TRANSLATION: The Funaji Scroll

The first English publication of the fourth volume of Naruto Hichō

Apr 20, 2026

As the fifth release in our weekly translation schedule, we have completed the official English translation THE SECRET SCROLLS OF NARUTO: The Funaji Scroll, by Yoshikawa Eiji, who is best-known in the West as the author of MUSASHI. The ebook has already been sent out to the paid subscribers. THE FUNAJI SCROLL is now available on Amazon Kindle, KU, and audiobook.

SAMURAI SWORDS AT SEA

The fourth book of The Secret Scrolls of Naruto brings the pursuit at last to the seas of Japan. What was sworn on a hilltop in Osaka at the close of the first volume, Norizuki Gennojō’s vow to cross the Kitan Strait and follow the lord of Awa’s great ship home, becomes the central action of the fourth volume of the series. From the dockside battle of The Kamigata Scroll, through the urban underground of The Edo Scroll and the mountain passes of The Kiso Scroll, the whole of Yoshikawa’s great adventure has been building toward the all-important crossing into the sealed domain on Shikoku.

In Osaka, Gennojō and the woman he has vowed to see safely to Awa scheme their way aboard a merchant vessel bound for the forbidden domain. In Tokushima Castle, the lord of Awa paces his watchtower on the verge of collapse, his nerves worn raw by the weight of a conspiracy against the shogunate that cannot afford to be exposed. And between them, the three villains of the preceding volumes — Ojūya Magobei, Tendō Ikkaku, and Tabikawa Shūma — close at last on the quarry they have hunted from the canals of Osaka to the mountains of Shinano. Parallel threads of love and betrayal converge on a single ship, and when a sudden storm breaks over the Kitan Strait, the long pursuit comes to a reckoning that neither hunter nor hunted could ever have foreseen.

The Funaji Scroll is the fourth book in the first English translation of Yoshikawa Eiji’s Naruto Hichō, the century-old serial that made him the most widely read author in Japanese history. Translated in literary prose that reads as though it were originally composed in English, it continues the definitive English edition of the novel that created the modern Japanese adventure genre.