4 years later, Ken visits Ise on his way to Osaka. He is accompanied by Hatsuko, a 9-year-old girl from Yamagata whom he intends to sell to a brothel in Osaka as a cleaning girl. Ken is related to her parents – tenant farmers who had a bad harvest this year and had no other choice but to try to sell their daughter for 50 yen. Hatsuko's hard fate and cheerful resourcefulness remind Oshin of herself when she was a girl, and of Ai, the baby girl Oshin had lost who would be the same age as Hatsuko had she lived. The couple decide to take Hatsuko in, paying Ken the 50 yen. Ryuzo and Oshin treat Hatsuko as part of the family, even arranging for her to continue her education.