Yanagawa Tsuyoshi

Ryuukou Kanbou

The novelist Shiga Naoya lives with his wife Haruko and their 4-year-old daughter Saeko. He is paranoid about Saeko’s health, making her wear heavy clothes even in summer in order to prevent her from catching a cold. Their child before Saeko died due to an epidemic, and he believes thorough enforcement is a natural consequence. In 1918, the Spanish flu reaches Japan. As the number of infected people grows, Shiga starts to suspect their servant Ishi might have gone to watch a travelling entertainment troupe’s performance which drew a great number of villagers. It is something Ishi is likely to do. But when Shiga questions her, she says that she did not go. However, she makes him have misgivings on a regular basis and he decides to take this opportunity to make her quit. An uproar ensues. Shiga feels that he has become a tyrant and refrains from kicking her out but he loses all reason and faith in humanity amid the pandemic…

Eien no Nispa

Takeshiro Matsuura was a Japanese explorer who was the first person to document the inner reaches of what is now known as Hokkaido. He explored the area extensively during the mid 19th century and created a map of the island that included parts which had been ignored by earlier cartographers. He visited Ainu communities and compiled records of the large numbers of the population who had been conscripted for forced labor far from their homes. Matsuura suggested the name Hokkaido for the area

Henkan kōshōjin: Itsuka, Okinawa o torimodosu

In 2010, while covering the issue of the "secret agreement" at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the author came across diplomatic documents relating to the reversion of Okinawa and was particularly impressed by the handwritten documents of Kazuo Chiba, then Director of the North American First Division at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which, unlike ordinary bureaucrats, "stood out from the crowd and seemed unique". The name of Chiba subsequently appeared in a number of documents left by former Prime Minister Eisaku Sato's secretary, and the author became interested in finding out what kind of person he was.

Yuriko's Picture Book

Onodera Yuriko sets off for Sweden where her husband, Major General Onodera Makoto, is stationed as a military attache in Stockholm during World War II. Called the "god of intelligence", Makoto is an intelligence officer of the Russian service of the Japanese Army General Staff. Fluent in Russian and German and trusted by the spies of many countries because of his integrity, his office would eventually become the most important Japanese intelligence post in Europe. From the day of her arrival in Stockholm, Yuriko helps her husband's intelligence activities. She encrypts the highly classified information obtained by Makoto and sends it in coded telegrams to the General Staff Headquarters in Japan every day. Husband and wife have jointly undertaken this intelligence work for confidentiality.

Second Virginity

45-year-old Rui Nakamura is a highly successful publisher. During the course of work, she encounters a 28-year-old married man named Kou Suzuki who aggressively pursues her. Unexpectedly, Rui Nakamura starts to fall in love with the younger married man Set 5 years after the ending of the NHK drama series “Second Virgin,” Rui Nakamura is transferred to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia while still taking care of Marie Suzuki.