The narrator follows traces of Yoshino Dayu, a courtesan said to have lived in Shinano-Oiwake, through graves, temple records, local memory, and documents. Blending fiction, essay, and criticism, the novel turns the act of searching itself into a digressive, proliferating narrative.

A search for Yoshino Dayu becomes a labyrinth of documents, places, and remembered traces.

A collection centered on the title story, in which a narrator visiting a village in northeastern Japan is drawn into strange customs involving villagers who borrow folding screens, an armless Buddhist figure, and dolls. It renders local folklore, views of life and death, and inherited karma as a quiet but unsettling current beneath the prose.

Through the strange custom surrounding an armless Buddhist figure and dolls, the darkness of life hidden in a northeastern village rises to the surface.