The Great Bodhisattva Pass, Volume 5: Ryūjin

The Tenchūgumi uprising has failed. Eleven fugitives retreat through the mountains, exhausted and hungry, until a hunter’s hut promises food and shelter. What follows sends Tsukue Ryūnosuke into a deeper darkness, while Utsuki Hyōma pursues the man he holds responsible for his brother’s death.

Their paths lead to Ryūjin, a remote hot-spring village where Otoyo has begun an uneasy new life. A narrow cloud across the sky is known as Kiyohime’s sash, an omen linked to the jealousy of a legendary woman transformed into a serpent. When longing, suspicion, and religious fear converge, the village faces a disaster that no ordinary effort seems able to contain.

Nakazato Kaizan’s sprawling historical epic gives its fifth installment a concentrated atmosphere of pursuit and uncanny expectation. A dream of a lost child, a meeting beside a purification waterfall, and a body discovered in a swollen river expose forms of blindness beyond the physical. This complete new English translation preserves all twelve sections, the changing perspectives, and the unresolved movement toward the next encounter.