Autumn Leaves: A Novel of Old Japan

Four stories about one story.

There has been a series of fires plaguing Edo, the city of paper and wood, and the fire chief, Kiru Jindo, has been unable to solve the crimes. Prince Juzo is becoming impatient. When a young ronin named Iga-no-Nikki arrives in the city he soon finds himself with arson. It appears Kiru has found a scapegoat. Nikki's only hope is to find the real arsonist before he is forced to reclaim his honor by committing seppuku.

At the same time, two women in Kiru's life are moving in opposite directions, and it is tearing him apart. Akashi, the beautiful geisha Kiru has known since childhood and wants to marry, has set her sights on a career in the theater. She loves him, but cannot marry him and keep her place in society as a geisha. And Kiru's wealthy father has tasked him with finding a suitable husband for his younger sister Osan. She is smart, educated, creative and lovely; a catch for any man. But she is of the merchant class and her father wants her to marry into the samurai class. Osan is a dreamer, lost in her own world, lost in the books she reads on courtly love and soon finds herself falling for Nikki.

Equal parts romance, mystery, adventure and pastoral "Autumn Leaves: A Novel of Old Japan" takes us through medieval Japan and shows the reader the lost world where honor and shame ruled as strongly as the shogunate. It is a world full of humor and horror, beauty and cruelty, science and superstition. This is a story that shows a world that has captured the imagination of millions.