Set in an alternate near-future Japan, a young woman codenamed
"Kabuki", acts as an agent and television law-enforcement personality
for a clandestine government body known as "The Noh". In the first
volume of the series, The Noh's nature and background is explained. The Noh is controlled by a renowned World War II
Japanese military man known as the General, who has achieved much power
and status for being a brilliant military tactician during his many
years of service. The agency itself exists as part of Japan's strict
police state, which hunts down and brutally executes criminals for their
misdeeds under the veil of keeping the peace. Secretly the Noh also
acts to maintain the balance of crime and order that ultimately benefits
the national economy on both sides of the law and thus targets
politicians, businessmen and certain underworld kingpins whose actions
threaten this balance. Kabuki herself is one of eight masked assassins
who perform these secret executions under the General's orders.

Ryuchi Kai is the General's son and another war veteran, who is a
Yakuza boss and every bit as deadly and brilliant as his father but has
earned a reputation for swift brutality. Astonishingly, despite the
high level of discretion surrounding Noh, Kai manages to infiltrate the
agency, personally, by using its policy of masked operatives to his
advantage. He poses as Oni – one of the General's two overseers of the
assassins (the other being a mysterious old man named "Dove"). He
manipulates Kabuki and her partners into eliminating the entire
underworld hierarchy in Tokyo. Publicly Kai is a talented businessman
with much stock and influence in the Japanese market, thus this move
makes him indispensable and essential to the balance.