Kitchen

Jim Fonseca

Rating: really liked it
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.

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.



This very short novel has a short story appended at the end: Moonlight Shadow. This story, also about loss, and it could be the same woman, takes us into magical realism. Maybe they do come back, at least to tell you they’re ok.

I found the two stories very moving and fascinating to read. Translated from the Japanese.

Photo: Model of a Japanese kitchen, ca. 1880, from peabody.harvard.edu

Brina

Rating: really liked it
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.

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.

Mikage becomes rooted in the kitchen. It becomes her compass by which she compares all homes that she has ever entered. Upon arriving, she takes over cooking for Yuichi and his mother Eriko, a transvestite who runs an all night club. Both lead busy lives and emit positive energy, encouraging Mikage to engage in her newfound passion of cooking. The three make up a new family unit until Mikage can recover from all the death around her.

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.

These dreams segue to Yoshimoto's second story, Moonlight Shadow. Satsuki is only twenty years old when her boyfriend of four years Hitoshi passes away in a tragic accident. Unable to cope, she turns to jogging in order to push away sad thoughts. Hitoshi's brother Hiirage who is also coping with the death in his own way attempts to pull Satsuki out of her destitute life, yet to no avail. Eventually a stranger named Urara appears and tells Satsuki of a phenomenon that could end her pain at once. This leads to a denouement in which Yoshimoto gives Satsuki hope for her future.

Banana Yoshimoto has been a leading Japanese novelist for the past thirty years. Her first two stories contrast the pain of death for the living with their hope for a brighter future. Using luscious imagery of food and dreams, Yoshimoto creates vivid scenes in which the living should be happy to be alive. These two stories compliment each other perfectly and rate 4 bright stars.

Cecily

Rating: really liked it
Important Note: When I read this in 2015, I took GR's publication date of 2001 at face value. However, it was first published in Japanese in 1988. Had I realised it was so long ago, I would have read it as a historical piece and not been distracted and annoyed by the portrayal of trans characters which was probably daringly progressive back then. Nevertheless, this review stands as my experience of reading the book, though I'm uprating to 2*.

"People aren't overcome by situations or outside forces; defeat invades from within."

I didn't like this book. It comprises a novella (Kitchen) and short story (Moonlight Shadow), but I'm not sure how much is the book's fault, and how much can be attributed to being set in an unfamiliar culture (Japanese teens/twenties), possibly bad translation, and that although the atmosphere is contemporary, it was actually written and set nearly 30 years ago.

I was expecting lyrical language, and quirky insights into Japanese attitudes to death and LGBTQ issues. I was sadly disappointed, but kept going because it was short and because I gave up part way through my previous book (something I rarely do).

Language: Teens and Translation

The weaknesses here made me sad. Both stories are narrated by a (different) young woman. The language is often simple, but rather than the spare beauty I vaguely associate with Japanese and Chinese writing, it's mostly just banal and awkward. That may be how angst-ridden, love-up, bereaved Japanese YAs really speak (or spoke, 30 years ago) or it may be the translation, but the result is the same.

After a particularly egregious section of stilted psychobabble, one character says, "What kind of talk is that? Sounds like it was translated from English." I guess the author is aware of how clunky it is. Odd.

"It's amazing how good this is," I said.
"Isn't it," said Hiiraji.
"Yes, it's delicious. So delicious it makes me grateful I'm alive," I said.

Another: "Why do I love everything that has to do with kitchens so much?... a kitchen represents some distant longing engraved on my soul." Does anyone think like that? (And it doesn't answer the question anyway.)

Metaphors must be hard to translate, but this one is so mixed up, I grudgingly admire it: "The two of us, alone, were flowing down that river of light, suspended in the cosmic darkness, and were approaching a critical juncture."

Maybe YAs would relate to the characters better than I did (I have no idea), but I'd be reluctant to recommend it to them because of the next problem...

Transgender is not Transvestite

The weaknesses here made me cross. Anyone concerned with LGBTQ issues (especially trans ones) may feel the urge to throw this book at the wall. One has to remember it's a different culture, a generation ago, but the trouble is, it doesn't feel like a historical novel.

One young man takes to wearing his dead girlfriend's sailor-suit school uniform. He finds that comforting (and no one would think it odd for a girl to wear a boyfriend's jumper); a female friend is "mortified" to be seen with him, but other girls find it attractive because they assume it means he understands women. Not exactly enlightened views, but plausible, perhaps. However, they're not challenged, which tacitly condones them.

Worse, is the trans character. She's much loved and sympathetically portrayed, but the terminology is muddled and descriptions would raise eyebrows and hackles nowadays. Early on, she is described as having "had everything 'done', from her face to her whatever", but she is often referred to as "really" being a man or a transvestite. Then it turns out that it was only when her wife died that she realised "I didn't like being a man... It became clear that the best thing to do was to adopt a sort of muddled cheerfulness. So I became a woman." Really?! Just like that? To be cheerfully muddled?!

Finding Solace after Bereavement

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).

"I felt that I was the only person alive and moving in a world brought to a stop. Houses always feel like that after someone has died."

If I had lost a parent, partner or child, maybe I'd have been more engaged with this book, but I suspect my experience would be so different as to be barely comparable. I'm grateful that I'm not in the position to compare.

Still, this helpfully explains that losing a partner is even worse than losing a dog or a bird! So I've learned something.

Depth?

There were glimpses of something deeper. When overtly self-analytical, I don't think they worked, but some were genuinely poignant and thought-provoking.

Mikage was an orphan, raised by her grandmother: "I was always aware that my family consisted of only one other person. The space that cannot be filled, no matter how cheerfully a child and an old person live together - the deathly silence that, panting in the corner of the room, pushes its way in like a shudder." (The punctuation is a little odd, though.)

Reality, Magical Realism, Dreams

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.


Quote

* "Far off in the pale sky, thin clouds gently flowed, suspended."

* "It was the kind of frozen morning in which mood shadows seem to be pasted on the sky."

* "She was someone whose face told you nothing."

* "The little girl, whose face epitomized 'grandchild'."

* "Her power was the brilliance of her charm" which "condemned her to an ice-cold loneliness."

* "The sound of raindrops began to fall in the transparent stillness of the evening."

* Traditional housewives "had been taught, probably by caring parents, not to exceed the boundaries of their happiness".

* "On the deserted bridge, with the city misted over by the blue haze of dawn, my eyes absently followed the white embankment that continued on to who knows where. I rested, enveloped by the sound of the current."

* "I want to continue living with the awareness that I will die. Without that, I am not alive." Hmmm.

Jason Pettus

Rating: really liked it
Oh, let's face it; I love everything Banana Yoshimoto's ever written! But that said, she's not for everyone; she's a minimalist storyteller, at least in my opinion, able to turn the emotional state of the right reader with the flick of just one beautiful perfect phrase, but only if you're ready to catch that beautiful perfect phrase and appreciate it for what it is. Give up on this review yet? Then you shouldn't be reading Yoshimoto! Actually consisting of two novellas, Kitchen (named after the better of the two) is the story of 1990s urban life in Japan, full of quirky postmodern characters right at the beginning of an age where the Web let everyone on the planet understand that. If you liked the movie "Amelie," you'll love the sparse, haunting story of a hurt woman being told here, who slowly learns to trust the world again through the relative warmth of urban kitchens; like I said, the finale can be heartbreaking if you let it. Oh, just read any of Yoshimoto's books, seriously!

Jr Bacdayan

Rating: really liked it
This is a book on healing, a lovely look at the hurting human heart and its captivating reflection. Convalescence has never been so beautiful. One has to admit that the theme of loss in literature has been one of the most exploited and has been done so masterfully by the best. But never have I encountered one on recovery where it has been handled as exquisitely.

“Everyone we love is dying. Still, 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.

Hurt is ice. It melts; it turns to water that evaporates into thin air. But ice takes time to melt, tear by tear. There is nothing you can do but wait, and so you do. Until the time when the coldness is gone and you sigh and inhale the air that was once pain.

“In a downpour of blessings, I prayed, as though it were a hymn: Let me become stronger.”

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.

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.

I feel light. I feel like flying, soaring.

The worst is yet to come, but I feel hope.

s.penkevich

Rating: really liked it
‘Truly happy memories always live on, shining. Over time, one by one, they come back to life.’

Memory winds its way down the back alleys of our lives casting shadow plays in the corridors like moonlight. A tragedy in life is that we don’t always appreciate what we had until we look back on it, seeing diamonds in the rough in even our darkest days. While romancing hard times is problematic, realizing the beauty that hid even then is a wonderful reflection. Personally, my biggest moments of growth came in the worst, saddest, hungriest of times for me, and while I do not miss them or wish them on anyone, I can fondly recognize the beauty that always lurked out of sight. Kitchen, the 1988 novel that made Banana Yoshimoto an international success with the 1993 English translation by Megan Backus, examines hard times and the ways we realize our growth in retrospect, learning the hard truths about life and embracing their difficult realities in order to press on. Overall, Kitchen is an endlessly quotable and charming little book even if a touch of overly sentimental but unfortunately troubling when it comes to the depiction of its trans character, even if she is a beloved and emotional center of the book (more on this later). Still, there is a heart to this story of a young girl learning to become her own person, find her passion and fall in love, all told in some elegant prose.

‘Again and again I will suffer; again and again I will get back on my feet. I will not be defeated. I won't let my spirit be destroyed.’

‘The one charm about the past is that it is the past,’ Oscar Wilde said. Removed from us, we can safely access what occurred and learn from it. But the past can still hurt, and often does as the characters in Kitchen discover. Mikage has been orphaned with the loss of her parents at a young age and now her grandparents. She moves in with Yoichi, a boy her age that her grandmother was fond of when seeing him working at the flower shop she frequented, and Yoichi’s mother, Eriko. The three of them form a found-family and live peacefully together, growing and bonding. But it isn’t until looking back that Mikage realizes how much those moments meant to her, especially once Eriko is sadly gone.

While reading this I came across an album review for the new Taylor Swift by Brandon Taylor, author of Real Life that had a line that really resonated with me and this book. He mentions that Swift can ‘ tap into some larger cultural idea of the breakup itself: the misaligned fake admiration of a toxic relationship.’ When discussing the ways we look back on hard times and notice the beauty, it is easy to do this, which in itself is fairly toxic similar to the ways literary fans have had to have the conversation on not romanticizing mental illness. Yoshimoto manages to navigate this well, as Mikage can recognize her moments of growth, the love she felt living with Eriko and Yoichi, miss all these things, but still not romanticize the pain she was suffering both then and in her present. Which is, ultimately, an indication of maturity.

‘Just when one can't take anymore, one sees the moonlight. Beauty that seems to infuse itself into the heart: I know about that.’

The narrative to Kitchen is fairly ingenious in the way that it is told from the before and after of their times together. It leaves all the events to be recounted in the form of memory, so we witness the emotional reckoning with events in hindsight at the same time we learn of them, doubling their emotional impact. This also helps highlight their moments of beauty, and what is more beautiful than identifying moments of growth. ‘I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time,’ wrote Virginia Woolf, ‘it expands later.’ What the characters learn is how sadness and hard times shaped them because they were able to roll with them and keep on keeping on.

‘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.’

There is a lightness and glowing charm to a book that deals so heavily in death and loss. Eriko is gone, which leaves a hole in everyone, but Mikage must move on and help people like Yoichi do the same. Eriko will always exist in her memory, and she is safe and perfect there. In a book that deals so much with memory, we are reminded how tragic it is to lose memory. This is why something like Alzheimers is so unbearably sad. When Mikage speaks to Chika, who works at the club Eriko owned, what saddens her most is that Chika says ‘I can’t believe in the gods. We’ll never see dear Eriko again, and I can’t bear it.’ While, sure, the idea in belief in an afterlife means seeing those we loved again, but it also is often implied that in the afterlife we remember our time spent on earth. If Chika can’t believe in the gods, and can’t believe in the afterlife, it would seem Chika may believe in death as finality where all memory of life evaporates. This is tragic to Mikage, though she doesn’t express why, as so much of the beauty in her life is digging up the beauty in memory.

All this said, the handling of Eriko in the book is rather frustrating and almost lead me to abandon it. Eriko is trans, and Yoshimoto seems to constantly remind you ‘she used to be a man’. Which is just uncool. Granted this was 1988 and was probably progressive at the time, though other novels have approached trans identity. If it was just at the beginning I wouldn’t be as bothered, but it is relentless. And this is about the character that is the emotional centerpiece of the novel. Yoichi frequently reminds Mikage of her dead name and the level of passing the women at the club have is remarked upon as if their most defining trait. Granted, the discourse we have now wasn’t around at the time, but it still seems worth mentioning as it will definitely offend some. Eriko being trans is passed off as she simply decided she didn’t want to be a man, which seems to sidestep a lot of emotional aspects that would have fit really well into the novel. While it was nice to see a trans character be openly embraced, the handling left so much to be desired and irked me.

‘Everyone we love is dying. Still, to cease living is unacceptable.’

Kitchen is an emotional roller coaster and an effective coming-of-age novel. It is a book that will likely have few pages without underlining. This is a book about embracing loss, change, and all the hardships that life can throw at you and turning them into something good. Like Mikage’s cooking. In the depths of her sorrows, she was able to mix the ingredients of her life into something lovely, be it food or friendship. Both, it seems, tended to happen in the kitchen for her.

3.5/5

‘As I grow older, much older, I will experience many things, and I will hit rock bottom again and again. Again and again I will suffer; again and again I will get back on my feet. I will not be defeated. I won't let my spirit be destroyed.’

TK421

Rating: really liked it
One of the many things I love about goodreads is that a person is able to see what other “friends” think about a novel before committing oneself to reading it. I would have never read KITCHEN had I not seen that Mariel, Oriana, and Jason Pettus, three of my friends, all thought highly of this slim book.

But, even with the high ratings of these three “friends”, I still had to find out information about Banana Yoshimoto, the author. So I went to Wikipedia (obviously, where else would I go?) and read about her accomplishments and many literary awards in her home country of Japan. It seemed there was a phase lovingly referred to as Bananamania both in the US and in Japan. Then, just as I had decided that perhaps this book was not worth moving to the top of my TBR pile, I saw that Yoshimoto had outspokenly said that she aims to win the Nobel Prize in literature. (I loved this bravado!) Most critics don’t see this as happening, saying she is a “lightweight.” Well, I put what the critics had to say aside and began reading this novel.

And I have to say I loved the use of a kitchen as a metaphor for life and life’s daily interactions. When you stop to think about it, there are a lot of events that happen in a kitchen over the course of the day. I had never stopped to give this much thought. (In graduate school I did read some essays by a sociologist and anthropologist team that ventured across Europe studying bathrooms as a way to see into a country’s culture.) But if the kitchen metaphor was only a stand-a-lone point of the story, the book would have floundered. So Yoshimoto supplies whatever actions happen in a kitchen (home, apartment, restaurant, even the simple act of eating as communion) with direct language that is sparse, beautiful, and laden with underlying messages. You see, the real question of this novel is: What does love mean to a person when it becomes absent in one’s life?

This is an incredibly difficult question to answer, for both the characters in the story as well as for the reader. In the story, Mikage loses her grandmother and is then invited to stay with Eriko (a transvestite) and her (his) son, Yuichi. For the most part, this piecemeal family goes about its daily interactions as any “normal” family would. That is until tragedy strikes. I won’t spoil what happens, but let’s just say Mikage loses again, along with some other characters. It is at this point that the reader takes on a new role: one of participant. There are several choices that the reader must make: 1) stop reading; 2) allow the events to play out and continue reading; or 3) believe in the tragedy and get lost in the story. I chose number 3. And even though I have no basis of understanding to compare to these characters, I felt their pain, the confusion, the moments of helplessness that teeter precariously on the edge of hopelessness.

Perhaps it would be easy to label this as just a sentimental novel by an overrated novelist—but that may be missing the point. This is a powerful novel if allowed to be read as a powerful novel. It tries to give answers to difficult questions. Sometimes the novel succeeds. Sometimes it fails, even, dare I say, becomes hokey. But all of that can be whitewashed over by the simple notion that this novel achieves what other great novels achieve: the ability to be whatever the reader wants it to be.

I cannot say that Banana Yoshimoto will be a contender for the Nobel Prize, but I can say that she delivers a strong argument for being one of the great writers currently writing today.

VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Jaidee

Rating: really liked it
2 " quirky, lazy, sloppy" stars !!

I wanted to like this book very much. In the end, I couldn't !

Poor writing, incongruent character psychologies and inane dialogue took any enjoyment away from a rather sweet melancholy love story.

Another little novella was included in this volume (Moonlight Shadow). I do not have the patience nor the stamina to read it.

Paul Bryant

Rating: really liked it
I did a quick audit of my Japanese cultural input and came up with the following :

MOVIES

Tokyo Story – beautiful acknowledged masterpiece
Nobody Knows – great indy
Kikujiro – worth watching
Love Exposure – quite insane, probably brilliant, unmissable, but you should be warned that it’s quite insane
Visitor Q – er, probably avoid this one! Really gross.
Seven Samurai – may be the greatest film ever, if there is such a thing

WESTERN PERSPECTIVES

Babel – brilliant film, but the Tokyo part is strange & uncomfortable
Lost in Translation – what planet was everyone else on? This was a snoozefest. If you haven’t seen it, count yourself fortunate

NOVELS

In the Miso Soup – Ryu Murakami – yeah, I liked this
A Personal matter – Oe – yeah, I HATED this
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by the other Marukami guy – I LOVED this because it was so easy to parody and gave me my top scoring review (While I was reading it was a different story)

MUSIC

Absolutely NOTHING

And now to add to this very small Japanese input, Kitchen, a tender sprig of a novel. It was kind of goofy, kind of nice, kind of weirdly translated. Kind of sad. Had a transgendered person and a transvestite. Had a lot of food. If I write any more of this review it’ll be longer than the novel. But basically, I need more Japanese stuff. Recommendations welcome.

Sarah

Rating: really liked it
This is, hands down, the worst thing I've read in recent years.

Let's start with the translation, because that is largely to blame for my utter disgust. The prose is terrible. Awkward, contradictory, inconsistent, hackneyed and immature. (Apparently not so in the original Japanese which has been hailed as poetic and lyrical. Even given my limited knowledge of Japanese, I can see how this would be the case.) This is what I would expect from an electronic translator, e.g. google-translate and its ilk. Though the work has been proofread appropriately for a work destined for mass distribution, (the only glaring errors are an inability to distinguish between the colon and the semi-colon, and an army of commas deployed across each page splicing at random.) I suspect that it was never edited for content.

There are simple errors in translation that can only result from using a bilingual electronic dictionary that provides a list of approximate synonyms rather than actual definitions. This is something I would expect from someone struggling to write in a second language, but it seems that Megan Backus is a native speaker of English. (I am guessing, though perhaps her first language is neither Japanese nor English?) Her errors are nothing less than sloppy, and the fact that they escaped the editing process is embarrassing. Words like 'suddenly' 'though' 'as if' 'ironically' and 'actually' are dispersed at random. The only attempt to acknowledge the intricate Japanese system of honorific and casual verb forms seems to be the use of swears paired with exclamation marks. Words in Japanese that have more than one possible English meaning are translated not only incorrectly, but inconsistently. (The Japanese '笑' could be 'smile' or 'laugh' in English. Maybe it is not a huge distinction, but when a character 'smiles' at something his friend says and then can't stop shaking it creates the impression of an unbalanced or perhaps epileptic person when, in the original, the character was simply laughing.) Even the friendly Japanese exclamatory 'えええ' has been translated with an inappropriate emotional volume. In response to a ringing phone: “[Mikage] answered it. 'Aaaah!' screamed a high, thin voice. 'Mikage, dear? How have you been?'” This accounts, I suspect, for a huge amount of the inconsistencies in the prose, and for characters that vacillate wildly between contradictory and inappropriate emotions. Japanese is a context dependent language. A translator who can't be bothered to acknowledge multi-sentence discourse is not ready to translate prose. Instead, she has given us characters who emote passionately, overreact wildly, and then are described as cold, hard-to-read, independent and stoic. (or vice versa) The only character that displays a realistic chain of response is the anachronistic potted pineapple (dead years before Mikage even meets the Tanabes, yet somehow still able to arouse in her memories of Eriko.) that blooms in the sun and then withers when over watered. At last. Consistency.

Even worse is Backus' (irresponsible and thoughtless) total reliance on cliché to bridge the gap between languages. When it's not garbled and confusing, it is so purple it practically glows. While Yoshimoto’s description is recognized as fluid and poetic, Backus’ descriptions are like farts in an echo chamber: loud, repetitive, embarrassing and stinky. In the 40 pages of the second story, 'Moonlight Shadow', she describes the morning as 'blue' at least 10 times. (Blue mist, blue light, blue dawn etc.) So mindless are her clichés that on one page hell is a raging inferno, then later it is as cold as a winter's day. People smile and chat while being 'as still as a statue', and private thoughts occur 'straight from the heart'. Even while walking in a cold wind, a character squints his eyes 'as if against a cold wind'. Metaphors are as mixed as mixed-nuts and similes are as stale as stale bread. Imagination has been messily sacrificed on the altar of the cliché and even important cultural images like the moon and the night view are lost, drowned in a sea of 'indigo-coloured' sentimentality, running about 'like a chicken with its head cut off' 'in a raging tempest'. Blah.

Mikage's existential angst mirrors my own upon encountering such prose:

“From the bottom of my heart, I wanted to give up; I wanted to give up on living. There was no denying that tomorrow would come, and the day after tomorrow, and so next week, too. I never thought it would be this hard, but I would go on living in the midst of a gloomy depression, and that made me feel sick to the depths of my soul. In spite of the tempest raging within me, I walked the night path calmly. I wanted it to end, and quickly...”

(she continues on for another meaty paragraph and then runs up ten flights of stairs in a sort of fugue that is simultaneously gloomy and energetic, whereas I just threw the book across the room in a fit of disgust.)

If this is the much celebrated minimalist prose that won so many awards, I dread the thought of her attempt at detailed long fiction.

So, is Backus solely to blame for this abomination of taste and style? I sadly think that she is not. Characters are systematically schizophrenic, detached, emotionally unreliable and static. Events unfold unevenly, and plot development occurs as an afterthought. Unnecessary details are introduced at random and motivation is left unaccounted for. The effect is jarring and profoundly unlikeable.

From a cultural perspective I was embarrassed to see Japanese people represented uniformly as spoiled, privileged, emotionally isolated and selfish, devoid of effective introspection, and socially cold. The theme of loneliness and isolation comes across as a national character flaw rather than a universal aspect of grief and it makes me uncomfortable on a personal and political level.

Looking at the back cover, I noticed that this book is supposed to be “about mothers, transsexuality, bereavement, kitchens, love and tragedy...” It is not. The only mother presented is actually a father (and the only family interaction that the reader witnesses is financial), and the central character's 'tragedy' is the loss of a grandmother to old age. As for transsexuality, the book isn't even about any sexuality in any form. Yoshimoto's prudery is so profound that the closest her characters come to acknowledging sex and desire is a veiled allusion to a 'double bed.' As for the transsexual character Eriko, her transition is presented as an impulsive reaction to the loss of a heterosexual partner. Indeed, in both stories cross-dressing is shown to be the result of a mind damaged by heterosexual heartbreak. There is no acknowledgment of homosexuality and non-stereotypical gender identity and Backus can't even be bothered to distinguish between the terms transsexuality and transvestism. Furthermore, (spoiler) Eriko's murder is only considered a tragedy insofar as it affects her loved ones with a sense of loss. They are all so selfishly self-absorbed [yes.] that they only bother to feel bad about the fact that they miss her, not that her life was sacrificed to a bruised male ego in a scene of sexualized violence and systematic homophobia. (It’s also unclear exactly how she died, as the translation suggests that her attacker was killed when she fought back. What?) That is all taken in stride, even by Eriko who anticipates her murder and, rather than turn to friends or the police for protection, sits down to write her will. She says, “lately I've been feeling that I might be in danger...if people I don't care for are attracted to me, I accept it as the wages of beauty.” Here is a profoundly relevant and pervasive social justice issue that is glossed over and turned into an exotic episode used to colour the barely disguised teenage angst of her main characters. The closest she comes to addressing issues of transphobia and the marginalization of the queer community is when she relates how one of Eriko's employees cried after being harassed on the train, but she quickly explains that this is because she is unusually 'sensitive'. All told, this book does nothing to challenge Japanese beliefs that homosexuality and transexuality are a source of superficial entertainment and it actually enforces norms of homophobia and violence against women.

I couldn't like this book less.

Em Lost In Books

Rating: really liked it
I tried but me and this story aren't made for each other.

Lynne King

Rating: really liked it
...if a person hasn't ever experienced true despair, she grows old never knowing how to evaluate where she is in life; never understanding what joy really is. I'm grateful for it.

Samadrita in her excellent review began with:

There's something about Japanese writers. They have the unparalleled ability of transforming an extremely ordinary scene from our everyday mundane lives into something magical and other-worldly.

I thoroughly agree with her and that magical quality transforms what could have been a rather banal book into a great one.

The book is divided into two stories both concerning young Japanese women.

Kitchen

Mikage Sakurai has lost her dearly beloved grandmother whom she had been living with, and she feels lost, alone and vulnerable. She’s now an orphan as there are no other relatives. The tide has gone out and she doesn’t know when or whether it will return. She knows she has to find a new apartment to live in but hesitates. So when a casual acquaintance, Yuichi Tanabe, who used to work part-time in her grandmother’s favourite flower shop, invites her to stay with him and his mother, Eriko, she agrees, especially when she sees the enormous sofa, which would be her bed, in the living room and finally the kitchen. She was a particular lover of kitchens.

The place I like best in this world is the kitchen. No matter where it is, no matter what kind, if it’s the kitchen, if it’s a place where they make food, it’s fine with me. Ideally it should be well broken in. Lots of tea towels, dry and immaculate. White tile catching the light (ting! ting!).

I truly empathized with Mikage from the beginning of this story to the end. A tale that on the surface appeared to be simple and even trite at times, but which soon uncovered a multi-faceted kaleidoscope of human emotions which I had never seen expressed in this way before.

I was the sword in the scabbard firmly attached at Mikage’s side. I was her friend, her alter ego and champion in her quest to re-find herself, in fact her soul. I would protect her at all cost.

Such interesting characters are to be found in this rather philosophical work, individuals in fact who I continued to think about after I finished the book.

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.

When you’re travelling, every night the air is clear and crisp, the mind serene. In any case, if nobody was waiting for me anywhere, yes, this serene life would be the thing. But I’m not free, I realized; I’ve been touched by Yuichi’s soul. How much easier it would be to stay away forever.

Eriko in particular fascinated me. She was a transvestite, originally Yuichi’s father, then upon the death of his wife from cancer and thanks to plastic surgery, became his mother. She was also the owner of a gay bar. Eriko was such a vibrant individual, colourful and generous both emotionally and physically. She brought back purpose into Mikage’s life, but then tragedy struck again:

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.

The moon and light are also important themes that flow throughout this story.

In addition, there are innumerable turns of phrase that are unforgettable but I particularly liked:

Their faces shone like buddhas when they smiled., and

The dirigible traversed the sky like a pale moonbeam, its tiny lights blinking on and off.

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.


Moonlight Shadow

...Wherever he went, Hitoshi always had a little bell with him, attached to the case he kept his bus pass in. Even though it was just a trinket, something I gave him before we were in love, it was destined to remain at his side until the last.

This story is also about a young woman called Satsuki who has lost her loved one, Hitoshi but it has more of a metaphysical feel to it. Yes, she has this same dreadful sense of loss as the earlier story. Hitoshi had a brother called Hiiragi, who had lost his girlfriend Yumiko at the same time as Hitoshi had been killed.

Satsuki often goes to the bridge where she used to meet Hitoshi and one day she meets a young woman called Urara. And due to this meeting, Satsuki and even Hiiragi have these metaphysical experiences. This story is all rather dream-like and so different to Kitchen but still excellent in its own right.

When I looked at this title I kept on thinking about the music of Mike Oldfield's Moonlight Shadow. In the preface, the author mentions that she wished to dedicate this song to Mr Jiro Yoshikawa, who had introduced this music to her, the inspiration for this story.

Two exquisite stories and highly, highly recommended.

Reading_ Tamishly

Rating: really liked it
Sadly, I had to DNF this short book!
I just couldn't feel the writing, couldn't connect with the characters, couldn't feel anything for whatever that's going on in the story. The writing is simple and is supposed to reach each nook and corner of my heart considering the situation the characters were in. But seriously I simply just couldn't bear the torture of reading something I wasn't enjoying. Left the book at 73rd page out of 152.
Better start another book.

Aubrey

Rating: really liked it
4.5/5

A couple of days ago, I watched a film called Millenium Actress, a Japanese anime film centered around the life of a once wildly popular Japanese film star. I loved it for its lovely story as well as its wonderful animation, but most of all for its peculiar disregard of many of the 'rules' of film that I hadn't realized I unconsciously followed until they were subverted. This sort of bending and breaking of my own sensibilities into something I had never considered something that would work is rampant in this book here, on a much more heartbreaking level. As both the film and the book are Japanese, there could be a correlation that other partakers of that particular cultural entertainment would be familiar with, but I shy away from labeling it as something inherent on a sociocultural level. Instead, I will describe it on my own terms, and see what happens from there.

Kitchen is subsumed in grief. Each part of the story is centered around the death of one or more individuals, who through their passing have prompted the narrator and other characters to go forth on their own personal journeys of coming to grips with what has been left to them. What is missing, an absence that at first bewildered me but one that I now see as beneficial, is the pomp and circumstance that usually accompanies such events. There is no factoring in of all the usual aspects of funerals, mourning rituals, all those standards imposed upon individuals by the weight of tradition and the history of society. In a word, this story has no interest in the attempts of life to make death a thing that can not only be dealt with methods of logic, but also bureaucratic.

Instead, the words are short, sweet, and sharp, as each narrator falls upon their knife of grief and attempts to walk it off. Here, there is no sweeping away of the tragedy into a neat compartmentalization, a time to mourn and a time to thrive coexisting in carefully delineated measurements of a person's history. For how can the horror of a beloved one being taken away in such an unfairly abrupt and often nonsensical manner ever be reconciled, as if the matter could heal as cleanly as a broken bone knitting up in a predictable number of days? As if the evolution of coping with an overwhelming loss could be graphed for all affected, and therein calculate a formulaic equation specifically calibrated for speeding up the resolution as efficiently as possible. As if it was a lie that when it came down to it, one is alone and will always be alone with one's mind, and that is how the battle of mournful reconciliation must always be fought.

While it is true that there is always a banality to this process, it is also true that reality is sometimes stranger than fiction. And here, the overwhelming potential of storytelling chooses to direct its narrators and their tragedies along plots that reject the popular assumption of sadness having more believability than happiness. Unexpected acquaintances welcome stricken souls in for as long as they need a rest from the forceful expectations of reality. Methodologies of all sorts are taken up in the quest to come to terms with loss, whether it be cooking, running, crossdressing, or sex change surgery. The little beauties of seemingly mundane surroundings birth alongside the gaping holes that despair has left in the intermittent musings of daily life. Words such as 'weird' and 'strange' lose their potency in the face of the fact that, had these unusual and rather unbelievable circumstances never come to pass, another life may have joined the ones that had gone before it.

Would that have made the story better? Treating death with the cold dignity of normal proceedings, forbidding the thick interweave of both passionate joy and debilitating sorrow in the span of a short paragraph, scoffing at the small and sometimes magical coincidences that led others in unexpected ways to a life worth living? Should the path to reconciliation always be one of proud obligation, or can it be erratic, irresponsible, and sometimes even sweet?

The choice is always personal, and one must always make it on one's own. Me, I like the idea of a peculiar path being available to those who are faced with the death of a loved one, the most peculiar situation of all. If one is must decide how to live their life past the gap, shouldn't that life be their own?

Zanna

Rating: really liked it
Now that I teach English as my main job I am more than ever aware of how language shapes and limits what can be expressed, how it makes and remakes the social world as it is made and remade. I have read few books from the Japanese, but I would wager I can tell such a text after reading a page! Perhaps it was the themes, not only the flavour of the language, that made this taste so distinctly Japanese to me. Quirky relationships, dramatic melancholy, organised and comfortable domesticity, defiance of convention, appreciation of food and eating, and a kind of pride of place, a cultural pride, chimed with my preconceptions.

Anyway, I love this book, which makes writing look effortless (it isn't) and feels like a personal gift. Mikage, the protagonist, could hardly be more sympathetic as a lonely young adult struggling to overcome grief, and the relationships she is lucky enough to be pulled into nourished my heart as they did hers. The writing is spare, poetic, direct, and often original in its images. As a love story, this feels gloriously contemporary and cinematic.

One of the important characters in the book, Eriko, is a transsexual woman, and Yoshimoto both has her speak her own truth and presents her in a very positive light as self-willed, resiliant, highly atttractive, extremely generous, and surrounded by loving friends. She is also a victim of anti-trans violence.

Personally, I felt sad that both Mikage and her friend Yuichi are negative about vegetarian food! Otherwise, I might give it 5 stars.