The Emperor is dying ... and needs his secret to die with him. The time is the late 1980s. The setting is contemporary Japan and its colonies. A devastating earthquake has decimated the Japanese heartland, threatening to to shake out secrets the Empire would rather leave under mossy rocks or flooded rice paddies. While writing a story on shoddy construction practices linked to political corruption that magnified the earthquake destruction, journalist Shinzo Tokugawa rescues a group of Korean construction laborers from the aftermath. In the course of publishing his story and protecting his source, Shinzo learns something that threatens the very legitimacy of the Japanese Emperor and the vast extended Empire he rules over. With the help of a couple of Japanese twin sisters, the husband of the American Ambassador to Japan, the Korean labourers he rescued, and the Japanese mafia, Shinzo battles the assembled forces of the Japanese socio-political elite. These include not only the presumptive Prime Minister-to-be Minoru Sasagawa, but also the country’s version of the Gestapo, or Kempetai ; the dogged Inspector Asano of the Special Higher Police, or Tokkō; and the combined naval, air and land forces of the world’s pre-eminent military power.