Characters

Taira no Masakado

The greatest hero of the Kanto region during the Heian period. He turned his blade against the central government and sought to make Kanto an independent nation, for which he was defeated and killed. Yet his entire life was devoted to the creation of a Kanto utopia. Even today, Masakado’s Head Mound remains amid the office buildings of Otemachi, having guarded the heart of Tokyo for a thousand years.

Sato Nobuhiro

A political economist, mining engineer, and military strategist of the late Edo period. In pursuit of a utopia, he proposed reclaiming all inland waters, beginning with Inba Marsh, a place associated with Masakado, and increasing their productivity. His Udai Kondo Hisaku (Secret Plan for Unifying the World) is an extraordinary and eccentric work. Borrowing the bizarre Japan-centered ideology of Shinto thinkers such as Hirata Atsutane, it laid out a blueprint for the conquest of the entire world. It is also said to contain the first use of the name “Tokyo.”

Terada Torahiko

One of Japan’s foremost polymaths and the leading disciple of Natsume Soseki. On the one hand, he unconsciously inherited the inconsolable grief of his father, who, through a chance occurrence near the end of the Edo period, had killed his own younger brother with his own hands. On the other, although a physicist, he maintained a boundless fascination with the supernatural and the uncanny. A vigorous young scholar who desperately strives to hold back the approaching destruction of Tokyo.

Shibusawa Eiichi

The preeminent businessman of Meiji-era Tokyo and a leader in the creation of a free-market economy. He was one of the shogunate envoys sent to the Paris Exposition and later helped establish Japan’s modern financial system, serving, among other roles, as president of the First National Bank. True to his Confucian principles, he maintained a policy of “speaking neither of prodigies, feats of strength, disorder, nor spirits.”

Oda Hiroyuki

Born into a wealthy farming family in Mikawa Province, he joined the imperial loyalist faction and associated with Katsura Kogoro and Takasugi Shinsaku. After the Restoration, he took charge of the Meiji government’s agricultural and land-reclamation projects, devoting particular effort to the flood-control works at Inba Marsh. He retired in Meiji 25 (1892) and founded the Hibun Association. Thereafter, he dedicated himself to the systematic presentation of the ideas of Ninomiya Sontoku and Sato Nobuhiro.

Koda Rohan

Born Koda Shigeyuki. One of the foremost scholars of Eastern mysticism in the Meiji period. Alongside such curious works as The Practitioner of Magic and On the Brain, his strangely fateful biographical study Taira no Masakado will surely be indispensable reading for readers of Teito Monogatari. He was also an ardent champion of Hakkenden. In addition, he wrote a lengthy proposal for the reconstruction of Tokyo titled The Capital of a Nation. In later years, he formed a close friendship with Terada Torahiko and even authored a biography of Shibusawa Eiichi.

Karl Haushofer

Born in Munich, he traveled as an army officer through India, East Asia, and Siberia in 1887. Beginning in 1909, he also spent approximately two years in Japan. While in Japan, he is said to have joined a society known as the “Green Dragon.” He elevated geopolitics (Geopolitik) into a science of warfare and became a shadow strategist who helped shape the mystical ideology of early Nazism. In later years, he served successively as a professor and president of the University of Munich. After Germany’s defeat, he died by ritual disembowelment.

Morita Masatake

A psychiatrist and clinician of modern Japan. Born in Kochi, where Terada Torahiko spent his childhood, he studied spiritual phenomena such as possession by inugami. He later established the innovative method of treating mental illness known as Morita therapy.

Mori Rintaro

Better known by his pen name, Ogai. One of the greatest literary figures of the Meiji period, he also left behind numerous accomplishments as an army surgeon. He pursued two paths at once, those of a high-ranking official and a man of letters, and was wounded by the strain between them. He was a close friend of Koda Rohan, and together with Saito Ryokuu, the two produced witty literary criticism under the title Idle Talk of Three Men.

Okouchi Masatoshi

A prodigy of the distinguished Okouchi family, an eminent house since the Edo period. At Tokyo Imperial University, he was acclaimed as a genius who surpassed even Terada Torahiko, with whom he also conducted experiments in physics. He became president of the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research, commonly known as Riken, the foremost center of applied scientific research established in Taisho 6 (1917). Renowned as a handsome and imposing man, he was also generous in character, as befitted a scion of so distinguished a family.

Abe no Seimei

The great onmyoji and Doctor of Astronomy of the Heian period. As the spiritual consultant of his age, he commanded immense trust among the imperial family, the nobility, and the common people. According to one tradition, he was the child of the fox of Shinoda. He became the founder of the Tsuchimikado house, the hereditary head of Japan’s state-sanctioned magical arts. Japan’s greatest white magician.

Tatsumiya Yoichiro

A young official of the Ministry of Finance. He participates in the plan to reconstruct the Imperial Capital and witnesses the torrent of history sweeping from the final years of Meiji into the Taisho period.

Tatsumiya Yukari

Yoichiro’s younger sister. She suffers from severe hysterical symptoms, or perhaps possesses a form of psychic ability, and is consequently drawn into a series of bizarre incidents. After falling mentally ill, she receives treatment from Dr. Morita Masatake. Yet the seeds of resentment and vengeance scattered throughout the Imperial Capital blossom ominously through her.

Narutaki Junichi

A Bachelor of Science. An old friend of Tatsumiya Yoichiro, he is enrolled in the College of Science at Tokyo Imperial University. He desperately attempts to rescue Tatsumiya Yukari after she becomes entangled in uncanny events, only to fall to a murderous blade.

Hirai Yasumasa

An aged onmyoji of the Tsuchimikado house. He exhausts every one of his secret arts in his struggle against his destined enemy, but upon the death of Emperor Meiji, he takes his own life by the sword. A warrior of the same name once served Minamoto no Yorimitsu, the great demon-slaying hero. By a strange coincidence, this Hirai encounters a Meiji-era version of the incident of the “Demon of Rashomon.”

Hong Feng

A woman belonging to the Korean secret society Cheondogyo.

Lin Jue

A young man belonging to the Chinese secret society known as the Triad.

Kato Yasunori

A second lieutenant in the army, later promoted to first lieutenant. He summons vengeful spirits to the Imperial Capital and practices kojutsu, the most feared secret art of lethal sorcery since ancient times. Versed in onmyodo and the art of qimen dunjia, he commands the invisible demonic spirits known as shikigami. What is his true purpose in abducting Tatsumiya Yukari? The fate of the Imperial Capital lies in the palm of this sinister figure.