To the Spring Equinox and Beyond, Volume 1

A young graduate seeks employment and adventure in Meiji Tokyo, encouraged by a fellow lodger’s strange tales and a fortune-teller’s prediction.

A businessman’s surveillance errand brings him to a streetcar stop, where his imagination repeatedly outruns what he actually knows.

Volume 1 includes the author’s preface and every paragraph of the supplied opening slice. The novel continues in Volume 2.