If you grew up in the United States, where serialized fiction is largely associated with long-gone authors like Charles Dickens or Harriet Beecher Stowe, it might come as a surprise to learn that the format remains extremely popular in Japan, where everything from manga to literary fiction is regularly parceled out over many months before being released as a single volume. And it’s not just bespoke journals or websites boosting little-known creators at the start of their careers, but the country’s biggest media outlets publishing new work by already famous writers.
One such author is Mieko Kawakami, a superstar bestseller in Japan who is also critically lauded at home and abroad (her novel “Breasts and Eggs” was a New York Times Top Ten Book in 2020). Partly as a result of that success, Kawakami was approached to serialize a novel in Yomiuri Shimbun, one of Japan’s main newspapers, in 2022. The installments were subsequently published as a conventional bound novel, which is now available in a thoughtful English-language version titled “Sisters in Yellow,” from translators Laurel Taylor and Hitomi Yoshio.
Roughly the first half of “Sisters in Yellow” epitomizes what makes Kawakami’s writing so great, melding incisive social commentary with a cast of memorable, scrappy, put-upon young people. But an abrupt tonal shift late in the novel, something seemingly endemic to all Kawakami’s work, results in the protagonist evincing a rather dizzying change in temperament and the narrative meandering its way through fits and starts toward a disappointingly rote dénouement. The serialized origin of “Sisters in Yellow” gives the story a spontaneous authenticity and whimsy, yet also feels responsible for the novel’s shortcomings, namely its overly drawn-out second half and the sidelining of a major character, whom Kawakami has said she couldn’t get to engage with the role she had originally envisioned for her.
Brief episodes in the first months of the pandemic bookend the narrative, but the novel is otherwise set, via flashback, between 1995 and 2000, as the teenage Hana Ito tries to make her way in the world. Hana is “the kind of kid everybody avoided and felt sorry for at the same time.” Her father is absent and her mother indifferent, rarely interacting with her daughter because she works nights at a series of “hole-in-the-wall” bars and sleeps during the day. One morning, 15-year-old Hana awakens to find Kimiko Yoshikawa, one of her mom’s drinking buddies, in her mom’s bed. Kimiko, 35, tells Hana that her mom “might not come home for a bit,” which is fine with the girl because this freewheeling new roomie is “so cool” and “so stunningly beautiful.”
Kimiko disappears as abruptly as she showed up, however, and Hana heads back to her usual routine concerned less with academics than with saving up money so she can escape tenement housing with its communal bathroom down the hall. (A particularly memorable line later in the novel sees Hana remark that she had “never lived in a place nice enough to have chairs.”) After two years, Hana’s plan suffers a major setback, only for Kimiko to show up and throw her another lifeline in the form of Lemon, a snack bar they open up together. Such businesses, which Hana describes as “a community center, but with booze and karaoke,” are a ubiquitous part of Japanese nightlight, run by a “Mama” and patronized by customers, especially men, who come to chat and drink with younger female staff. Hana discovers that alcohol has “no effect” on her (until late in the novel when conveniently it does), so Kimiko assumes the de facto Mama role and Hana eagerly sits and drinks with the clientele, eventually accompanied by her new friend Ran Kato.
Hana and Kimiko chose the name Lemon because of the feng shui tenet associating the color yellow with wealth, and indeed, money is the overriding force behind every decision Hana makes (except for the one time she decides her prodigal family matters more). Most of the ostensible role models in Hana’s life extol the importance of money. Yeongsu, a Korean mystery man with longstanding ties to Kimiko, tells Hana that “Money never died, and it didn’t disappear either,” and Vivien, the criminal mind who shows up in the novel’s second half, puts it even more plainly, stating, “Money is power, and poverty is violence.”
Kawakami thoughtfully addresses numerous aspects of late 1990s Japanese youth culture through her three teenage characters, Hana, Ran, and Momoko Tamamori, a wealthy girl who rebels against her mom’s propensity to treat her as if she’s “a piece of jewelry she can show off.” Some of these trends will be relatable, like the fashion craze of “loose socks,” which are favored by somewhat rebellious youth, while others will likely shock US readers, such as “compensated dating,” where a “sugar daddy” starts going out with a high school girl, or “burusera shops,” where teenage girls sell their used underwear.
Without getting into specific plot spoilers, once Kawakami pulls the rug out from under her characters, the story shifts focus to the fringes of organized crime and the vagaries of credit card fraud that were only feasible during that brief window when security protocols hadn’t quite caught up to technological advancements. Given the novel’s many lengthy narrative tangents, I wish more time had been devoted to exploring how Hana so quickly goes from naif balking at the very concept of using an ATM to abusive paranoiac demanding more and more risk. Overall, though, I will take a novel like this any day over a meticulously planned, overly predictable thriller. To borrow an appraisal often used for today’s more prevalent serialized entertainment: “Sisters in Yellow” is an enjoyable 12-episode season that could’ve been an eight-episode masterpiece.
SISTERS IN YELLOW
By Mieko Kawakami
Knopf, 448 pages, $30
Cory Oldweiler is a freelance writer and critic.