Question:

[Jaleh]

Was the hanged boy Herves son??? Was it the guilt and grief over his son's death that caused his years of turmoil?

[Liz M]

The hanged boy "was no more than fourteen years old" and Hervé had made his first trip to Japan four years before the incident, so it was not his son. Presumably it was the grief over being forbidden to ever see the woman he loved again and the perhaps the guilt of not loving his wife in the same way.