A group of assassins stop a blind men pilgrimage making their way down the road. The assassins ask for Ichi, but they all claim variations of that name. They line them up against a building to look at their faces, but do not find Ichi and leave. One of the blind men brings Ichi out from his hiding place in the building, and they laugh at playing a prank on sighted men. Ichi goes on his way.
Ichi travels to the village of Itakura to pay respects at the grave of a man he killed two years earlier. At the grave he reminisces on a fight between the two yakuza gangs (Iioka and Sasagawa from an earlier film) one man ran away and, though Ichi was not taking part in the fight, attacked Ichi. The dead man's sister, Chiyo, overhears Ichi say this to himself.
A young Yakuza, who is looking to make a name for himself, shoots Zatoichi in the back with a musket. Zatoichi is wounded, but is aided by a stranger: Miss Kuni. After recovering, Zatoichi travels to her home to thank her and repay her kindness by assisting in what household chores he can do.
Sometime in the early 1980s, Miami-Dade Police Department detective Kung Fury and his partner Dragon apprehend a red ninja in a back alley, but Dragon is sliced in half by the ninja while Kung Fury is suddenly struck by lightning and bitten by a cobra, giving him extraordinary kung fu powers that enable him to defeat his foe. Years later in 1985, after defeating a rogue arcade machine robot, Kung Fury quits the force when he is assigned to partner with Triceracop, fearing that he would lose another partner in the line of duty. Meanwhile, Adolf Hitler, a.k.a. "Kung Führer", enters the timeline and remotely guns down the police chief and attacks the precinct through a mobile phone. Intent to avenge the chief, Kung Fury has computer whiz Hackerman send him back in time to kill Hitler in Nazi Germany. A glitch in the system, however, sends him back into the Viking Age. After Kung Fury meets the Viking valkyries Barbarianna and Katana, the Norse god Thor sends him to Nazi Germany for him to finish his job.
Mataemon Araki (Toshiro Mifune), a renowned swordsman, helps a young man find vengeance. The opening scene has Araki sternly accosting Jinza with a formal proclamation of vengeance for the killing of his family member. Jinza (Takashi Shimura) cackles villainously and an epic fight commences.
On his way to a village to celebrate the New Year's festival, Zatoichi is asked by a man to deliver a message to a woman. Upon delivery, he rooms with a young women who is searching for her missing father.
On a boat trip to Honshu island, Zatoichi (Katsu) makes the acquaintance of Jumonji (Narita), an expert shogi (Japanese chess) player and swordsman. Once on Honshu, a group of men that had tried to cheat Zatoichi at dice try to take revenge upon him- only for Ichi to turn the tables on them in the tussle. However, Miki, the niece of a woman named Otane, is injured in the confusion, compelling Ichi to go to great lengths to procure the medicine needed to cure her injury. When she recovers, the child sincerely thanks him, leaving him overwrought with emotion.
Traveling on the road, Zatoichi (Katsu) encounters a dying man who gives him a bag full of money and the name "Taichi". Traveling on, he makes the acquaintance of a blind biwa-playing priest. The two travel to a town that is having their annual thunder drum festival. The town is under the domination of a Yakuza boss who extorts from the people.
Seeking to atone for his violent past, Zatoichi (Katsu) embarks on a pilgrimage to visit the 88 shrines on Shikoku. On the road, a man (Igawa) attacks Zatoichi but is killed by him. Zatoichi follows the man's horse back to his home.
In a rural village, Zatoichi (Katsu) encounters Shushi Ohara (Suzuki; modeled after 18th-century agriculturalist Yagaku Ohara) a sword-less ronin who defends himself against multiple attackers without killing them. Ohara leads a peasant movement advocating the abstention from gambling, drinking, and whoring.
Zatoichi (Katsu) checks into an inn where he shares a room with an ill woman and her young son named Ryota. Before the woman dies, she requests that Zatoichi take her son to his father, an artist living in the nearby town of Maebara.
Zatoichi comes to a village which is the local hub of family farms in a silk growing region. The most prominent villager is Matsugoro who apparently will stop at nothing to bring all under his control. The small village does have a kind doctor, Dr. Junan, who lives with his daughter Oshizu.
The upright and invincible leader of the Wulin clan Lord Yin Ke Feng (Cheng Miu) helps the Luoyang government to escort two hundred million worth of gold annually and has never made a mistake. However, he accidentally loses his martial arts skills and the gold is stolen by Chao Hong (Ku Feng), leader of the Flying Tigers thieves. Lone swordsman Lo Yi (David Chiang) meets Yun Piao Piao (Lee Ching) and her fiance Siang Ding (Ti Lung), who are bodyguards for the gold. First, they fight each other before joining forces to help Yin to defeat Chao. Originally down and out, Lu is taken in by the gentle Yun and volunteers to be a bodyguard. He becomes acquainted with her through his warm-blooded actions.
Zatoichi's travels have finally brought him back to the village where he was trained in the arts of the masseur, nearly ten years ago by his old sensei, Master Hikonoichi. His proximity to his former teacher compels him to pay a visit, only to learn that Hikonoichi was recently killed while traveling, and his daughter Sayo has been sold into prostitution to repay the money lent to her father by local business man Tatsugoro. Zatoichi sets out to free Sayo, only to discover that the entire village is suffering -- victims of a scheme that has either forced their daughters into prostitution, or into doing the bidding of Tatsugoro, who is working for the corrupt Intendant, Isoda. Sayo provides him with the toggle of a medicine pouch, recovered from her father's hand.
A group of bandits flees with a stolen safe to a small town where they oppress the villagers and forces the town's blacksmith Wei Min-hui (Danny Lee) to unlock the safe. Wei refuses to help the bandits and after he informed the mayor about this, he reports to the officials in a nearby village. The bandits were furious that Wei has fled away and starts killing the villagers, threatening them they will kill a villager every hour if they do not find Wei. Finally, the heroes of the town come forward to wipe out the bandits. At this time, Wei also brings a government official to town, who unexpectedly turns out to be an accomplice of the bandits.