On Earth - Those Who Lurk Beneath, Volume 1

Fifteen-year-old Ōkawa Heiichirō wants love, friendship, and a future worthy of his fierce confidence. His mother Omitsu wants only to keep him in school and help him grow into the man she believes he can become. But their savings are dwindling, and the work she can find is not enough.

A friendship with Fuyuko, a gifted geisha, offers them a new home at Shunpūrō, one of Kanazawa’s leading houses in the pleasure quarter. There, artistic brilliance and everyday kindness exist beside exploitation, cruelty, and suffering. Heiichirō’s romantic hopes and Omitsu’s quiet strength are drawn into a world where money and authority determine what freedom can mean.

This first volume of Shimada Seijirō’s On Earth moves from schoolboy rivalry and tender letters to a devastating portrait of the women of Shunpūrō. A powerful businessman’s arrival changes Fuyuko’s life and reawakens Omitsu’s long-buried family history. First published in 1919, the novel joins expansive emotional prose with an uncompromising examination of social power. The story continues in Volume 2.