Set against the background of a giant newspaper company. A girl reporter on the staff of the newspaper witnesses the accidental killing of one of the top executives, whose wife is having an affair with the head of the company.
Oichi the Blind helps a woman escape the clutches of a high government official to go off with the man she loves. The official puts a reward on her head of fifty gold pieces and soon a menagerie of bounty hunters are after her skin. Three of them band together to accomplish this, one an expert swordsman, another a huge judo master and the third is deadly with a chain. To escape, she heads for the fishing town of Itso but soon comes face to face with Sankuro, the swordsman...
Seijuro Fujihana, head master of the Fujihana dance school, is a proud and lonely artist. And because of his character, his group lacks the prosperity of others. He wishes his daughter Kasumi, gifted like himself, to take over and develop the Fujihana, but she wishes to marry Hiroshi, head of a jazz band which her father opposes. Kisaburo, Seijuro's No.1 disciple, wants to marry Kasumi and take over the Fujihana with the backing of the chairman of the supporters' association.
Traveling salesman Kuruma Torajirō falls in love with an inn manager as New Year's approaches.
A young female samurai comes upon a dying messenger and agrees to deliver the scroll he was carrying to its destination. However, unbeknownst to her, the scroll is actually a formula for a new kind of gunpowder. An evil clan that is planning to overthrow the Emperor is also after the scroll, and they try to take it from her.
A detective tries to outwit a jewel thief who has kidnapped the daughter of a jeweler to get to an exquisite diamond.
Assassination begins with the events of 1853 when "four black ships" anchored at Edo Bay, sparking civil unrest and the major political manoeuvring that saw the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate. At a time when assassination had become a disturbing political tool, Shinoda's film follows Hachiro Kiyokawa, an ambitious, masterless samurai whose allegiances drift dangerously between the Shogunate and the Emperor.
