He was not the politician or the energetic boy that they had wanted. They often lament that with her spirit, if Fumio had been a boy, she would have been famous. Throughout this section, it is evident that technology begins to play a large role in the lives of the characters. Instead of walking everywhere, they have introduced bicycles and buses. Rickshas are no longer used.
Cars travel the streets in the city and buses take people to and from school.
Babies are born in hospitals instead of in the home. Fumio, after getting married, surprises her mother and decided to have her first child in the hospital. It is Hana who takes the pilgrimage to Jison-in for her daughter. She turns down the traditional way for the new way, dressing in Western fashions and leaving for China on a boat shortly after her first son, Kazuhiko's, birth. Regardless of all the new technology, sadness hit the Matanis.