Swearing off cartooning as a profession, Tsuge takes on a series of unconventional jobs — used camera salesman, ferryman, and stone collector — hoping to find success among the hucksters, speculators, and deadbeats he does business with. Instead, he fails again and again, unable to provide for his family, earning only their contempt and his own. The result is a dryly funny look at the pitfalls of the creative life, and an off-kilter portrait of modern Japan.