維新の肖像

The year is 1932. The Manchuria Incident is followed by the Shanghai Incident. In the United States Kan'ichi Asakawa, a scholar of history at Yale University, is distressed by Japan's growing militarism as it moves toward invading China. Years ago, anxious about Japan's direction following the Russo-Japanese War, he published "Nihon no Kaki" and warned "Sooner or later this will lead to war with the United States!" But his warnings fell on deaf ears, leaving him tormented by his own powerlessness. Such is his state when he comes across a trunk left by his father, Masasumi Asakawa. Inside he finds a record of his father's experiences fighting in the Bōshin War as a retainer of the Nihonmatsu domain. Kan'ichi begins to write a novel with his father as the protagonist, hoping that by re-examining both their experiences he might begin to uncover the root of the evil that has sent Japan tumbling down the road to destruction. -- Cataloguer's translation of Amazon.co.jp summary.