One murky night, Soetsu, a blind acupuncturist and money lender, calls on Shinzaemon Fukami, a Hatamoto samurai, to collect some money. But Fukami is too busy having an affair with a maid and curtly tells Soetsu to ask Sawano, his wife, for the money. As they have no money, Sawano interprets her husband's words as telling her to give herself to Soetsu in lieu of payment. However, Fukami catches them in the act and kills them both. Snatching up Soetsu's money bag with 30 ryo in it, he then asks two ruffians, to sink the bodies in a marsh. From what follows, it seems as if the spirits of Soetsu and Sawano are still hovering on earth in anguish and anger. For soon afterwards, Fukami is found dead by his own hand and Osono, Soetsu's younger daughter, suddenly disappears from home.

The second Bounty Hunter film, when master killer Shikoro Ichibei takes up the cause of a group of farmers being driven to despair by the vile Lord Ozeki. The villainous lord has driven them to mounting their last stand at a deserted fort against an army of attackers. Wakayama Tomisaburo is superb as an expert in killing and military tactics, who leaves his medical practice at a clinic for the poor in order to counter the vicious tactics of that vile lord.