A romance novel about a man who spends his postwar youth in Yokohama gambling at stud poker, moves to Kobe to run a bar with a deserter from the U.S. military, and encounters the mysterious Chinese woman Li Lan.

Against the backdrop of postwar port cities, a wayward youth and an exotic love become intertwined in memory.

An early short work that marked Takashi Kitajima's move from copywriter and commercial director to novelist. Its cocktail-inflected title hints at the light, urban, cinematic sensibility that would later characterize his fiction.

An award-winning work with an urbane title, placed at the starting point of Takashi Kitajima's career as a novelist.