? Useless in an era of hard-won peace, samurai, thrown onto the streets from military houses dispersed by the government, survive as best they can. Grouping into gangs, they fight with the city's shadow businessmen for daily food. Secretly hired, they kill each other in a secret civil war driven into narrow the alleys of the capital, hoping to save, if not life or preserve honor, then at least preserve memories of themselves. Abandoned, betrayed, alone on the path between murder and suicide, they are looking for a use for themselves, fighting for the meaning of existence every day on the indifferent streets of a huge city. Loyalty and betrayal, debts of honor and just debts, right, wrong and inevitable choices, clans and ronin, conspiracies, investigations and interrogations, bandits and actors, merchants and dice players, monks and courtesans, flowers of Edo and flowers of the Musashi Valley, rains and heat, untouchables and non-humans and many, many strange and amazing things.