Sanemori was of the Genji Clan but sided with the losing Heike in 12th century Genji-Heikebattles, dying at Shinowara at the age of 72. To hide his age, he dyed his white hair black and alsoobtained the privilege of wearing brocade robe in battle. The ghost of Sanemori appears beforea traveling priest two centuries later, tells how he met his death, and asks to be saved. 

After a local person of Shinowara explains in a short prologue that the priest Ta-ami preaches there every day,  apparently to himself, the priest begins his sermon.  An old man, visible to Ta-ami but to no one else, then comes to listen as he has on every previous day.  When asked about himself, he reveals that he is the ghost of the warrior Sanemori who was killed in battle there more than two hundred years ago, and then he vanishes beside the pond in which his head was washed after his death.  When the priest prays there through the night for the repose of Sanemori's spirit, the ghost appears and tells the story of his last battle before which, being already an old man at the time, he died his white hair to hide his age.