On a Tokyo dump’s shantytown edge, interwoven vignettes follow residents scraping by: a boy who “drives” an imaginary trolley, a homeless father and son designing a dream house, a young woman brutalized at home, drunks, schemers, and saints of small kindnesses. Kurosawa crafts a ragged mosaic of hardship, fantasy, and flickers of grace that keep people moving forward.

This anthology film consists of nine incidents in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when assassins changed the course of Japanese history.

It is based on the story "The Lawyer" by attorney Hiroshi Masaki and his account of Japan's "Headless Murder Case" in which a police officer beat a suspect to death during the Pacific War.