Sisters in Yellow by Mieko Kawakami

Japanese author Mieko Kawakami is probably best known outside of Japan for the translation of her novel Breasts and Eggs and, more recently, All the Lovers in the Night. Her latest novel in translation is Sisters in Yellow (translated by Laurel Taylor and Hitomi Yoshio), a book which focusses on the seedier side of Tokyo in the late 1990s through the eyes of a young woman struggling to rise above her situation but finding that her only pathway is through crime.

Sisters in Yellow is mainly told in flashback. The framing story is of Hana, now in her 40s who sees in the news that a sixty-year-old woman named Kimiko has been charged with criminal offences. This section, set in the early days of the Covid pandemic, sends Hana into a spin due to a connection she had with Kimiko many years before. Hana reaches out to someone from that time but is told to leave the past in the past. The bulk of the book then tells the story of Hana’s early life. It is one of constantly trying to climb up only to find that circumstances push her down again.

Hana’s story opens when she is fifteen, living with her mother, a hostess in a local bar, in a small Tokyo apartment. Hana meets her mother’s friend Kimiko and later runs away with Kimiko and helps Kimiko open and run her own small bar which they call Lemon. Hana recruits two other teens and soon the four are living together. But tragedy and set-back are never far away and each time Hana has to start from scratch Hana is dragged further into the Tokyo underworld.

Sisters in Yellow was originally serialised in the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun and knowing this may help readers navigate or understand the episodic nature of the narrative and the shift in tone between some of the different segments. That tone becomes increasingly dark as Hana moves from helping run a bar to doing small time criminal work for the Yakuza to running her friends as a criminal gang.

Sisters in Yellow is a fascinating exploration of a time and place through the eyes of a character who is quite powerless yet struggling to gain some agency and independence. Kawakami often focusses on the small details and leaves some of the bigger picture off stage but this in itself reflects Hana’s struggle to survive in a world in which she only sees a small part. This struggle will see Hana grow and take charge but also, in the process, harden and lose some of the traits that made her likeable. Sisters in Yellow very much then an engaging coming-of-age story in which a naïve teenager is hardened in her pursuit of the life that she wants.

Sisters in Yellow by Mieko Kawakami

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8.0/10