When 54 high school girls throw themselves in front of a subway train it appears to be only the beginning of a string of suicides around the country. Does the new all-girl group Desert have anything to do with it? Detective Kuroda tries to find the answer, which isn’t as simple as he had hoped.

Ninko is a virtuous Buddhist monk who’s embarrassed to discover that he’s irresistible to many women (and some men). After a particularly troubling encounter with a masked woman, he undertakes a journey to “purify” himself, hoping that this will equip him to rebuff sexual advances. He meets the samurai Kanzo and hears of a village decimated by the rapacious mountain goddess Yama-onna, who kills men to absorb their energy. Finally Ninko has a quest to fulfill…