Drive, Die, Repeat: Chaos, Castles, and OnnaMusha

by Sumiko Nakano

What do you get when two Japanese warrior women armed with snacks, sarcasm, and ancestral trauma set off across Scotland in a beat-up car?

Disaster. Laughter. And maybe spiritual enlightenment—if they survive the sheep.

Drive, Die, Repeat is not a travel guide. It’s a full-throttle, side-splitting, emotionally unhinged diary of a road trip that was never meant to be a book. From cursed battlefields to haunted cairns, from burger-fuelled prophecies to historic blunders and sheep-based warfare, this is the chronicle of two chaos gremlins leaving a trail of confusion, haggis, and existential crises across the UK.

Meet martial artist, silent storm, and the designated driver of doom.
Meet her loud cousin, spiritual raccoon, and snack hoarder with god-complex energy.
Together, they are what happens when Onna Musha collide with British heritage sites and forget the meaning of “appropriate behaviour.”

Seven days.
One war wagon.
Zero chill.

If you like samurai metaphors, unhinged road trips, cursed GPS directions, and witnessing the emotional breakdown of Scotland in real time—welcome. You’ve found your clan.

226 pages, Hardcover

Published June 14, 2025

About the author

Sumiko Nakano writes books for readers who prefer history with mud on its boots. Her work centres on nineteenth-century Japan, particularly the Boshin War, Aizu, samurai society and the women whom conventional histories too often pushed to the edges.

The Daughters of Wars series follows sisters caught in a country tearing itself apart, combining historical detail with brutal, character-driven stories about loyalty, family, vengeance and survival. The series includes The Birth of Steel and Vengeance, The Broken Oath and The Lost Banner, alongside a mature black-and-white manga adaptation.

Her wider historical work approaches the past from different directions. The Jōshitai: Unsung Heroines of the Boshin War examines the women of Aizu. Rot Beneath the Blossoms challenges comfortable ideas about samurai mythology, propaganda and national memory, while See Then Stand: Nakano Takeko returns to one of the Boshin War’s most compelling figures through a dual-voiced historical narrative.

Not every book remains on the battlefield. Oku-Iya, or There and Back Again ventures into Japan’s remote valleys. Drive, Die, Repeat: Chaos, Castles, and OnnaMusha turns Scotland into a journey of castles, confusion and questionable decisions. SHUT UP & EAT: From Sumo Stew to Spotted Dick brings cultural memory, comfort food and a certain amount of chaos into the kitchen.

The shelves may look varied, but the instinct behind them remains the same: dig beneath the tidy version, find the human story and write it with enough force that the past refuses to sit quietly.