"Begins in New York in the 1960s, where we meet Taro, a relentlessly ambitious Japanese immigrant trying to make his fortune. Flashbacks and multilayered stories reveal his life: an impoverished upbringing as an orphan, his eventual rise to wealth and success--despite racial and class prejudice--and an obsession with a girl from an affluent family that has haunted him all his life. [The book] then widens into an examination of Japans westernization and the emergence of a middle class"--Amazon.com.