Looking back across the whole work, poverty tourism looms large. Sisters is a bit refreshing for me, even in that overworked and quite sinister milieu, because the list of contemporary Japanese fiction books I’ve read lately deal a lot more with fulfillment and cozy comforts than scrambling for cash and bending the laws to continue to survive. Hana’s slow decent into petty crime is fully reasonable and structurally coherent, but it still sucks to watch her clearly lose herself over and over. If there is a main pulse that Sisters in Yellow lives by, it’s that if you lack even the basic protections of a social system–bank account, ID card–any moment might leave you to the whims of fate…

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