Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway also incorporates this kind of circular character arch. In that novel the protagonist, a high-society housewife living in post-WWI London named Clarissa, spends a whole day planning a party. She has a social role, and despite the numerous memories of her free youth and opportunities to defect from the social order detailed throughout the novel, Clarissa returns to her party at the story’s end out her own conviction.

The question remains the same — is this a happy, or hollow ending?

An argument for the happy ending is that throughout both novels, the main characters actively affirm their social roles rather than passively occupy them. That is, Keiko becomes aware of how society looks down on her through Shiraha, and returns to the convenience store of her volition. Affirming the meaning of their work by emphasizing the value of choice is the same as these women affirming life.

The hollow ending camp sees this as self-delusional since, just looking at the facts, both characters never escape their respective systems of oppression. Clarissa remains jailed in her dying marriage and the patriarchal expectations of a housewife. Keiko flees society and shelters herself in the gears of modern capitalism and commodification. The idea of “choice” then, is merely subterfuge, a tool to make women feel like they’ll never truly belong.

Maybe the progression is one of alienation, rather than self-actualization. After all, the difference between the Keiko at the end with Keiko at the beginning is that the former no longer feels ashamed of her work, and can immerse herself fully into the rhythms of the convenience store without external influences. Clarissa too, both inhabits and breaks the bonds of her social situation by showing care to everything and everyone in her life.