A couple Takeo Omura and Takeko Kaniguchi travel across Japan with their two sons, the eldest, Toshio, who is biologically his but not hers. They are con artists, whose scam is for her to jump alongside moving vehicles feigning being hit and injured, while he, playing the outraged husband, negotiates with the worried driver for an unofficial cash settlement in return for not calling the police reporting the motorist's "guilt". She often does sustain minor injuries from the ruse. She believes that they will continue doing this work until they have enough money to settle down in one place, where he will get a legitimate job. However, he wants to continue the scam indefinitely as he, a veteran, claims that injuries he sustained during the war would prevent him from obtaining that legitimate work. When Toshio reaches age ten in 1966, they enlist him in the con, he now playing the accident victim, with Takeko now playing the concerned mother role. They even manufacture real bruises on Toshio to make the scam more convincing. Like his stepmother before him, Toshio increasingly gets real injuries doing this work. This work takes its toll on their already dysfunctional family, that dysfunction which includes lies, and physical and emotional abuse by both Takeko but most specifically Takeo. That increasing dysfunction is also due to the fact that Takeko learns that she's pregnant again. She wants to keep the baby if only because it will force them to settle down, while he wants her to abort the pregnancy. Toshio has no true perspective of love or life, he only knowing that they need money to live, this work which is the only way he knows to obtain money. He does begin to get a sense that what they are doing is wrong when he witnesses a boy only slightly older than him being extorted for money from older bullies. As an emotional escape, Toshio often thinks about running away, which may not be difficult as his parents allow him free reign while they deal with their own priorities. Toshio also immerses him and his younger brother in a fantasy world where he is an alien from the Andromeda nebula come to Earth to kill all the evildoers of the world.
—Huggo
