Genzou, the owner of the apartment building where the sisters live, is an older man who rarely smiles and appears gruff and forbidding. He is, however, very much concerned with the sisters' welfare and was the only one willing to take them in when their father abandoned them. In his own way, he tries to look out for the Yamada sisters. They apparently remind him of his wife and granddaughter, who were killed in an accident involving a truck. For all that he cares about the sisters, he still will collect the full rent every month.