In the second year of the Meiji era (1869), when Hokkaido was still called Ezo, Hachirota Okudaira, a corporal in the former Shogunate army, was defeated by the new government forces in the Battle of Hakodate. He fled to the Yurakubu forest far north of Hakodate with his brother Kiichiro and his comrade-in-arms Sakichi. Seriously wounded and weakened, Hachirota and Sakichi let their brother escape, deciding there was no point in him dying like that. However, moments later, he was attacked by a gigantic brown bear weighing over 300 kg. Having been mauled by the bear and left unconscious in the forest, Hachirota was saved by Kaburagi Juzo, a former Shonai samurai who made a living as a bear hunter. This Bildungsroman tells the story of a defeated soldier who lost everything and is reborn as a bear hunter in the northern lands.