Kitchen

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Love Exposure – quite insane, probably brilliant, unmissable, but you should be warned that it’s quite insane 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. When you lose someone, a void is created. You seek to fill that hole inside you. Stability is what you desire, because your once solid world of certainties has crumbled. And so we latch onto the most basic things and habits. Constant things we know that will never leave and never fail us: a kitchen, cooking, the road, running, clothing, videos, pictures, songs, books. You lean on that, get strength from the habit till you are strong enough to gamble on more uncertain things. 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?

The hybrid narrative proved to be very attractive to readers. The signs in Kitchen, although used in a hesitant fashion according to postmodernism, are always multimeaningful. The readers can read on the surface of the text that there is a young couple who are finding out about each other to prepare for their possible marriage. However, at a deeper layer of meaning, one can find that the author uses love as a healing process for the painful and scary trauma in the subconsciousness of the Japanese. In a deeper sense, we can realize that it is an effort to escape the loss and loneliness of humanity. Banana Y (2017) Nap bien [Lid of the Sea] (trans: Hoa DT). Writers Association Publishing House, Hanoi 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. I thoroughly agree with her and that magical quality transforms what could have been a rather banal book into a great one. 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.From this cultural archetype, the readers may understand Banana’s intentions when she placed two stories in her book (the stories of Mikage-Yuichi and Satsuki-Hitoshi), which is formally in three parts (Part I includes Kitchen and Full Moon, while part II is Moonlight Shadow). The three short stories are about a grandmother who dies because of her old age, a mother who dies due to a crazy man with an obsession, and a lover who dies due to a traffic accident. Instead of making the reader feel sympathetic to the survivors of these losses, these details lead to the impression that these people live on with their own situations. From a comparative perspective, we can view this as if it is an interior power of a hybrid narrative that is dominated by the impermanence of life.

From this point, it can be concluded that Banana describes traumatic events to let her characters escape and live the life of human beings. The banana creates a series of hardships for her characters to force them to fight for their lives. This is much like prominent writers worldwide, namely, Ernest Hemingway, “But man is not made for defeat. […] A man can be destroyed but not defeated” (Hemingway, 1965, p. 95) or Kobo Abe in The Woman in the Dunes: sand cannot beat human beings (Abe, 1991). Placing humans in hardship is merely a means to make them assert their values. Life has too many pitfalls to prevent people from faltering, but these hardships only make them move faster toward the beautiful destinations of their lives. 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.In Kitchen, Mikage Sakurai had just lost her grandmother, the last person in her family to pass away. Alone in the world and unable to cope with her university schedule, Mikage falls into a bleak existence. One day, a classmate named Yuichi Tanabe invites her to live with him and his mother in their apartment because Mikage's grandmother had a profound effect on him. Although reluctant to accept the kindness, Mikage agrees and the Tanabe's couch becomes her new home. Yuichi Tanabe — Son of Eriko Tanabe. Main character. His mother died of cancer when Yuichi was a very young child. He lives with his loving transgender mother and supports Mikage in her time of grieving. He eventually loses his mother, and relies on emotional support from Mikage. The next day, she offers to cook a feast for Yuichi to cheer him up. Yuichi is enlivened by the idea and rushes out to get the ingredients. Suddenly, Mikage feels heavy as visions of Eriko’s face torment her. Not knowing what to do, Mikage starts to clean the kitchen. As she cleans, she starts to feel better. Although one may notice a certain Western influence in Yoshimoto's style, Kitchen is still critically recognized as an example of contemporary Japanese literature; The Independent, The Times, and The New Yorker have all reviewed the novel favorably. Those women lived their lives happily. They had been taught, probably by caring parents, not to exceed the boundaries of their happiness regardless of what they were doing. But therefore they could never know real joy. Which is better? Who can say?