Akitaro Orizuru, who set out on a journey to avenge his father's death in the darkness, returned to Itako, his hometown, where the Ayame Festival was approaching, for the first time in five years. His late father's brother, Sutezo, who took off his waraji, runs a small prostitute with only one child, Sutematsu. In addition, only Shigezaburo, who left a mark in the middle wind, was ill-mannered by Inomatsu. Akitaro was accompanied by a daughter named Omitsu on the way to here, but she was Ura's younger sister who works at Fujikura's house, and the villagers worked on the fifty cars to meet her critically ill father.

Period film about a feudal era judge living in Edo

Film adaption by Kenji Misumi

Aboard a ship connecting Kyoto and Osaka, Osan was pickpocketed by a sham blind biwa player. A man who looked like a merchant retrieved the wallet for her. Osan was a woman being sold off for the sake of her yakuza-like brother, Nin'kichi. The man in the guise of a merchant turned out to be the Rat Thief, Jirokichi, the infamous thief of Edo. Due to this chance encounter, the two ended up staying at the same hot spring inn. However, one morning, as Jirokichi was about to leave alone, Osan, with the intuition of a smitten woman, confessed she knew he was the famed Rat Thief.

A young boy named Chomatsu (Misora Hibari) lives with an old man Denbei near the grounds of Asakusa temple as bell ringers. In their house is an Echigo lion mask, a memento of Chomatsu's deceased father. After several incidents of Echigo lion masks being destroyed in the area, a local kingpin Saheiji shows up at Denbei's demanded he hand over the mask, a request Denbei rejects out of pity for Chomatsu. However, after it is accidentally revealed that the mask contains an important map, Saheiji plots to steal the mask. Chomatsu gets involved after his mother makes a sudden reappearance that sends the boy on a roundabout journey that will reveal the truth about his family.

The time was the first year of Keio (1865). Upon hearing the news that the Imperial Army was approaching Hida Takayama, the district head Shimizu Uzen fled to Edo. Local officials like Yoshida Bunsuke and Yoshizumi Hironoshin showed their allegiance by welcoming them. The commander at the time, Umemura Hayami, was a former member of the Tengu Party and had previously been pursued in the town. He took refuge in a restaurant named Kabuya, and owing to a tip-off from a woman named Oraku, he was almost captured for her lover, Yoshizumi. Oraku and Yoshizumi probably feared revenge from that previous encounter, but Umemura had come back to Hida because he couldn't forget Oraku.

Around the Genroku era, there was a man named Saotome Shusui-no-Suke, nephew to the senior councilor Matsudaira Sakon Shogen. He was commonly known as the Bored Samurai of the Hatamoto rank. Just as he was engulfed in boredom, Tokugawa Jo-Kaibo, claiming to be the Shogun's illegitimate child, made a grand entrance into Edo. At the behest of Sakon Shogen, Shusui-no-Suke was tasked to investigate Jo-Kaibo's background and had his young page Kyoya disguise as a woman to infiltrate Jo-Kaibo's gun mansion.

The phantom thief, known as the "Actor Kid", who was creating a stir in the Daimyo's mansion, especially in the inner chambers, was called Inaba Goutaro. He was the adopted son of a samurai, Inaba Buemon. An incident occurred where his foster father collided with the palanquin of the lord's concubine. In the subsequent altercation, Goutaro killed one of the attendants. Taking responsibility for the act, his foster father committed seppuku, and Goutaro was hunted down. Facing death, his foster father revealed to Goutaro that after the death of his biological father, Goutaro's real mother and his younger brother were forcibly made to serve a lord. This revelation ignited Goutaro's determination to infiltrate the Daimyo's mansion to meet his birth mother.

In 1842, in the Umemoku Mansion within Hikone Castle, Naosuke Ii, despite the tumultuous times, was engrossed in the world of tea ceremony. His friend, the Kokugaku scholar Nagano Shuzen, introduced him to a captivating shamisen master named Murayama Taka. Naosuke became deeply infatuated with her, disregarding the jealousy of his consort Shizu and the warnings of his senior retainer, Gaiji. However, upon discovering Taka's relationship with Shuzen, Naosuke promptly ended his ties with her.

On March 11 in the seventh year of Tenpo (1836), a monk named Bennō, who fell in love with a geisha named Oshima, was publicly exposed at Nihonbashi for committing an illicit act with a woman. While this was happening, an extravagant procession led by another monk named Nikkei passed over the bridge. Nikkei, the head of the Kanouin temple, in collusion with Nakano Harima-no-Kami, had schemed to make his younger sister, Miyoshi, the Shogun's mistress and aimed to transform Kanouin into the Shogun's family temple. To fund the renovations, Nikkei accepted bribes from a corrupt merchant named Koya Bunzo.