Sawaki is released from prison after serving eight years for murdering a rival gang leader in order to obtain the land rights to a landfill for the Kotaki clan and he discovers that the world has changed significantly in that time.

Shimamura, a former executive of the Kotaki clan, has become the president of a construction company that built an oil complex on the landfill and now intends to build another one as soon as they clear the inhabitants off of land owned by Dr. Omachi.

[1][2][3] In his book Outlaw Masters of Japanese Film, author Chris D. writes that, with Ceremony of Disbanding, "Fukasaku continued to insert hot potato issues into his pictures.

"[5] In her book Rising Sun, Divided Land: Japanese and South Korean Filmmakers, author Kate Taylor-Jones notes that "Fukasaku's early films," including Kaisanshiki, "often focus on those residing in poor areas on the outskirts of the developing cities.

In Dissolution Ceremony (Kaisan-shiki 1967, directed by Kinji Fukasaku) on the night he gets out of prison he refuses the playmate his ritual brother offers him.