For a novel narrating a series of pivotal events in a teenage girl’s life, the absence of references to its protagonist’s social and family circle makes White Reminiscences seem like an anomaly. Among other things Ōnogi narrates in often overindulgent detail, we’re told that Misa attended Toyo Eiwa Elementary School and the first two years of Toyo Eiwa Junior High School. In these eight years (ten, if we also count the two years of kindergarten – if she attended one, which is very likely), she’s bound to have made friends from school and her neighborhood, with some being her best friends.