This item has been stored at home. The contents are in like-new, excellent condition, but it is old and the cover shows signs of aging. There are about four very faint lines, like from a cutter, on the upper part of the back cover. Please consider this if you are interested. In the 1950s in Japan, Osaka's Ikano district—a densely populated area for Korean residents—was also a place where gangs and yakuza organizations thrived. The "Meiyukai," said to have had over a thousand members at the time, was a Korean gang born in Ikano. However, the Meiyukai was defeated and destroyed in a conflict with the Yamaguchi-gumi in 1960. Masao and his friends in their teens, living in a three-block longhouse, are tossed about and influenced by the strong atmosphere of the times and the area, and eventually go their separate ways. A masterpiece of Showa nostalgia non-fiction! Prologue Summer, 1958 The Sanada-yama Incident A Group of Rowdy Boys Masao and the Gang's Town The Destruction of the Meiyukai Epilogue Afterword for the paperback edition: A Forgotten Thing from Fifty Years Ago From Reviews: A Korean/Korean-Japanese version of STAND BY ME! I didn't expect much before reading it, but as I read on, I was drawn into the content and finished it in no time. Doesn't everyone have a childhood like this in their heart? I kept confirming, "This is a story about elementary school students." The characters were doing things that are unimaginable now, and I felt the changes of the times, thinking, "I haven't seen such bad kids lately." Set in the post-war Osaka Ikano district (Tsuruhashi), this is a coming-of-age story of boys wavering between Korean and Japanese identities. For some reason, reading this book reminds me of when I was bullied. It was this underground scene in Osaka that warmly welcomed me when I transferred from Nagoya. Nowadays, the Tsuruhashi town has nothing left of its former appearance except for the shopping streets, and it's a beautiful place. But they definitely existed... It was such an interesting book that I was reluctant to finish it after a long time. A Stand by Me of the boys in the Korean settlement of Osaka's Ikano district in the 1950s. The author and the children are poor and have bad behavior. A classmate suddenly disappeared on the first ship of the repatriation project to North Korea, and they saw their older brother figure, who took them to Koshien and movies, brutally murdered in a conflict between the Korean gang and the Yamaguchi-gumi. The post-war period of change is the setting, so the interest never ceases. And the bitterness of the boys' lives revealed in the epilogue.