Reviewed by Juliana Buriticá Alzate
Mieko Kawakami’s latest novel, Sisters in Yellow, is loosely framed by the COVID-19 pandemic, though the main story unfolds in the 1990s, after the economic “bubble” bursts and recession sets in, emphasizing the intersection between gender and precarity. The novel addresses unemployment, poverty, “solitary deaths” (kodokushi), and the care crisis in an ageing society—preexisting structural issues further exacerbated by the pandemic. Kawakami’s novel is as personal as it is political and, I would suggest, could be read as a call for a feminist ethics of care: an approach to care as interdependent, relational, contextual and intersectional.
The Japanese book cover stands out with its deep ocean-blue background, yellow lettering, and yellow paint-textured house. Its Japanese title, Kiiroi ie, meaning “Yellow House,” is accompanied by its English standing title Sisters in Yellow, printed in smaller text. The novel was published in Japanese in 2023, but it was initially serialized in the Yomiuri Shimbun in 2021-2022. English-language readers get the complete version, brilliantly co-translated by Laurel Taylor and Hitomi Yoshio. The English cover in my hand is more playful: with yellow text popping against a light pink and black background, alongside an illustration of a glass with a lemon inside.
There is plenty of yellow on both covers, and after reading, there is a chance you may begin noticing yellow everywhere or even feel tempted to paint your own house yellow. From Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz’s yellow brick road to the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine, Coldplay’s Yellow, and even the author herself, Mieko Kawakami wearing a yellow dress for a profile in Vogue Japan. In Colombia, where I come from, people wear new yellow underwear to welcome the New Year and attract wealth and prosperity. Yellow is the color of gold, symbolizing money and fortune; yellow is the color of the sun, symbolizing light and vitality; and yellow is the color of lemons, symbolizing both the bright and sour sides of life. Kawakami gestures toward all these meanings, though perhaps the strongest wink is to Van Gogh’s sense of belonging at the Yellow House and his dream of turning the yellow corner-building into a community of artists living and working together. If we were to combine both the Japanese and English titles, we would end up with Sisters in a Yellow House. The title promises a focus on sisterhood, and it is a promise kept. This novel toys as much with yellow as with sisters. Four unrelated women from different backgrounds end up creating a sisterhood of sorts.
The first-person narrator, Hana Ito, often finds herself disappointed by life yet keeps moving forward. For example, “I was so scared, I didn’t know what to do. Furious at the world, at myself. I was hyperventilating, and my head hurt so bad I thought it was about to split open. I kept crying and crying” (46). The translation by Taylor and Yoshio takes us into Hana’s inner world. We witness how she is knocked down time and again, and we root for her each time she rises. This is Hana’s coming-of-age journey: a survival story of precarity, tough choices, of chasing the dream of a ‘good’ fortune clinging to some Feng Shui, and of navigating the complex bonds of female friendship.
Hana’s first bond is with Kimiko Yoshikawa, a friend of her mother, who works as a hostess. Their relationship could be read through a mother-daughter angle, as at times Kimiko seems to fill in for Hana’s often absent mother. Together, Kimiko and Hana eventually open “Lemon,” a bar in the quiet neighborhood of Sangenjaya. Later, Hana meets Ran Kato, a beauty school dropout working as a hostess at a nearby club, and Momoko Tamamori, a privileged schoolgirl rebelling against her family. Hana is the one who brings them together, and the four of them become a source of endurance and hope for one another as they attempt to face (or avoid) their own hardships. Their sisterhood complicates precarity, caring, and agency, which is symbolized by their quest for a “yellow house,” by their shared longing for a sense of belonging, for a place they could call home.
Let me share with you what yellow means to the sisters in this book. Kimiko and Hana build a Yellow Corner in their home: “Simply by being yellow, they held a special power, giving us courage and comfort” (83). Hana’s first friendship bracelet, from Ran and Momoko, is a yellow one, of course, and she places it in their Yellow Corner. When Hana is anxious, she returns to this corner: “I took the time to pick up each object in the Yellow Corner and then put it back in its place, and then I did it again, trying to calm myself” (183). It could be seen as the spiritual and material rendering of “when life gives you lemons,” of holding on, of choosing to believe.
Kawakami has written a page-turner that at times reads like a crime-thriller while offering a critical look at the social realities of the 1990s marked by the onset of an economic recession, with organized crime lurking in the background and financial pressures conditioning everyday life. Crime in Japan: another taboo. Women committing crime: another gendered taboo. Exciting drama unfolds in Tokyo’s underworld as we root for Hana and her partners in crime—Yeongsu, trustworthy and mysterious, and Viv, unfazed and composed. Hana’s newly found sisters are thrown into this world, as Kawakami articulates female friendship without idealizing it. These bonds are tested by the male-dominated urban nightlife and by luck, both good and bad. Their friendship seems to be also shaped by the absent father figures, unstable homes, and violent partners. And yet, the greatest threat to their success lies within themselves, in their internalized voices of self-doubt and sabotage.
Serious subjects are paired with humor—a key feature of Kawakami’s narrative style. A dream with Titanic’s Leo, Nostradamus, pagers, new slang, nicknames, swearing, karaoke booths, beers, and more add layers to the atmosphere of the 1990s in Tokyo. The translation brings us there, sustains this humor, coining words like ‘traumatisch,’ which capture the singular world of Hana. And each character inhabiting this world is carefully drawn, and their distinct voice and traits come through vividly in the translation: from shady Snoozy and Tommy Cat to La Belle Kotomi, Gon-chama, and Jin-ji’s strong Osakan accent.
Another interesting feature of Sisters in Yellow is perspective.The first-person narration allows readers to delve deeply into Hana’s inner world and the world around her. Readers can easily imagine that, if the story were told from a different perspective, say Kimiko’s, Ran’s, or Momoko’s, or by an omniscient, third-person narrator we would get an entirely different story. I love this. Kawakami gives us a masterclass in storytelling, reminding readers that there are multiple sides to every story, that narratives are always partial, and that narrators are never fully reliable, as they are conditioned by their own traumas, desires, and values.
This is a novel of novels, in which Kawakami’s recurring questions are woven throughout the narrative: the personal lives of women and their bodies, philosophical ruminations on what it means to live and survive, the feminist tension between predetermination and agency, and the societal pressures of capitalism and neoliberalism. It may feel like an entirely new way of writing for Kawakami, yet readers familiar with her writing will likely identify her distinctive voice and signature questions throughout. And those who have not yet read her writing could very well start here. This is Kawakami at her finest, and the English translation conveys intense feeling while balancing vivid everyday expression with poetic language. I will carry with me Hana’s continued prayers to her yellow objects, her hope that all would be okay (273). There are tears, fear, and death throughout these pages, but also hope. A hope that at times flickers and at times shines brighter yet never disappears.
Kawakami, Mieko. Sisters in Yellow. Translated by Laurel Taylor and Hitomi Yoshio, Knopf, 2026.
Juliana Buriticá Alzate is a researcher in Japanese literature and gender and sexuality studies, as well as a literary translator (Japanese to Spanish). She worked as Departmental Lecturer in Modern Japanese Literature in the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Oxford, UK (from 2022 -2025), where she currently holds a research affiliation. She completed her Ph.D. in Japanese literature at International Christian University in 2017, where she is a Research Fellow at the university’s Center for Gender Studies. Her research brings together queer and feminist theory to explore representations of mothering and related embodied experiences in contemporary Japanese fiction, particularly in the works of Kawakami Mieko, Murata Sayaka, Kirino Natsuo, and Itō Hiromi, on which she has published academic articles and book chapters. She has also translated Matsuda Aoko’s Where the Wild Ladies Are into Spanish (Quaterni 2022). She is currently working on a project related to making translation visible and feminist ethics of care.