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KITCHEN Kitchen is divided into two stories about people coping with the deaths of relatives and loved ones, "Kitchen" and "Moonlight Shadow. In first story, Mikage has to confront with death her whole life. The first two deaths did not affect her as much. She was young and did not realize the sense of death. The last two deaths changed her life radically. These deaths made Mikage grow up and learn to be lonely dealing with death by herself.
When her parents died, grandparents took her into there home and brought other the best they could. Her grandmother and Mikage then became very close. Mikage whole life was her grandmother, and the kitchen is the place where they enjoyed each other company. From the first pages of the novel the importance of the kitchen is explained.
Mikage introduces herself and explains that she has been sleeping in the kitchen after her grandmothers death, indicating that the association with warmth and food was what she needed to comfort her anxious soul. There is even a reference to Linus, the character in cartoon who carries a security blanket that provides him with psychological support against the rages of the world. The metaphor of the kitchen as a place of mothers love makes occasional, but significant, appearances throughout this novel. Mikage reflects upon the present moment and its radical dislocation from the past: Sometimes I realize that I used to have a family, a real family, but over time it grew smaller and smaller, until now I'm the only one left.
When I think of my life in those terms, everything seems unreal. Time has passed, as it always does, in these rooms where I've grown up, but everyone else is gone. What a shock. It's just like science fiction. This vast, dark universe. Kitchen is a hollow sign that encloses the hole left by "family" in the usual sense.
Like "kitchen" and "family, " the disembodiment of human relationship such as "friendship" and "love, " takes place as their replacement by signs of different material objects. A sofa and kitchen at Yuichi's house replace affection between Mikage, Yuichi and his mother. Cucumber salad replaces Mikage and Eriko's friendship, ramen replaces Mikage and Yuichi's love. Cleaning a kitchen together in dream is the only expression of the relationship between Mikage and Yuichi. Two orphaned young people draw closer together and this is illustrated with some humor.
Yuichi says, when both of them have lost all who were close to them, "Maybe we should go into business. Our clients could pay us to move in with people they want dead. We " ll call ourselves destruction workers. " A central point in Mikage and Yuichi's relationship humor changed into serious tone: In the gloom of death that surrounded the two of us, we were just at the point of approaching and negotiating a gentle curve. If we bypassed it, we would split off into different directions... [and] would forever remain friends.
Further, Mikage express her thoughts in suc a way: But I'm not free, I realized; I've been touched by Yuichi's soul. She relishes her relationship with Yuichi, even though it can be difficult. Life is plentiful of bad events and one can be drawn to the bottom, overtaken by the burden of living without a nigh soul. Kitchen deals with sorrow and accusation after death of a loved person, however balances grief with other life forces - power of love, power of friendship and food... an important powerful life force which acts better if it is shared with others.
It becomes clearer with Mikage and Yuichi, as they express their feelings for each other through food: "Why is it that everything I eat when I'm with you is so delicious?" Mikage says, "Could it be that you " re satisfying hunger and lust at the same time?"No way, no way, no way!" he said, laughing. "It must be because we " re family. " Overriding theme of Moonlight Shadow lost souls searching for meaning and intention in a cold and violent universe. This time, the characters are Satsuki and Hiiragi, two teenagers whose loved ones were killed in a car accident. Satsuki, the young woman, lost her sweetheart boyfriend, Hitoshi; and Hiiragi, who is also Hitoshi's brother, lost his darling girlfriend Yumiko as well. Satsuki sees how Hiiragi and herself have been rejecting to accept the loss of their loved ones, If, in a flash, we remembered, we would suddenly be crushed with the knowledge, the knowledge of our loss, and find ourselves standing alone in the darkness. And although Satsuki and Hiiragi find a measure of consolation in each other's company, each has also found a solitary way to cope Satsuki by jogging to weariness at sunrise each morning, and Hiiragi by wearing Yumiko's schoolgirl uniform everywhere he goes. Satsuki comments on the crossing where Hitoshi and Yumiko had died In places where a loved one has died, time stops for eternity.
Nevertheless, there is a places of heartfelt spirit and insight into the depths of the human soul in novel. In Kitchen's finest passage, in a silent moment of reflection, Mikage muses to herself: Lying there on my back, I looked up at the roof of the inn and, staring at the glowing moon and clouds, I thought, really, we " re all in the same position We all believe we can choose our own path from among the many alternatives. But perhaps it's more accurate to say that we make the choice unconsciously. I think I did -- but now I knew it, because now I was able to put it into words. But I don't mean this in the fatalistic sense; we " re constantly making choices. With the breaths we take every day, with the expression in our eyes, with the daily actions we do over and over, we decide as though by instinct.
And so some of us will inevitably find ourselves rolling around in a puddle on some roof in a strange place with a takeout kats udon in the middle of winter, looking up at the night sky as if it were the most natural thing in the world. Ah, but the moon was lovely. The moon and light are used throughout novel as symbols of magic, or life's supernatural forces. In an early scene on a bus on the way to the Tanabe's house, Mikage's "eye came to rest on the still-new moon making its way across the sky. " (33). The moon appears again after Eriko is murdered in part two of Kitchen. This section of Kitchen is called "Full Moon" Mikage wandering the nighttime streets, pondering her life: As I walked along in the moonlight, I wished that I might spend the rest of my life traveling from place to place.
She thought on death and loneliness: When was it I realized that, on this truly dark and solitary path we all walk, the only way we can light is our own? (36). Accepting this new and scaring state of affairs, she strikes out on her own, trying to make her own way. Light also symbolizes a certain kind of character in Kitchen. 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 (Heiter).
There are a few wonderful people in the novel who are suffering more bearable. Eriko and Yuichi help Mikage when she needs them, and she says: "Even though they didn't look alike, there were certain traits that they shared. Their faces shone like Buddhas when they smiled. " (15). Ultra plays resembling role in "Moonlight Shadow. " She helps Satsuki resolve her suffering by showing her where she can have a vision of Hitoshi.
Satsuki gives a Buddha-like description of her, as well: "Her eyes were too knowing and serene; the expression on her face hinted that she had tasted deeply of the sorrows and joys of this world. " (115). These "Buddha-like" characters express the message that loss, pain, and suffering are an important part of life. Eriko says, .".. 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. " (41). In Moonlight Shadow Satsuki realizes that no matter how hard it gets, it isn't worth taking shortcuts: In retrospect I realize that fate was a ladder on which, at the time, I could not afford to miss a single rung. That passages show up the edge of life and death. And a ray of hop, eventually, No matter what, I want to continue living with the awareness that I will die. Without that, I am not alive.
This is what makes the life I have now possible Inching one's way along a steep cliff in the dark: on reaching the highway, one breathes a sigh of relief. 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 (59, 60). I like that Kitchen is narrated in the first person style. It allows the reader entire access into the mind and heart of Mikage as she paints her fellow characters with empathic observations of them throughout the story.
She's a wonderful character and her thoughts about herself and the people around her are so insightful, honest and warm. Because this theme and correlating ideas are related to us through the thoughts of a main female character in both stories, I think that Yoshimoto uses characters like these to express her own philosophy. Reading this book I realized that not everything that is great has to look complicated. Sometimes the most absolute things are the least complex. One of the judges for the Karen prize, of which Moonlight Shadow was rewarded, senior novelist and critic Nakamura Shinichiro, said of Kitchen that, This is a work written on a theme, and with a sensibility, that the older generation of which I am a part could not have imagined.
It is the product of an abandon completely indifferent to literary traditions. Its naive rejection of the very question of whether it does or does not conform to conventional concepts is precisely what makes it strike me as a new sort of literature. (Loftus) Concluding, I would like to quote Jim Morrisons great song Soul Kitchen: It seems to me there are some parallels: Let me sleep all night in your soul kitchen Warm my mind near your gentle stove Turn me out and I'll wander baby Stumbling in the neon groves Bibliography: Yoshimoto, Banana. Kitchen. Translated by Megan Backus. New York: Washington Square Press, 1993. Ronald P.
Loftus. Notes On Yoshimoto Bananas Place in Japanese Literature. Willamette University. < web > Celeste Heiter. Book Review: Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto.
Published on 01 / 06 / 02 < web >
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Research essay sample on Mikage And Yuichi Satsuki And Hiiragi Kitchen
