Mr. Gray is the new Resident in Charge of the Welcome Islands in the Indian Ocean. The Islands are full of life, but the only other Europeans are the "sanctimonious, psalm-singing" brother-sister missionary team of Martha and Owen Jordans, and the Honourable Ted - a hard-drinking, womanizing social outcast whose English family pays him to stay away.
During the era of Tokugawa Ieyasu, one night a carver named Fujijiro was murdered. Immediately launching an investigation, Denhichi, accompanied by Otoshi and Take, toured the entertainment houses of Ryogoku.
A handsome newcomer in a village marries a local girl. A year or so later an abandoned baby is left on the couple's doorstep, a baby the man had with another woman.