Russo-Japanese War veteran Saichi Sugimoto searches Hokkaido for hidden Ainu gold with the help of a girl named Asirpa. Other soldiers and criminals are pursuing the same treasure. Their journey combines surviving the country with finding clues that are dangerous to possess.
The map to the gold is encoded in tattoos carried by escaped prisoners. Sugimoto and Asirpa therefore have to find people as well as interpret information, while rivals seek the same clues. Their partnership begins with different connections to a treasure that has already cost lives.
The gold itself appears as a heavy, glittering mound, a material prize behind all the coded information. It promises something immediate to people whose lives have been shaped by war and dispossession. Reaching it, however, requires following a map distributed across other people’s bodies, making the search far less simple than digging in the right place.
