“Based on a popular novel, the plot of this film deals with the life of Tsuruchiyo Niiro, the son of a physician in a clan that is loyal to the emperor in defiance of the Tokugawa shogun's edicts. Niiro assumes he will follow in his father's footsteps, but his mother, for reasons not explained to him, wants him to become a samurai. She is seen making a surreptitious visit to Naosuke Ii, the Great Elder or adviser to the shogun. This casts suspicion on Niiro's own loyalty to the imperial cause, and he is sent on a mission to assassinate Ii, but he fails when Ii's men disarm him. Ii then convinces Niiro of the folly of resisting the Western powers. Niiro, no longer passionately devoted to the imperial cause but not fully committed to the Tokugawa policy, becomes a ronin (the code here is that he lets the hair on his crown grow in; normally samurai shave it). The revelation by his mother that Niiro is Ii's son follows hard on the heels of the information that Niiro's erstwhile friends are going to assassinate Ii. Throwing scruples to the wind, Niiro dashes out into the snow to warn his father, whose palanquin and retinue move forward to keep a rendezvous with destiny outside Sakurada Gate in 1860.
“Several features of the films of Osone are apparent in this film: the importance of the fencing academy which, like the modern college, was the stepping stone to a position in service to a feudal lord or the government (very much like the postwar generation which joins business firms or the bureaucracy armed not with a sword but a calculator and computer); the emphasis, as in Howard Hawks' films, on male friendships which are analogous to the kinship that exists among mountain climbers: you entrust your life to another man; and the understanding which female characters show for each other.” --Frank T. Motofuji