A young girl is being asked about a man with whom she was keeping company, as her grandmother plays a lament on a shamisen. Then the focus changes to a couple arriving from Tokyo - the woman returning to her home, the man an escapee from the yakuza. The man doesn't seem to mind when the woman sells her favours to tourists at the local bar, just as she seems to take his attentions to Yuki, a blind girl, with equanimity.

After the enactment of the Anti-Prostitution Law, the red-light district in Shinjuku lost its allure. Even the gambling den of the Ryūzaki family was always deserted. Ryūzaki, the boss, declared his retirement in response to the changing times. It was thought that Igarashi, who valued righteousness and principles and had the respect of others, would become the second-in-command. However, he was an annoying presence to Ryūzaki...

Among the tight-knit neighbours are a poet, his actress wife, a bachelor budding author, a tobacco shop owner-cum-landlady, an insurance salesman and his nosy and greedy wife. Enter a young and seemingly high-class couple who just so happens is open to purchasing life insurance from their swift neighbour. In the meantime, life is imitating art across the street, which may end up providing for either a happy ending or a rude split - eventually that is.

A tragic drama - a dismembered torso of a woman rises up on the banks of the Arakawa River. The body is only the torso. Her legs were discovered on the opposite bank. The only clue, a man was trying to throw something in from a car with a license plate number three days ago at Shin-Arakawa Ohashi Bridge...

A woman remarries after receiving official notification that her husband has died, but he returns.

A drama about relations between Japanese immigrants and the indigenous Ainu on Hokkaido, the most northerly island of Japan. From a novel by Taijun Takeda.