Early in Mieko Kawakami's Sisters in Yellow (Knopf; 448 pages; translated by Laurel Taylor and Hitomi Yoshio), lonely teenager Hana Ito, scraping by on the fringes of Tokyo society, opens an unregulated bar with a strange but generous acquaintance of her mother's. Hana meets two other teen girls, and the foursome soon moves in together. On the surface, it's the beginning of a coming-of-age tale about the friendship between young women facing a challenging economic situation. But the desperate social conditions pulsating through the book, coupled with Hana's questionable recollection of her own actions, create a sinister undertone that carries the book through to its conclusion.
Opening in Tokyo at the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, 40-year-old Hana comes across a news story about the arrest of Kimiko Yoshikawa, a 60-year-old woman accused of battering a young woman and confining her to a room over a 15-month period. Hana initially feels stunned, based on her own experiences living with Kimiko approximately 20 years earlier. "But once I saw her name in the article on the web, I realized I'd forgotten everything about her—her name, her existence, the time we'd spent together, what we'd done, and of course the fact I'd believed I'd never forget her," Hana notes as she overcomes shock at having indeed forgotten Kimiko's influence on her own upbringing.
In the retelling of her relationship with Kimiko, which comprises most of the novel, Hana begins as a 15-year-old living in an apartment with her mother, who works in the questionable nightlife industry and often goes missing for short periods. One day, in her mother's place, Kimiko appears and begins to care for Hana. Eventually, together with two of Hana's new friends, they open a bar called Lemon that becomes the central purpose in their lives. But when they encounter trouble with their off-the-books business, Hana is forced to turn to illegal activities to survive.
Kawakami presents a distinct and sometimes light-hearted portrayal of the Japanese underworld, in contrast with American popular culture's depictions of Yakuza henchmen in sharp suits. Hana begins to associate with the lowest-level members of a criminal enterprise, people who struggle themselves and are prone to mistakes and disappearances. It's easy for them to prey on a doe-eyed teenager without an education who just wants enough money to find legitimacy in her life. Hana's coerced into using stolen debit cards to withdraw cash from an ATM and eventually graduates to credit card skimming. It's a desperate depiction that shows how easily a person like Hana can be trapped and exploited by self-serving individuals.
Hana's movement to the underworld also demonstrates how she's stuck in a specific social class without any hope of escape. As one character explains to her, "You can have friends, and you can have buddies, but if you don't have money, they all fall through." Many of the decisions she makes revolve around earning as much money as possible, and Kawakami does well to juxtapose the tone of Hana's initial optimistic thought process with realistic indicators that nothing will work out unless she ventures into unsavory activities. Through carefully constructed prose, we see how impossible Hana's situation is before the character realizes it herself; once she does, her actions become increasingly erratic.
Kawakami also captures Hana's youthful enthusiasm through a strong first-person voice; however, at times, the novel drags due to extended sections of Hana's thoughts, which can feel repetitive. It's a deliberate stylistic choice, but Hana's internal narration can also flatten out other characters, particularly in places where the dialogue is scant or breezy. We know Hana's desires, but little is revealed about the motivations of the other female characters, leaving us wanting more.
Originally published in 2024, Sisters in Yellow won Japan's Yomiuri Prize for Literature. It was the latest honor for Kawakami, whose novel Heaven was shortlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize and All the Lovers in the Night was a finalist for the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. Much of her work has focused on Japanese class and gender issues, and Sisters in Yellow excels at contrasting Hana's initial bouncy optimism and appreciation of newfound friendships with an obviously hopeless future.
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