From infancy, she has been trained as though she were the son and heir of the house of Sanematsu. Now, the time has come for Sanematsu Yoshikane to face the test that will declare her samurai—or send her into humiliation and defeat.

But that is just the first test. Once she has passed it, she must confront both the responsibility her position imposes and the fact that, having lived all her 16 years in a monastery, she is ignorant of much of the real life the Japanese people.

To correct that, she decides to undertake a pilgrimage, one that will not only awaken her understanding of her people but make her painfully aware of what it means to be a woman in Nihon.