平井靖

Every year on the fourth of January, Shobei's soba restaurant serves "Sanada Soba"; soba noodles topped with grated spicy daikon radish. Even regulars refrain from coming to the restaurant because of the extra spicy soba. But on year, a stranger comes in and finishes the bowl, announcing that it tastes familiar. The man begins to visit every year on the 4th of January to eat Sanada Soba. Shobei develops a warm feeling towards the peculiar customer he interacts with once a year.

On a snowy winter night, Soetsu, a blind masseur, and his daughter Shiga visit the nobleman Shinzaemon Fukami. Drunk, he assaults Shiga, and when Soetsu tries to protect her, he’s brutally killed. Later, Soetsu's body is thrown into a swamp, but his spirit returns to haunt Shinzaemon, driving him inevitably toward death.

Dance teacher Omiyo survives a double suicide with her lover and is forced into life as the courtesan Tamagiku in Yoshiwara. Living in misery, she meets Gengo, her lover’s look-alike brother, and they fall in love. Jealous rival Naraya frames Gengo as a criminal, and he is struck by lightning and killed before Tamagiku’s eyes. After her own death, Tamagiku rises from hell to seek revenge on Naraya and his allies.

Fleeing the Ōnin War, Tomone and her daughter Shiori are saved by Ukyō Fujiki. While taking shelter in a house, they are attacked by a greedy servant, Shichibee, but Shiori defends her mother, injuring him. A year later, Tomone and Ukyō reunite and fall in love, but Shichibee, now a bandit leader, returns and brutally murders Tomone and Shiori in Ukyō’s absence.

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