The Isle of South Kamui and Other Stories

Book excerpt: A young Tokyoite doctor accepts a post on a remote island south of Okinawa. When a highly contagious fatal disease breaks out, he has to choose between saving himself or saving others. A hormone-ridden teenage youth left alone with his young stepmother following his father’s death is consumed with jealousy as her affections turn to another man. A journalist in search of answers travels from the metropolis to a bleak shore on the Japan Sea and eventually the furthest extreme of ice-bound Hokkaido, as he investigates the suicide of a young man. In a backstreet of the metropolis, a wily old detective follows his hunches to nail the murderer of a young prostitute. A conflict arises between two detectives investigating the shocking suicide of a 6-year-old child, the son of a young actress famed for her immoral behavior. Can it really be suicide, or is it murder? In this early collection of five short stories, Kyotaro Nishimura explores the criminal mind and what makes people do the unthinkable.