Just when one can’t take any more, one sees the moonlight. Beauty that seems to infuse itself into the heart: I know about that.” The writer Yukio Mishima, for example, dedicated his life to, via various platforms, mournfully proclaiming the death of his own culture at the hands of westernisation, and finally dedicating the last year of his life to planning his own death by seppuku. Can cooking help you cope with the despondency you feel from loss? I’m not talking about wolfing down garlic mashed potatoes from a pan; I’m talking about a multi-course gourmet meal that you are willing to toss out if it’s not perfect and start all over again. That’s the theme of Kitchen. Our main character is a twentyish-woman who lost her father at an early age and then her mother. She went to live with grandparents but her grandfather died, and then her grandmother, and now she has no living relatives.

Mikage Sakurai — Young Japanese woman. Main character. Struggling with the loss of her grandmother, who was her last surviving relative. She moves in with Yuichi Tanabe and Eriko Tanabe after her grandmother's death.Telkens als ik met hem had afgesproken gebeurde hetzelfde: dan werd ik verdrietig omdat ik was wie ik was During the time that Mikage spends with Eriko and her son, Yuichi, the latter who appeared to be a quiet unassuming person, was slowly transformed into a soul-mate of Mikage which rather stunned her. She felt he knew her very soul. Maybe this is the main idea that Japanese writers aim for. Getting accustomed to one’s own new situation is the foremost rule of survival. The Japanese people are born in a land filled with death, so they have developed their strangely brave and patient characteristics. The same applies to Banana. While writing about disasters and accidents, she is fully aware of the spirit of the Japanese—they are ready to face their challenges calmly. This is how Banana tells the rest of humanity that the Japanese can overcome any injury. However, how do they overcome them? And if so, are they the winner in all cases? Siguiendo con mi costumbre de no alejarme demasiado tiempo de la literatura japonesa, elijo Kichen (1988) la ópera prima de Banana Yosimoto (1964-) para mi lectura. El libro consta de dos novelas cortas independientes (la segunda más breve, casi un cuento), pero con un nexo común: la muerte como tema principal. La muerte y, especialmente, los efectos que ésta causa sobre las personas que rodean a los fallecidos y que sienten un gran afecto por ellos. 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).

I could continue passing on the knowledge this book so kindly imparted on me, but by then I’d have recited the whole thing. Perhaps it’s best for me to stop, and for you to discover it for yourself.Love Exposure – quite insane, probably brilliant, unmissable, but you should be warned that it’s quite insane El mundo no existe sólo para mí. El porcentaje de cosas amargas que me sucedan no variará. Yo no puedo decidirlo. Por eso, comprendí que es mejor ser alegre. Due to the complexity of the layers of metaphor, Banana’s stories seem to barely have any connection, which, in fact, is untrue. Its complexity reaches an advanced level at which the characters themselves can produce different meanings as readers reinterpret and try to relate them to their personal lives. The storyline is written in a postmodernist style, and there are few details to create dramatic conflicts such as in older forms of narrative found in Akutagawa or Mishima’s fiction. However, this does not mean that this story has no conflict. This narrative still maintains conflicts; they appear in the depth of cultural meaning instead of being expressed explicitly, creating forever internal conversations and making the “meanings” of the story change according to how the readers interpret it at different times. Margolis E (2021) How the English language failed Banana Yoshimoto. https://metropolisjapan.com. Accessed 3 Feb 2022

Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto is divided into two stories of love, loss, and hope. It’s one of the most breath-taking pieces of literature I’ve read. The stories’ elegant simplicity feels like a breeze of cold air that can hurt, numb, and refresh. There’s also an element in the writing that feels almost evanescent, a certain transparency that is pure honesty. I wasn’t instantly spell-binded as you might think. It took a while, but when it did, it felt right. Everything was perfectly clear, like looking into a small pond seeing your own reflection and washing your face with its cold clear water. Dore R (1981) Foreword. In: Kato S (ed) A history of Japanese literature, vol 1 (trans: Chibbett D). Kodansha International, Tokyo, New York, London

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Banana also seems to fight against postmodernism. Somehow, she tries to preserve historical memory. Her hybrid narrative reaches beyond postmodernism. Butler wrote, “Frederic Jameson points to a defining sense of the postmodern as ‘the disappearance of a sense of history’ in the culture, a pervasive depthlessness, a ‘perpetual present’ in which the memory of tradition is gone” (Butler, 2002, p. 110). In Kitchen, Japanese tradition is still alive. Disasters: past and present Mensen bezwijken niet onder omstandigheden en krachten van buitenaf, ze worden van binnenuit verslagen, dacht ik uit de grond van mijn hart 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.