After Hangan's death, Oboshi Yuranosuke spent day and night drinking and playing with courtesans at the Ichiriki teahouse in Gion, Kyoto. Rumors that "Yuranosuke has forgotten all about revenge and become a spineless wreck" reached even the ears of his enemy, Ko no Moronao.
In fact this was Yuranosuke's ploy to lull Moronao's side into carelessness.
One night a secret letter reached Yuranosuke from Hangan's widow, Kaoyo Gozen, reporting on Moronao's movements. Yuranosuke went out onto an empty veranda and began reading the long letter by the light of a hanging lantern.
But the courtesan Okaru, in a room upstairs, was secretly watching in a hand mirror. And beneath the veranda, Ono Kudayu, a former chief retainer who had gone over to Moronao's side, was quietly reading the end of the letter as it hung down.
At the sound of Okaru's hairpin falling, Yuranosuke realized. Knowing the letter had been read, he planned to kill Okaru to silence her, and lured her with sweet words: "I'll buy out your contract."
Okaru was delighted, but then her brother, the foot soldier Teraoka Heiemon, appeared. Seeing through Yuranosuke's real intent, Heiemon turned his sword on his sister: "If you're to be killed anyway, die by your brother's hand." Okaru's husband, Hayano Kanpei, was already dead. Learning this, Okaru made up her mind: "Then let it be at your hand, brother."
Then Yuranosuke appeared and stopped them. "I have seen the true hearts of brother and sister." He put the sword in Okaru's hand and had her run it through Kudayu, who was hiding under the veranda. So Okaru avenged her husband, and Heiemon was admitted to the band of avengers.
The Ichiriki in Gion still stands at the corner of Hanamikoji, with its red lattice front. Every year on March 20, the anniversary of Oishi's death, the "Oishi memorial" is held there.