Tokyo Ueno Station

Much of the novel revolves around poverty. In addition to Kazu’s story, Yu Miri describes the various ways that people find themselves unhoused, detailing both personal choices and external factors. Through Kazu, she also shows the impact of financial struggles on mental health, particularly for those born into generational poverty.

In his younger years, Kazu’s family struggled to make ends meet. His father had been a laborer and had strived to do whatever he could to make sure his family’s basic needs were met. One of Kazu’s first jobs was helping his father gather clams, but since there were so many others like his father, eventually, this source of meager income dried up. Kazu recalls his father having to fall into debt and the many ways the man tried to get himself out from under it. Often, he would hide from his creditors, leaving Kazu to lie to them. Of this, Kazu says,

I thought what a thing of sin poverty was, that there could be nothing more sinful than forcing a small child to lie. The wages of that sin were poverty, a wage that one could not endure, leading one to sin again, and as long as one could not pull oneself out of poverty, the cycle would repeat until death (39).