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Paper short abstract

This paper examines Kawakami Mieko’s Sisters in Yellow, where a teenage protagonist assumes caregiving roles within a fragile “family of choice.” The novel depicts how care circulates among young women living in precarity, revealing the structural limits of care in contexts of poverty and exclusion.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines Kawakami Mieko’s Sisters in Yellow (2023), where a runaway teenage protagonist assumes caregiving roles within a fragile “family of choice.” The novel depicts how care circulates among young women living under conditions of precarity, transforming domestic space into a site of both protection and confinement, and revealing the structural limits placed on care in contexts of poverty and exclusion.

Set during the financial downturn of 1990s Tokyo, the novel follows a young protagonist named Hana, who grows up in poverty in a single mother household. Her mother, a bar hostess, is fun and loveable, yet childish and irresponsible, and the responsibility falls on Hana to fend for herself from preparing meals to earning money through minimum wage jobs. When her mother abandons her for a new boyfriend, Hana drops out of school and goes to live with Kimiko, who appears to be an adult figure that would give her the care that she had never received in her life. Together they open a shabby bar called Lemon, where Hana finds happiness and fulfillment for the first time. Yet, it quickly becomes clear that Kimiko has troubles of her own, and her unnamed disability requires care from those around her.

Soon, Hana is living with Kimiko, and two other girls around her age, Ran and Momoko—not blood relations, but a family of choice. The “yellow house” (kiiroi ie) that they share first appears to be a haven, but Hana’s caregiving turns into fanatic control driven by an obsession with money. The fate of Hana and the various women in her life reveal Kawakami’s critique of the neoliberal paradigm, showing that their choices are never actually independent or individual, but deeply embedded in systemic inequality, creating a downward spiral that traps the women in a life of poverty and crime. Yet, it is in the seediest of worlds where Hana finds love and security, no matter how precarious. Through its depictions of various forms of care, Sisters in Yellow questions the meaning of independence and female solidarity for women who exist on the fringes of society.