Bad Company

It is 1980 Sadatomo is at a secondary school in a small town His parents barely take any notice of him The strict teacher Kobayashi has hung up a humanity index in the classroom divided into the categories delinquents scum and people In each category he has hung namecards of pupils One day Kobayashi finds out that Sadatomo and his friends have stolen some things from a shop for fun Their fathers are informed and as punishment the children have to write a selfcritical essay of no less than thirty pages For the first time Sadatomo is beaten by his father Shocked he writes a piece entitled I am an onion in which the teacher thinks he can detect a first sign of humanity That is the start of a confusing situation in which it gets hard to distinguish lies truth justified selfcriticism and opportunist wheeler dealing even for the boys