This book consists of a novel titled "the Tale of the Sun," a hot ball entangled with ghosts, reincarnation, and Minamoto no Yoritomo, and essays. While covering some parts of Japan's history, the novel offers interesting connections between its characters, which run from the far past. Meanwhile, each of the essays has unique contents, dealing with various sorts of topics as a whole. Amongst them, there also are 14 essays I originally wrote in 2008...