イクサガミ (天)
Author:
Summary
Japanese
金か、命か、誇りか。
刀を握る理由は、何だ。
明治11年。深夜の京都、天龍寺。
「武技ニ優レタル者」に「金十万円ヲ得ル機会」を与えるとの怪文書によって、
腕に覚えがある292人が集められた。
告げられたのは、〈こどく〉という名の「遊び」の開始と、七つの奇妙な掟。
点数を集めながら、東海道を辿って東京を目指せという。
各自に配られた木札は、1枚につき1点を意味する。点数を稼ぐ手段は、ただ一つ――。
「奪い合うのです！ その手段は問いません！」
剣客・嵯峨愁二郎は、命懸けの戦いに巻き込まれた12歳の少女・双葉を守りながら道を進むも、
強敵たちが立ちはだかる――。
English (ChatGPT)
Gold, life, or pride.
For what reason do you grip the sword?
Meiji 11 (1878).
Late at night in Kyoto, at Tenryū-ji Temple.
A mysterious notice promised “an opportunity to obtain 100,000 yen” to those “skilled in martial arts.”
In response, 292 warriors confident in their abilities gathered.
They were informed of the start of a “game” called Kudoku, along with seven strange rules.
The objective: collect points and make your way along the Tōkaidō Road toward Tokyo.
Each participant was given wooden tags, each worth one point.
There was only one way to earn points—
“Take them from one another! The method does not matter!”
Swordsman Saga Shūjirō advances through this deadly contest while protecting Futaba, a 12-year-old girl drawn into the life-and-death struggle.
But formidable enemies stand in their path…
Length: 336 pages
Category: fast
Natively link: イクサガミ 天 | L32??
Availability
Amazon.co.jp
Amazon.co.jp eBook
Bookwalker
Audible
Personal Opinion
It’s often described as battle royal game in a historical setting with samurais. It recently popped off and concluded, and I often hear people quite liked the book. I’m intrigued enough that I definitely want to read the first book, at least. Apparently, the first book might work halfway decent as its own, non-concluded story. There are 3 more books in the series, which we can continue in an offshoot if people like the first book.
There’s a Netflix adaptation which apparently has roughly the same setup but is mostly independent of the details of the books.
Pros and Cons for the Book Club
Pros
- Sounds like a lot of fun action with samurais
- Different genre than the typical thrillers
- There’s a drama adaptation people can watch
- Audiobook avialable
Cons
- Series of 4 books which we would only read the first of
- Prose might not be of the highest quality
Pictures
Was not sure whether to nominate it here or in the intermediate club. Would prefer the faster pace of the advance club. It is close to the upper limit of the intermediate club + the Mejii setting, why I ultimately decided to post it here.
I think it’s a good call to post it here. I really try to keep the IBC nominations below 300 pages (which is not always possible, I know). An action-focused book will also benefit from the faster reading pace. Thanks for the nomination!
In case anyone in the ABC is interested, there are a couple of us going to start reading another short story collection by 小川洋子 over at Natively.
(We’ve just finished 密やかな結晶)
寡黙な死骸みだらな弔い is a collection of short stories that, by the sounds of things, are eerie and unsettling. We’ll probably read a story a week or so. Do join in - I might be biased (OK I am), but 小川洋子 is always fascinating and thought-provoking as a writer…
I had originally planned to post this poll almost a week earlier - sorry everybody! Finally, here is
Our Next Poll!!
Have a look at the List of Proposed Books section in the first post for details on each book. If you are interested, you can have a look at the books’ Natively levels through this list. The Natively level is also annotated in the poll in square brackets after each book’s name.
Do not rely solely on the levels when making a choice. Please have a look at the nomination posts and text samples if you haven’t already.
Expected reading pace: The proposals fall into two categories, Fast and Hard. We aim to read fast books at 30-50 pages per week and hard books at ~15 pages per week (that number might vary a bit throughout, depending on the book’s breaks and chapters). For manga, depending on difficulty and chapter length, we will probably read one to several chapters per week. The pick’s exact reading schedule will be negotiated before the book club kicks off.
Start of Book Club: We will start the next book on May 30th (after a one-week break).
Poll duration: The poll will be closed on 2026-04-26T21:00:00Z. You can choose up to 5 options.
- クォンタムデビルサーガ アバタールチューナーⅠ 五代ゆう [Fast / 372p. / L31 / Novel]
- 村上海賊の娘 和田 竜 [Fast / 343p. / L41 / Novel]
- さわらびの譜 葉室 麟 [Fast / 326p. / L35?? / Novel]
- 風が強く吹いている 三浦 しをん [Fast / 672p. / L33 / Novel]
- 占星術殺人事件 島田 荘司 [Fast / 544p. / L39?? / Novel]
- まちカドまぞく 1 伊藤 いづも [Fast / 120p. / L35 / Manga]
- 魔性の子 十二国記 0 小野 不由美 [Fast / 491p. / L34 / Novel /
] - 天空への回廊 笹本 稜平 [Fast / 662p. / L30?? / Novel]
- イクサガミ (天) 今村翔吾 [Fast / 266p. / L33?? / Novel]
- コインロッカーベイビーズ 村上 龍 [Hard / 576p. / L42 / Novel]
- 女坂 円地文子 [Hard / 226p. / L50?? / Novel / ]
I see all my choices are currently tied for first place 
I do actually have a preference order between them so maybe I’ll unvote one or two later in the week…
Does anybody have the necessary access to update the thread title?
I am now the owner of the thread - but still forgot to update it 
Also, I just realized I forgot to vote for one of the books - which might solve your problem 
The poll has spoken, and the winner is:
イクサガミ (天)
Congrats @downtimes to the instant win! 
Would you like to run the book club for it? The club will start on May 30th.
Sadly we have to say goodbye to クォンタムデビルサーガ アバタールチューナーⅠ as it scored less than 10% in three subsequent polls.
Which is to say, if you have interesting nominations for the Advanced Book Club, now is the time! Please feel free to nominate to your heart’s content 
Ohh what a surprise. I didn’t expect my pick to get an instant win. The amount of votes was still pretty low though..
It seems I can’t get away from book clubs.
I hope the pick is an excitng read with a decent stopping point and not a bad cliffhanger.
Sure I’d love to run the club. I probably need until next weekend to set up the home thread.
Great! And no rush. It only starts in a month. We would probably want to have a quick discussion about the schedule, but there’s still plenty of time.
Yeah, I’ve been thinking that too. My nomination won in the IMC with seven votes out of twenty-four total voters, or just under thirty percent. And don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining about winning, it’s just that I’m now running a book reading with fewer people than will fill a Toyota Tarago while the rest of the club wait for the next vote.
The “will you be reading” in the actual book thread got six yesses and seven dunnos.
I am observing this for quite some time now. When we started the Advanced club almost 6 years ago, we had 27 voters in the first poll, and now we’re down to 12 (even 11 in the one before that), so less than half. The Intermediate club was at ~40 voters back when, and is now down to 17. So either we need more entertainment in the club thread (which admittedly I’m the wrong person to do, if that’s the requirement) or general-purpose book clubs are not that interesting any more (people can now read what they want with ChatGPT on their side, I guess) or people are just generally so invested in special-purpose book clubs (either for a series or for a narrow topic they are interested in) that they don’t have the time to check out the general clubs (where it’s not very clear whether they will like the book after all) ? 
I’m also seeing less and less (language) questions being asked even in the Intermediate club (don’t know about the Beginner club though) so my ChatGPT theory is somewhat supported by this as well.
So, what’s the verdict? Are these kinds of book clubs a thing of the past?
Same thing happening in the IMC, way less people voting and even less people participating 
Maybe a book club overload? We have started so many book clubs, can’t keep piling them up. Though you’d think it should be balanced by new people showing up, why that is not happening, I don’t know. Maybe the reasons you pointed out!
Maybe less people are learning Japanese too, because with modern tools you need less and less to learn it? You can use Google Lens or similar tools if you are in Japan, you can use programs that display text in English on your computer if you play a game in Japanese nowadays, etc..
I think the ABBC and BBC are still doing fine though?
My guess is that there are so many clubs that people are spread out and can’t participate in them all. Also, people won’t want to read every pick anyways.
I don’t spend much time outside the book club section these days. Does anyone have an idea of how the WK forums are doing in general?
I think it’s interesting that the decline in voting in this club roughly corresponds with this change…
ah yeah, I forgot about that, yeah, that’s huge if the fire hose gets turned off
A lot of people in the past mentioned they lurked frequently before joining, and without a prompt to even lurk, then I can imagine losing that group of new forum members. Maybe now that the whole drama around software updates is over the mods would agree to promote the forum more… (I’m just assuming that’s why it got de-emphasised)
But I also suspect AI plays a big part as well
I know that I only made the jump to visiting the community, because I noticed that the threads names were changing (so it was active) and there were book clubs mentioned (so it was interesting). Don’t think I would have ever bothered visiting otherwise, probably would have thought that it’s only discussions about Wanikani specifically
たしかに 
I feel like we should make a request to staff to please consider bringing back recent thread feature.
Forum stats: 124 new sign-ups and 1500 active users the last week can’t be a lot of traffic. Not that I remember how it has been before, but it feels like a tiny number.
Edit: Found stats from 2018. Big decrease in traffic since back then. 4200 active users in a week.
