Postwar Japan is at its lowest point when a new crisis emerges in the form of a giant monster, baptized in the horrific power of the atomic bomb.

Japan, 1944. Trained for intelligence work, Hirō Onoda, 22 years old, discovers a philosophy contrary to the official line: no suicide; stay alive whatever happens; the mission is more important…

When three older men buy a 17-year-old schoolgirl named Chikako for a year’s-worth of sexual services — her motivation, aside from money, is never explained — the relationships among the…