Kitchen

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Kitchen and its accompanying story Moonlight Shadow comprise the first novella by award winning Japanese novelist Banana Yoshimoto. Both stories are told through the eyes of young women grieving following the death of a loved one, and deal with how that death plays a profound role in relationships going forward. Told in straight forward prose leaving nothing to chance, Yoshimoto tells two elegant stories. If this is the much celebrated minimalist prose that won so many awards, I dread the thought of her attempt at detailed long fiction. Months pass and Eriko is murdered at her club. The tables turn and Mikage helps Yuichi cope with his loss. Their relationship continues to center around food, and Yoshimoto paints a vivid picture of their life with her description of food and colors as well as Mikage's dreams that determine which life path that she should take. Although both Mikage and Yuichi appear to have bleak existences, their story ends with the reader feeling hopeful that they have finally turned the corner. I really needed this. Oftentimes we read books, they touch us and we cry but after a few hours it’s completely out of mind. Sometimes though, just sometimes we encounter a book that touches us so directly that it isn’t readily manifested by external emotions. This book is one of those. I didn’t cry, but I suffered. The last paragraph is nothing but one of the most beautiful things I have ever read. It stirred something inside me and after reading I felt a deep tranquility. I felt at peace. It seemed like a heavy burden was lifted from me and after, a delicious calm radiated through me. It still does. As a matter of course, the Japanese suffered defeat many times. Even writers as great as Mishima and Kawabata sought death by suicide. These people are, in some ways, the quintessence of Japan, but from another perspective, they are out of line with the Japanese tradition. Have they drained all their soul and strength for their immortal characters to the point where they no longer want to live?

Modernists view the world in binary, divided opposition, whereas postmodernists view the world as a unity of oppositions. With modernism, men are men, and women are women; there is no such thing as a woman living with a male biological nature. Banana’s postmodern vision offers a unique “hybridity” to her character’s image. Eriko/Yuji is a genderfluid character. Banana uses them to defy traditional notions of masculinity, affirming the role of women. This character’s gender identity manifests just how people freely express their gender. However, the death of Eriko/Yuji, on the one hand, shows the traditional Japanese conception of ephemeral beauty, expressed by authors such as Kawabata or Mishima; on the other hand, the moment represents the fierceness of modernist views against the genderfluidity of postmodernism. Sometimes, no matter how intensely I would be staring at him, I would have the feeling that Hitoshi wasn’t there” (p. 111). How does Yoshimoto craft this elegant, eerie tale? What early hints does she drop that we are on the edge of a paranormal experience? The sudden death of loved ones is a unifying aspect of both stories. They all find awkward support from each other, and one finds solace in kitchens and food, another in jogging (and the river that had divided them, been their meeting place, and was ultimately where they were separated for ever).

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The Japan of the boom era is represented by shopping as therapy, contrasted with the rural rituals in respect to a dead grandmother. Margolis E (2021) How the English language failed Banana Yoshimoto. https://metropolisjapan.com. Accessed 3 Feb 2022 She turns to her kitchen. But she is also invited to live with the family of a young man she has known since childhood. Now here’s a modern family: just two people, the young man and his mother. But did I tell you his father is his mother? Or, to phrase that more correctly, his mother is his father? It’s a transgender situation. The two young people are drawn to each other but then he is hit by loss. They grapple with trying to help each other, maybe love each other, or maybe just pity each other, and try to stop each other from jumping over the edge. The sudden deaths of beloved others also appear in many of Banana’s other works. Traditional Japanese writers are keenly aware of the mortality of humans. In Lid of the sea, the death of the grandmother drastically changed the fate of Hajime or in The Lake, the narrator Chihiro, a woman going on 30, also felt very sad after the death of her mother. Banana expresses Chihiro’s haunting loneliness in a thoughtful and simple style, just as Orthofer observed, “Presented in typical Yoshimoto-fashion, the style deceptively artless, the account seemingly straightforward and simple, the characters adrift” (Orthofer, 2011).

We’ve all had that ‘what if?’ thought. Perhaps it’s about a missed job opportunity or a potential partner we never had the courage to ask out. These are big things that slip through our fingers. We sometimes wish away a bad day at work, only to then be faced with the realisation that this day is one of a finite number we have. Fuminobu M (2005) Postmodern, feminist and postcolonial currents in contemporary Japanese culture: a reading of Murakami Haruki, Yoshimoto Banana, Yoshimoto Takaaki and Karatani Kojin. Routledge, New York I realized that the world did not exist for my benefit,’ Eriko tells Mikage, ‘ It followed that the ratio of pleasant and unpleasant things around me would not change. It wasn't up to me.’ Life will always be hard, but finding love and happiness must still go on and we must always get up and keep going. ‘ Why is it we have so little choice? We live like the lowliest worms. Always defeated - defeated we make dinner, we eat, we sleep. Everyone we love is dying. Sill, to cease living is unacceptable.’ Both stories have a dash of this. In the first, it's a dream that might be a premonition; in the second, there's an ethereal character who (maybe) shows another character a little gap in time.The hybrid narrative is multimeaningful. The story about a tiny kitchen depicts a clear way in which the Japanese people overcome hardship together. In the adorable plots of Mikage and Yuichi, it seems that they are in love; in fact, the relationship between them is just human care, which is greater than any form of romantic love. The fact that Yuichi invites Mikage to stay at his house comes from a genuinely humane gesture during her hard time. Therefore, when Yuichi’s mother dies, Mikage switches her position with Yuichi to help him with the same suffering. From Kitchen, the readers can realize that humans usually have to overcome challenges that are out of their control. During this lonely time, one always needs some form of caring from other people to light up the dark paths. This perspective influences the whole story. Both Yuichi’s lover and Mikage’s boyfriend cannot determine what kind of relationship exists between the two protagonists. These two supporting characters are simply selfish: they are not capable of comprehending the protagonists’ hardships. People also need to respect the pricelessness of humane care more than the daily love stories of immature young people. She graduated from Nihon University's Art College, majoring in Literature. During that time, she took the pseudonym "Banana" after her love of banana flowers, a name she recognizes as both "cute" and "purposefully androgynous." Interpreting the influence of Japanese culture on the world in the first half of the 20th century, Dore confirmed, “Japanese Zen has become the archetypal form of Buddhism for the questing, alternative-culture-seeking youth of Europe and North America” (Dore, 1981, p. x). In our opinion, Banana’s hybrid narrative will become the style that many writers will imitate in the world. Viewing postmodern society from a traditional perspective, Banana has created a writing style that covers many issues not only of the current era or of exclusively Japan. The writer has planted in the reader’s heart a desire to live honestly and tolerantly. Truly great people emit a light that warms the hearts of those around them. When that light has been put out, a heavy shadow of despair descends. Perhaps Eriko's was only a minor kind of greatness, but her light was sorely missed.

When I finished this tale, I thought of love won and then lost, tragedy, pain, and suffering that I had just encountered but then beauty, hope and optimism are also there. What a marvellous mix.Love Exposure – quite insane, probably brilliant, unmissable, but you should be warned that it’s quite insane