Tashiro (Chishū Ryū), Tamekichi (Reikichi Kawamura), and O-tane (Chōko Iida) are among the residents of a poor district of Tokyo that has been severely damaged in the bombing raids of 1944-45. They live on the economic margins of a society devastated by years of war: Tashiro is a street fortune teller, Tamekichi mends pots and pans and also buys and sells whatever he can get hold of, and O-tane is a widow who sells what odds and ends she can obtain.