The Kingdom of Wind
(Kaze no Okoku)

ENGLISH / Meredith McKinney

FRENCH / Jean-Marc Weiss

GERMAN / Isolde Asai

Shinchosha (1985)(hc)

(1987)(pb)

Taku had lost his parents when the mine, where they were working in, was hit by a typhoon.

Seven-year-old Taku was taken in by the Hayami family and grew up in a coastal region in Hokuriku. Having left Japan at the age of 18 and traveled around the world, 32-year-old Taku Hayami has become a travel writer. A publisher asked him to visit Mount Nijo near the ancient city of Nara, where he came across a group of people all wearing the same peculiar clothes, in happi coats, amongst whom he noticed a woman, "Tobu Onna"(Flying Woman), who was walking extraordinarily fast. Taku, who was intrigued by this "Flying Woman" and by the cultural atmosphere of the Nijo Mountain, later met the woman at a party hosted by Ikarino Sogyo, which was a huge company with 50 affiliated enterprises. This huge firm also had ties and connections with political circles, the media and with boryokudan (organized crime syndicates).Taku learned that the woman, whose name was Ai Katsuragi, was a daughter of Tenro Katsuragi, the leader of Tenmu Jin Shin Kou, a religious group, and a descendant of nomadic people who used to live in the Katsuragi mountain region in Nara. However, in the process of Japan's modernization and formation of the concept of "citizens of the nation", while some remained loyal to their traditional way of living, others some volunteered to be assimilated into the village life.

After his encounter with those people who had been seeking a nomadic way of life Taku gradually realized the secret of his own birth. Amid the intensifying conflict between Ikarino Sogyo, which was more and more spoiled and vulgarized by the world, and Tenro Katsuragi, who was adhering strictly to the rules of his group, Taku gained a whole new worldview. He started his journey looking ahead, where there is a true country, "Kaze no Okoku" (The Kingdom of Wind).