One year after the first film, Zatōichi travels back to the town near the Joshoji Temple, to pay respects at the grave of Hirate, the samurai he killed.

The attack having failed, the lord's men hire local yakuza (gangsters) to finish the job.

One of them, Setsu, grows very fond of Zatōichi very quickly, asking him to spend the night with her, and saying that her own father was blind and yet married three women.

While Zatōichi sits in a back room the one-armed swordsman, Yoshiro, and his companion enter the same restaurant.

Zatōichi says that he too loved a woman named Chiyo but that she, upon discovering he was blind, left him for the man she hated most in the world.

On his own way to the temple, Zatōichi stops by the stream where he once fished with Hirate (in the previous film), and laments the loss of the only man he could call friend.

He also regrets his failure to understand Otane's desire to marry him (also in the previous film), and recalls his love for Chiyo, who was stolen from him by his brother: Yoshiro.

The casting of Tomisaburo Wakayama—lead actor Shintaro Katsu's older brother—in the role of Yoshirō, the one-armed swordsman, lends the film more interest.

He notes that this film has the first large-scale battle in the series, with Zatōichi taking on fifty to sixty opponents at once.