A Chaos of Flowers

Set in the Taisho era which might be regarded as Japans Hippie Phase Hana no ran is a story about fashionable people without impulse control Much of the action centers on a popular woman writer the reallife poet Akiko Yosano and her experiences among the literati of early 20th century Japan Because of her independent antiwar and often erotic poetry she was a lightning rod for revolutionaries and other extremists many of whom were destined to glamorous yet ultimately pointless deaths The closest parallels might be the ByronShelley group or the people drawn to the Beat Generation