Ryuujin Hashimoto's seventh birthday should be a joyful occasion. Instead, his parents are murdered by five men who break into their modest home in Tacoma, Washington, as the young boy hides under the kitchen table. The boy finds a new home in Tokyo with his uncle, Jiro Asano, an aikido master and director of the Cabinet Research Chamber (postwar Japan's CIA). Asano recognizes in his nephew the potential of a skillful assassin and trains him expressly for that purpose, encouraging him to eschew all emotional attachments that might distract him. Dressed head to toe in the bloody rags he has pieced together from his parents' clothes, Ryuujin transforms himself into the fearsome killer the news media dubs Raggedy Man. His service to Asano brings him into deadly conflict with foes all around the globe, including the American Mafia and the Japanese Yakuza. But he remains obsessed with the two decade mystery of who killed his parents and why. Closing in on the truth at last, he finds the man who holds the shocking answers, and he exacts terrible revenge.