小林立美

A samurai is struggling to make ends meet at the end of the Edo period. He has students and, among other things, teaches them about the evils of the government. A member of the yakuza thugs has fallen in love with the samurai's daughter and conspires to report the father to the authorities in order to snatch the girl. The samurai's daughter has a boyfriend who hides the father and daughter from the thug.

Aboard a ship connecting Kyoto and Osaka, Osan was pickpocketed by a sham blind biwa player. A man who looked like a merchant retrieved the wallet for her. Osan was a woman being sold off for the sake of her yakuza-like brother, Nin'kichi. The man in the guise of a merchant turned out to be the Rat Thief, Jirokichi, the infamous thief of Edo. Due to this chance encounter, the two ended up staying at the same hot spring inn. However, one morning, as Jirokichi was about to leave alone, Osan, with the intuition of a smitten woman, confessed she knew he was the famed Rat Thief.