Her father, a peddler, decides to make a stop, hoping for good business with his potions which he sells as "medicine" while accompanying his praises with his accordion.
The father's business is a success, so he rents a small, unclean flat and sends Masako to school, where she is mocked as the daughter of "O-ichi-ni", a Charlie Chaplin character, by her schoolmates.
When a rainy season sets in, the family's financial situation tightens, and the father has to pledge his accordion, while the mother earns money by doing piece work.
After her widely popular autobiographical novel Diary of a Vagabond (Hōrōki, 1930), Hayashi experimented with a non-autobiographical approach with her short story Senshun fu, which was not well received.
[1] With The Accordion and the Fish Town, first published in the April 1931 edition of Kaizō magazine, and Seihin no sho (November 1931), she successfully returned to the autobiographical form[1] and established herself as an accomplished prose writer.