In 1890 Japan, Toyo attends an elite boys' boarding school, where he learns how to play the new sport of baseball that was brought over by Europeans. He is also taking "bushido" or samurai lessons from his father, and both bushido and baseball have a lot in common, though his father refuses to accept the newfangled sport. The book is set during the time when the old ways of Japan, the samurai code, are being set aside for new modern things like streetcars and baseball, and Toyo's father refuses to stop being a samurai even when the emperor bans it. As a result, he plans to commit ritual suicide--and wants his son to do it for him, to chop off his head! This is a great book, for the history and the action, the baseball and the suspense.