Ama Chi Amanohito, a strikingly handsome young man from Iwate, moves to Tokyo and begins writing poetry for people on the streets. He joins the literary coterie magazine Hametsuha, where his growing commitment to its eccentric members is complicated by his feelings for the leader's partner and the group's worsening financial strain.

A coming-of-age novel set around a real online literary magazine, tracing creative fervor and tangled relationships.

This work of literary criticism moves beyond the image of Kenji Miyazawa as an absolute pacifist to examine the violence within his writing and its self-destructive ethics. Tracing questions of modern literature and criticism, it seeks a mode of thought that leads violence toward a horizon of nonviolence.

How did the violence latent in a poet of absolute peace reach a horizon of nonviolence?