Publisher's Synopsis
At the turn of the 20th century, thousands of poor Japanese girls were tricked or kidnapped by zegen - Japanese "impresarios". The girls were smuggled onto steamships and sent to Singapore, where they were sold for sex to a largely male population while the British authorities struggled to contain prostitution and disease. In 1906, a young magistrate in Nagasaki meets the son of a prostitute, who tells him an incredible story of human trafficking. The two men recruit Sparrow, an American woman boxer and stowaway, who had no money and was "basically game for anything". The three friends hide themselves on board the luxury steamship the Tobi Maru bound for Singapore in pursuit of the greatest zegen of all, the legendary Oguri.
