Stephen is the novel’s protagonist and the author of his own journey in first-person journal form. He is a good-looking 20-year-old Chinese painter, writer, and student who, at the urging of his upper-middle-class parents, leaves school in Canton to spend a year recuperating from an undisclosed illness at his family’s beach house in Tarumi, Japan.

When we meet Stephen, he has been ill for a long while and feels isolated by his recuperation. His complaints are those of a young man – not narcissistic, but a bit self-involved: he misses his school friends and is weary of time in bed. His sense of isolation deepens in Tarumi, becoming one both personal and cultural as the Second Sino-Japanese War escalates. He comes to see that there is far worse suffering than his own as he gets to know Matsu and Sachi and their stories of leprosy, loss, suicide, service, and transcendence.

Stephen starts out being a recorder of experience but moves into full participation in life as the novel continues. From falling in love to rescuing the village of Yamaguchi from fire, he begins not only to heal, but also truly to live in his own body and mind.