
A humid summer evening drapes the streets of Kyoto in a soft, blue‑gray veil, where lanterns flicker from rickety jinrikishas and the river’s breeze offers brief relief. The city hums with revelers heading toward the Houses of Pleasure, their laughter echoing through winding alleys, while the night itself seems to whisper promises of fleeting joy.
Amid this festive swirl stands young Lord Saito Gonji, a poised heir burdened by his family’s expectations. Trained from childhood in the rigorous ways of the samurai and later educated at the Imperial University, he carries both the discipline of a warrior and the yearning of a poet. Now, on the cusp of an arranged marriage to his childhood acquaintance, Ohano, Gonji confronts a growing dread that his dreams of a bright future may be eclipsed by duty and tradition.
Language
en
Duration
~3 hours (206K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Produced by Mary Glenn Krause, Barry Abrahamsen, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
Release date
2018-10-13
Rights
Public domain in the USA.

1875–1954
A pioneering North American novelist and screenwriter, she became famous for popular fiction published under the pen name Onoto Watanna. Her life moved from Montreal to New York, Alberta, and Hollywood, and her work is now read as an important part of early Asian North American literary history.
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