selfish existence.

The finale follows the mother and reveals the toll the tragedy has taken on her and her husband a decade and a half on. The conclusion also reveals the (as it turns out, melodramatic) mystery of why their child was murdered.

"The whole idea of doing penance is a very complicated concept," Kurosawa says. "What interests me is how these five women understand and deal with the concept of a self-determined penance, especially the four girls and their behaviour in trying to redeem themselves. It's the differences that interest me.

"The mother is even more complicated because she ends up paying a double penance. She too is guilty of things in the past and carries that guilt her whole life," the filmmaker says.

With his penchant for long takes and subversive storylines about social discontent, the director acknowledges being influenced by filmmaker Yasujiro Ozu. Although the Kurosawa name brings to mind another great Japanese director (no relation), the contemporary namesake has been earning accolades on the international scene for more than a decade now.

Local cinephiles have been acquainted with Kurosawa since his Director of Focus showcase in 1999's Hong Kong International Film Festival. His family drama picked up the Prix Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival in 2008. By then Kurosawa already had a reputation for insightful horror films such as , and that combine spine-tingling chills with an understated critique of social ills. But he is adamant that he's not just a genre specialist.

"I like making horror films, but I don't think I'm a horror specialist. I like all kinds of films. I don't want to be bound by one genre. I want to make all kinds of films."

invokes no spooky ghosts or supernatural nightmares, but it does reflect Kurosawa's interest in the fractious structure of Japanese society. The film actually hints at an even scarier proposition: that Japan isn't just in the midst of an economic decline but its entire social fabric is decaying. Of course, Kurosawa knows his countrymen are more likely to prefer lighter fare than his sobering sensibility, especially after years of depressing economic news and natural disasters. Maybe that's why he hasn't made another movie since 2008's . However, that is not going to stop him probing the fragile Japanese psyche.

"There are lots of comedies and light entertainment now in Japan, and not many stories with dark or serious themes. But no matter what genres people are making, there is a tendency now to deliver a message that there is hope in the future, a better time is ahead. It seems audiences want to see this kind of ending," he says.

"But for me, I don't think we should give people false hopes. I don't think the immediate future will be great, so instead of false hope I would rather depict the confusion that Japan is facing now. Show them the chaos in people's minds and in the cities, instead of a lie. In this way, I feel this is my work."

Penance Penance