Seijiro and Shizue meet in Niigata and fall in love. Seijiro has to go back to Tokyo soon after, and they promise each other to meet again a year later. However, Seijiro gets jailed for five years. Unable to find him, Shizue gets married to a yakuza boss who can help her family business.
Koji Tsuruta
Tomisaburō Wakayama
Michiyo Yasuda
Michitarō Mizushima
Tsunehiko Watase
Tatsuo Endō
Shōtarō Hayashi
Takashi Noguchi
Akira Hirasawa
Seijiro and Shizue meet in Niigata and fall in love. Seijiro has to go back to Tokyo soon after, and they promise each other to meet again a year later. However, Seijiro gets jailed for five years. Unable to find him, Shizue gets married to a yakuza boss who can help her family business.
Repeatedly beat to a pulp by gamblers, cops, and gangsters, lone wolf Shoji Yamanaka finally finds a home as a Muraoka family hitman and falls in love with boss Muraoka's niece. Meanwhile, the ambitions of mad dog Katsutoshi Otomo draws our series' hero, Shozo Hirono, and the other yakuza into a new round of bloodshed.
A barkeeper saves a Yakuza boss' life and thus makes his way up in the organization. However, his fear of nothing soon causes problems.
Zatoichi is forced to kill a young man who owes a debt to a yakuza boss. Moments later, his sister Osode arrives with the money she earned (prostituting herself) to pay his debts. The bosses true motives are revealed and he attempts to steal Osode even though the debt is paid. Zatoichi realizes his grievous error and protects the girl from the gang. Osode and Zatoichi are caught in a dilemma as she must rely on her brother's killer for protection and Zatoichi wrestles with the injustice he has caused.
A former American G.I. joins a yakuza family after his release from prison in post-World War II Osaka.
Returning to the village where a year before he had killed Hirate, a much-admired opponent, Zatoichi encounters another swordsman and former rival in love.
The neglected common-law wife of a Japanese librarian is repeatedly harassed by a young man with a heart condition who seduces her with the prospect of a better life.
Toshio hires Yasaka to work in his workshop. But then this old acquaintance, who has just been released from prison, begins to meddle in Toshio's family life.
Zatoichi's trek through 88 temples to atone for his violent past is interrupted as he stumbles into a village terrorized by a violent yakuza boss.
Ocho is accidentally captured by a drug trafficking cartel who use Chinese women to smuggle drugs into Japan by hiding it in their vaginas. She is tortured, and manages to escape, fighting both the male yakuzas and a gang of female thieves.
Older, wiser but still a wandering loner, the blind, peace-loving masseur Ichi seeks a peaceful life in a rural village. When he's caught in the middle of a power struggle between two rival Yakuza clans, his reputation as a deadly defender of the innocent is put to the ultimate test in a series of sword-slashing showdowns.