On Earth - Those Who Lurk Beneath, Volume 2

Ōkawa Heiichirō dreams of becoming a statesman who can free people from poverty and suffering. His family’s hidden history reveals the human cost of power, while his own first love faces pressures he cannot overcome.

Among a circle of young writers, artists, and thwarted lovers, he finds friendship and passionate debate about life, death, and the possibility of freedom. Their despair both draws him in and challenges his determination to build a different future.

An offer of education takes him from Kanazawa to Tokyo. But the patron who makes his studies possible demands service and surrounds him with secrets. In this concluding volume of Those Who Lurk Beneath, Heiichirō must confront the contradictions between his ideals and his own circumstances. First published in 1919, Shimada Seijirō’s On Earth combines expansive emotional prose with an uncompromising examination of social power.