[1][2] In a short prologue, a hunter armed with a double-barreled gun, accompanied only by his dog, walks through a snowy landscape, while a narrator describes his appearance.
Instead of destroying it as told, Shoko reads her mother's diary, shocked about its content, lamenting the "sad and terrible world of adults".
These letters take up the major part of the book, with each woman describing the events from a different perspective, a technique similar to Akira Kurosawa's 1950 film Rashomon.
[5] While staying mostly close to the original story, Gosho and his scenarist Toshio Yasumi transferred the events, taking place between the mid 1930s and late 1940s in the book, completely into the post-war era for the film.
Hunting Rifle was screened at the Museum of Modern Art in 2022 as part of its "Beyond Ozu: Hidden Gems of Shochiku Studios" retrospective.