Haruo Sugimura is fresh from serving a two-year stint in prison for assaulting someone when he is recruited by a loan shark named Sakai to help collect money for a company called Minami Hachi Ban Kogyo, baesd in Osaka. Their rates are ruthless: 10% interest is added every 10 days. Their customers are desperate: a hostess who owes money to other loan sharks, a man made suicidal because his family don’t love him anymore. Haruo learns about the art of the loan shark as well as the dark side of peoples personalities.
The film documents the rise and fall of the Wufeng Lin family in Wufeng, Taiwan over the turbulent years of Taiwan under the administrations of the Qing dynasty, Japan, and Republic of China.
