Suicide has long been used in Japan as a form of social protest. The emergence of a new merchant class in this film, set in 1703, transforms samurai culture. Elements of the social contract are beginning to unravel, and some unscrupulous people took advantage of these changes before the social order was re-created. In this story, a wealthy merchant instead of paying his clerk, gives him an I.O.U. When the impoverished clerk presents the paper to the merchant at the agreed-upon time to request payment, the man becomes enraged and claims he never wrote it and that the clerk is attempting to defraud him. Then he orders his thugs to beat the clerk.