Yumoto makes it very clear in her Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards speech that she wrote this novel while thinking about several kinds of problems experienced by adolescents. For example, she describes the difficulties of Japanese children today.

"Five years have passed since I wrote it [The Friends], and in those five years, the issues facing children in Japan have grown ever more serious. Bullying, teenage prostitution, suicide, and increase in vicious juvenile crime." She especially reflects the bullying and harshness that are part of every school child's life in The Friends. But more interesting to her are the effects that changes in modern Japanese culture have had on human relationships. She describes how Japanese children do not seem to value life because they see very few future possibilities for themselves as individuals. "Many of them are filled with a sense of helplessness and despair and consequently...