‘The Three Crabs’ is a story of rootlessness and dissolution set in Vietnam-era America centred around a party and crucial 24 hours in the life of a housewife. It focuses on a group of Japanese diaspora friends – their rivalries, their foibles, their infidelities – but its subject overall is America and what it does to people, culture, and senses of belonging. Sensitively translated, it has subtle shades of Carver after Lish; Fitzgerald, Richard Yates, but a sensibility all its own. If it were a painting, it might be a Hopper; if it were a series, it might be Madmen, but viewed and framed by a Japanese eye.