The hero of the novel is Japanese Macao, who lost his parents at the age of three and became a rented child. The search for an already adult son, at the request of his mother, is led by the beautiful, intelligent Maiko. Following her, the reader ends up in New York, then in Tokyo, where a series of unusually bright characters passes before him: a capricious widow and a mad writer, a philosophizing homeless man, a descendant of the noble Taira family, and a gay man - a comforter of the sad, an unbridled rock musician, spouses renting out other people's children and, finally, the Lord of Dreams himself with his double.