About the book: 2023 / ? Useless in an era of hard-won peace, the samurai, thrown out into the streets from military houses dispersed by the government, survive as best they can. Forming gangs, they fight the city's shady businessmen for their daily food. Hired behind the scenes, they kill each other in a secret civil war driven into the narrow alleys of the capital, hoping to save, if not life or honor, then at least preserve memories of themselves. Abandoned, betrayed, alone on the path between murder and suicide, they are looking for a use for themselves, fighting for the meaning of existence every day on the indifferent streets of a huge city. Loyalty and betrayal, debts of honor and just debts, the choice is right, wrong and inevitable, clans and ronin, conspiracies, investigations and interrogations, bandits and actors, merchants and dice players, monks and courtesans, flowers of Edo and flowers of the Musashi Valley, rain and heat, untouchables and nonhumans and many, many strange and surprising things.