All of them are fleeing something. Growing up without a father, Hana’s tired of the pity in her classmates’ eyes, and finds a flashier mother figure in Kimiko. Kimiko is older than Hana's mother but seems much younger, chatting easily about school and boys and wanting a better life. Fate throws them together with two more young women—bruised but not broken by life. Together the four set out to remake their lives, fighting predatory lenders, organized criminals, and plain bad luck as they open a bar called Lemon.
Keeping the business going, and trying to take care of each other, forms the core of this enrapturing novel. It is a story of startling reversals and vivid portraits of the matriarchy of Tokyo nightlife and its adjacent criminal underclasses. From the bar owners to the aging hostesses to the young street touts coaxing people off the street to places like Lemon, everyone wants a chance at renewal, but can everyone get it?
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Sisters in Yellow
Author : Mieko Kawakami
Published year : 2026 (English translation)
Language : English
Pages : 429
Genre : Literary Fiction, Contemporary
Age recommendation : 17+
CW : Suicide, hint of LGBTQ
I preordered Sisters in Yellow in early 2026 and waited about three months for it to arrive, knowing full well what to expect after reading all of Mieko Kawakami’s books. But when I finally received it from my local bookstore, I didn’t read it right away. I know, what’s the point of preordering a book if you’re not going to read it immediately, right? But I still got a certain satisfaction from knowing that it was tucked away in my library, waiting for me.
After reading a series of books that left me feeling unfamiliar with their vibes, I decided to return to my reading comfort zone. And Sisters in Yellow, despite its considerable length, turned out to be exactly what I needed.
The story opens with our narrator, Hana, a forty-year-old woman working at a local deli during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. One day, she comes across a news report about a woman she knows who is on trial. The news strikes her like lightning. She can barely function, calls in sick, and finds herself unable to quiet her restless mind.
For the first time in twenty years, Hana reaches out to someone she has not spoken to in a long time: Ran. They both knew the woman on trial, and Hana feels an urgent need to discuss the matter with her.
But when they meet, Ran seems like an entirely different person. There are no hugs or warm greetings, not even a question about how Hana has been doing. The message is clear: under no circumstances should Hana go to the police and make a statement about the woman on trial.
Hmmm... intriguing, right?
The next chapter takes us back to Hana’s adolescence. She lives with her mother, who works as a hostess at a nearby bar. It is not unusual for her mother’s friends to spend the night at their house.
One summer holiday, Hana wakes up to find a woman she has never met before sleeping beside her. Unlike her mother’s other friends, this woman is different. While the others pity Hana for growing up with a mother like hers, this woman praises her mother for her kindness.
She likes to clean, prepare food for Hana, and talk to her with an ease that Hana has rarely experienced with adults. When Hana’s mother goes away for a while, Hana stays with this woman, Kimiko.
Kimiko is also popular with the other girls at Hana’s school. She even helps Hana make friends. For the first time in her life, Hana feels the warmth of having another adult around who genuinely cares about her.
Then, one day, Kimiko abruptly leaves, and Hana’s mother returns. A hollow space is left in Hana’s heart. Life goes on as before, but Hana now knows that she wants to earn as much money as possible so she can live independently and have a life of her own.
The following summer, after a series of unfortunate events, Hana unexpectedly encounters Kimiko again. When Kimiko invites her to come along, Hana has little reason to refuse. She is still underage, yet she leaves home without even bothering to finish school.
Together with Kimiko, Hana builds a business: a bar called Lemon. They work hard every day, exhausted and with little life outside work and home, but Hana is happy.
Then she meets Ran, who is around her age, and later Momoko, a girl from a very different background. The three grow close, perhaps because they are young, or perhaps because life has treated all of them unfairly in different ways.
Eventually, Hana, Ran, Momoko, and Kimiko find themselves living together under one roof. They dream of conquering the world together. But life happens, and they gradually grow in different directions.
Sisters in Yellow feels different from Kawakami’s previous works, yet unmistakably hers. Her retrospective narration allows us to follow not only the narrator’s movements through life but also the subtle shifts in her perspective. Kawakami once again brings social issues into the story in her own way. This time, she explores not only social inequality and nightlife but also structural poverty.
Yet the plot moves comparatively faster than in some of her other works. Slowly, we are drawn into Hana’s thoughts and life, and before we know it, we find ourselves rooting for her. We want life to be kinder to her. We smile from ear to ear when she finally finds warmth and a life she deserves, even if she finds them much later than many others do.
We are also devastated by how much Hana has to endure. She is barely an adult, yet she is already responsible for the lives of three other people. She works harder and harder, trying to preserve the warmth she has only recently found. When the world repeatedly gives her reasons to give up, she keeps going. And as a reader, I find myself desperately wanting her to be okay.
Not only is the plot a page-turner, but the characterization is remarkably complete. We follow the evolution of Hana’s thinking from adolescence to her forties. We come to know her almost as we would a friend: how she thinks, how she acts, why she makes certain decisions, and what she might do next.
Interestingly, after reaching the ending, I realized that character development does not always mean becoming a different person. Sometimes, we remain fundamentally the same, but gain the ability to look back at our younger selves and understand why we did the things we did.
Sometimes, change isn’t about becoming a different person. It’s about understanding ourselves better.
What fascinates me most is how an author can write about poverty without reducing the narrator to living proof of a social thesis. There is a risk that every hardship becomes evidence of inequality, every suffering exists to justify a political argument, and every word serves to represent the poor. As readers, we end up focusing only on their suffering, mourning the injustice they endure.
But Kawakami seems less interested in asking us to pity Hana than in showing us her perseverance. We do not simply pity her despite the series of misfortunes that befall her. We may curse her naivety, but we also understand that she is just a child facing challenges far beyond her years.
Hana is not particularly knowledgeable. Her understanding of the world is limited, and she believes in superstitions. But she is hardworking, kind-hearted, and resourceful. There are moments when she learns from conversations with older people, reminding us that, despite the responsibilities she carries, she is still young and has so little life experience.
What makes this characterization even more impressive is that Kawakami reportedly approached the novel differently from her previous works. Rather than planning every aspect of her characters in detail, she allowed the story to unfold as she wrote. In an interview, she explained that she began with the titles of the thirteen chapters and discovered how the characters and story would develop along the way.
And yet, Hana feels so complete. I find it fascinating that a character can feel this fully realized without every aspect of her life being meticulously planned from the beginning. Perhaps it is a testament to Kawakami’s understanding of human nature, and to her willingness to follow a character wherever her story leads.
Okay, I feel like I’ve dissected Hana’s character a little too much here. But please take this as a testament to my awe at how completely Kawakami has developed her character. As I said, reading Hana’s story feels like following the life of a friend.
What I love most, however, is the ending, particularly the chapters in which Hana is forty. We witness her inner battle and her attempt to make amends for the past. She finally begins to understand that the decisions she made years ago were not simply the result of Kimiko’s influence or manipulation. She, too, wanted to hold on to the warmth she had found for the first time in her life.
That realization makes her past more complicated, but also more human. She can acknowledge the harm that was done without denying her own desires or pretending that she had no agency in the decisions she made.
I honestly cannot imagine a better ending for her. Four thumbs up, Mieko!
That doesn’t mean Sisters in Yellow is perfect, though. In the early chapters, I felt a little cheated. Kawakami seemed to encourage us to imagine all sorts of things about Kimiko, and I was more than ready to cast her as the villain of the story. Yet, as the story unfolds, our understanding of her becomes more complicated, and the certainty I had about her character begins to crumble.
As for the ending, I find it particularly beautiful because it doesn't require Hana to become a completely different person. She is still the woman she has always been, but now she can look back at her younger self with a better understanding of why she made those choices. The possibility of making amends gives her a chance to move forward without having to erase the person she once was.
And perhaps that is why I cried.
This is the first time I have cried while reading Japanese literature. I wasn't necessarily fond of Hana, but I was rooting for her. After following her life for so long, I wanted her to be okay. I felt her heartbreak when she lost someone she loved, watched her lose herself, and hoped she would find a reason to keep living when misfortune continued to come her way.
By the time she reached her revelation, I felt as though I had been following the life of a friend. I knew her mistakes, understood her weaknesses, and could see why she had made the decisions she did. I didn't need her to be perfect. I simply wanted her to have the chance to make things right.
And that is quite something, considering that I never expected to cry over a novel written by Mieko Kawakami.
But was this book better than Kawakami’s previous works? Well, being a page-turner doesn’t necessarily make a book better than its predecessors. It was a thoroughly enjoyable read and a different experience from her other novels. At times, it even brought me back to the feeling of reading Pachinko, with its expansive portrayal of lives shaped by social circumstances and the passage of time.
Still, I think I prefer Breasts and Eggs. That novel resonates with me more deeply, particularly in the way it explores women’s bodies, reproductive choices, and the social expectations placed upon them.
But once again, I find myself in awe of Mieko Kawakami’s brilliance—this time, her ability to create such a complete, deeply human character in Hana..
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