Kitchen By Banana Yoshimoto: My First Japanese Novel
A Book About Death, Food, And Living Authentically
Hello!!!
This is Joyie and welcome back to my little bookish corner of the internet where I talk all things books!
Have you been reading anything this week? Today I finally finished Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto. But the book contains another short novella, so I still have like fifty pages to go.
This was my first time reading a Japanese novel, which marks a milestone moment in my life.
Coming back to the book itself. If I were to describe it in two words, I’ll say: death and food. The main character and the two main side characters all lose someone they called their family to death, which leaves them pretty much by themselves in the world. This shared grief and loss is what brings them close and binds them to each other in a way they can’t bond with any other people. Food plays a very important role in that. Food and cooking in this book are used as a means of forming bonds with people. It's a big part of Mikage, the protagonist's healing journey. Kitchen to her becomes a place where she finds comfort and a sense of belonging after a profound loss.
Yoshimoto uses a lot of regular, mundane details to portray the heavy sense of loss, there’s a lot of imagery about clouds, darkness, the city at night, and coldness, which really made me feel the loneliness Mikage was grappling with. This was my first time reading Yoshimoto, and I’m really looking forward to reading more of her works.
Now I’ll move to spoilers territory, so be aware!!!
One of these characters in the book, the tritagonist Eriko, is a trans woman. Biologically she’s the father of the deuteragonist, Yuichi, but in practice, she’s his mother. Halfway through the story, she is murdered because of her identity.
There’s a scene, after her death, where we get to read a letter she left for her son, suspecting that her life might be in danger. She writes she wanted to talk to her son, man to man, because she expected that some part of the ‘man’ she once used to be must still be left in her. But she finds none—that part of her is entirely gone.
Eriko’s character is the emotional core, the main source of warmth and life-force in this book. She is often described with light-like imagery, often shown taking care of her plants. She’s not just a trans woman; she is a parent who raised her son on her own, and long ago she used to be a loving and devoted husband to her wife whom she lost to cancer at a very young age. Years later, when Mikage is left all alone in the world after her grandmother’s death, she takes her in despite not being related to her in any way. She lives her life unapologetically, being true to herself, and dies the same way.
Her character was my favourite part of this book. I didn’t go into the book knowing there was a trans character, but it was a welcome surprise. This book was published in 1988, a time when conversations about gender identity were far less visible. Yoshimoto’s portrayal of Eriko feels so ahead of its time, it’s compassionate, nuanced, and deeply deeply human.
Overall, Kitchen is a heartfelt, bittersweet book about loss and healing. I’d definitely recommend it.
What about you? Have you read Kitchen? I'd love to hear about it!!!
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That’s it for today, I'll be back in your inbox next week.
Until then,
Joyie 🌻
Kitchen has been on my TBR since for ever!