The setting is Edo in the late Tempo Era (1830-44), in the grip of an economic depression after a series of failed government reforms. A strong-willed matriarch Okatsu struggles to keep her brood of five -- including three grown sons and a pretty, marriageable daughter -- on the road to financial survival, if not a success. She has also given them a strong moral core, as evidenced by their collective effort to save a friend of the oldest son from ruin. She faces a sterner test, however, when a thief, Yuichi invades her humble abode and demands her money -- including the coins she and her children have scraped together for the oldest son's friend. Instead of calling on her sleeping boys to beat the invader to a pulp, she sweet-talks him out of his demand -- and invites him to join the family. The thief, a young first-timer driven to this desperate strait by poverty, accepts her offer, though he can't help feeling uneasy about the secret he has to keep from his new "cousins," especially the daughter.