Five swordsmen are murdered and hung from a tree and the chase is on to find the killers. Two magistrates pursue the leads to solve the crime and it leads to a potential conspiracy to kill the Shogun.
Saotome, a sword master and guard of the Shogunate, pursues the mystery of a deadly aerial weapon that is responsible for the multiple deaths in town.
An important silent film survives, Kumahiko Nishina's Umon torimonocho rokuban tegara jinenji kidan (The Samurai Detective, aka The Detective Records of Umon, aka Detective Umon Diary: Exploit Number Six, 1930). Umon on his shining white horse stops a conspiracy against the Shogun. Umon was played by Kanjuro Arashi in this early film, & long after in the post-Occupation jidaigeki revival he reprised the role in Kajiro Yamamoto's Muttsuri Umon torimonocho (1955), helping to launch the renewed interest in such films.
