Taking place during the height of the giddy "bubble" years of Japan's economic prosperity,
Tokyo Vanilla is an atmospheric novel of sexual repression and the price it demands. College student Fumio awakens to his own sexual nature in a traditional society where homosexuality is still seen as best hidden away.
Introduced by his straight fellow-student Tatsuya to the "host clubs" where good money is to be made, he is torn between his unrequited passion for his schoolfriend and the comfortable life of a kept boy he is offered by a rich professor. When the professor proposes that Fumio marry his daughter, the web of deceit grows steadily more complex.
