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From the author of the highly acclaimed Tokyo Year Zero and Occupied City a new novel about a high-profile crime that occurs in Tokyo during the American occupation and goes cold, haunting the lives of both American and Japanese investigators for the next forty years.

Tokyo, 1949: the president of the Japanese National Railways goes missing after announcing 30,000 layoffs. In the midst of the U.S. occupation, against the backdrop of widespread social and economic reforms, American Detective Harry Sweeney – fighting against his own disillusion – leads the investigation. Fifteen years later, as Tokyo prepares for the 1964 Olympics. Private investigator Hideki Murota, a policeman during the occupation, is given a case that forces him to go back to confront a time and a crime he’s been hiding from for the past fifteen years. Twenty years later, as the Emperor Showa is dying, Donald Reichenbach, an aging American, eking out a living in Japan teaching discovers that the final reckoning of the greatest mystery of the Showa Era is up to him to solve.