Masahiro, a thirteen-year-old fisherman’s apprentice, is shipwrecked and rescued from certain death on Mujin-Shima by an American whaler, Captain Higgins. He learns whaling and becomes Americanized during the adventure-filled half-year-long ocean voyage from Japan to Massachusetts. Now, as John Mong, Masahiro is educated in the United States. He decides to return to Japan, in spite of the barbaric treatment that awaits returning expatriates. As a despised Banjin, he endures almost a year of torture. But due to the discovery of a small daguerreotype photograph in his possession, he is befriended by one of Japan’s high Lords. Over the ensuing years, now as Lord Tanaka Masahiro, advisor to the Imperial Court, he succeeds in bringing about the opening of Japan by Commodore Perry and the birth of modern Japan.

When Thomas Duane Prinez, a.k.a. The Prince, is released from prison after three years of incarceration, his head is filled with new ideas of promoting a new kind of aall consequence fights.a He is convinced that fans go to see fights, automobile races, and bullfights because they want to see blood. The Prince loses control to his investors, and an early attempt of presenting all consequence fights ends in disaster. With his Hollywood starlet live-in, Louise, at his side, he stumbles on a new scheme that turns out to be successful beyond his wildest imagination. But from here on, his road is a downhill struggle.