Tatsuya Nakadai plays a samurai who is an eyewitness to a massacre of a small village by men of his own clan. Even though he did not participate, and did his best to prevent it, he realizes with guilt that he had been manipulated to enable the massacre. He quits and becomes a ronin; wandering the country he learns of a scheme by his former clan to repeat a similar massacre. Determined to stop them, and with the help of women and men who are loyal to him, he endures great hardships, moral and physical, engaging in incredible battles in the effort to atone for his earlier mistake and help to save the lives of defenseless peasants.