She first stays at the clinic of Dr. Hachiya, suffering from mental disorders believed to be inherited from her father, who had died in complete madness, and the aftereffects of a venereal disease which she caught from her promiscuous husband.
After her companions' return to the Oyamas, Ogen travels to Tokyo, where she moves between the flats of her younger brothers Naotsugu and Kumakichi, who try to talk her into getting medical treatment.
In 1916, two years after her husband's death, Shimazaki's oldest sister Sono (Ogen in the novella) left the Takase household for a brief course of treatment at a nearby clinic, before joining her brothers Hirosuke (Naotsugu) and Tōson (Kumakichi) in Tokyo.
When her family could no longer cope with her increasingly eccentric behaviour, she was first transferred to a rest home and later to a mental hospital, where she died in 1920, aged sixty-four.
[1] In 1970, The Life of a Certain Woman was included in the literary works sealed in a time capsule in Osaka Castle during the Expo '70, Japan.