Kitchen
4/5
()
About this ebook
With the publication of Kitchen, the dazzling English-language debut that is still her best-loved book, the literary world realized that Banana Yoshimoto was a young writer of enduring talent whose work has quickly earned a place among the best of contemporary Japanese literature. Kitchen is an enchantingly original book that juxtaposes two tales about mothers, love, tragedy, and the power of the kitchen and home in the lives of a pair of free-spirited young women in contemporary Japan. Mikage, the heroine, is an orphan raised by her grandmother, who has passed away. Grieving, Mikage is taken in by her friend Yoichi and his mother (who is really his cross-dressing father) Eriko. As the three of them form an improvised family that soon weathers its own tragic losses, Yoshimoto spins a lovely, evocative tale with the kitchen and the comforts of home at its heart.
In a whimsical style that recalls the early Marguerite Duras, Kitchen and its companion story, Moonlight Shadow, are elegant tales whose seeming simplicity is the ruse of a very special writer whose voice echoes in the mind and the soul.
“Lucid, earnest and disarming . . . [It] seizes hold of the reader’s sympathy and refuses to let go.” —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
Read more from Banana Yoshimoto
Goodbye Tsugumi Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hardboiled & Hard Luck Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related to Kitchen
Related ebooks
Breasts and Eggs: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Earthlings: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pachinko Parlor Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All the Lovers in the Night Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5She and Her Cat: Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Quiet Life: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bliss Montage: Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Life Ceremony: Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Yellow Wallpaper Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Convenience Store Woman: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Boy Parts: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dragon Palace Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Idol, Burning: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Nakano Thrift Shop: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Days of Distraction: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Territory of Light: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Diary of a Murderer: And Other Stories Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Coincidence Plot Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRipe: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Heaven: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lonely Castle in the Mirror Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Temporary: A Novel Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCursed Bunny Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Pure Colour: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Housekeeper and the Professor: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Single Rose Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Honeybees and Distant Thunder: A Novel Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5PANENKA Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love at Six Thousand Degrees Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Literary Fiction For You
A Man Called Ove: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Flowers for Algernon Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Alchemist Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Piranesi Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Covenant of Water (Oprah's Book Club) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Prophet Song: A Novel (Booker Prize Winner) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Life of Pi: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Catch-22: 50th Anniversary Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Confederacy of Dunces Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Pride and Prejudice: Bestsellers and famous Books Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Cloud Cuckoo Land: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Demon Copperhead: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Handmaid's Tale Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Little Birds: Erotica Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Invisible Hour: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Lagos Wife: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Silmarillion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tender Is the Flesh Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Who Have Never Known Men Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Only Woman in the Room: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Queen's Gambit Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Poisonwood Bible: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Sympathizer: A Novel (Pulitzer Prize for Fiction) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Old Man and the Sea: The Hemingway Library Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leave the World Behind: A Novel Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5If We Were Villains: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All the Ugly and Wonderful Things: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Master & Margarita Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Kitchen
1,369 ratings57 reviews
What our readers think
Readers find this title amazing and a great book on healing and love. Although the plot may be unclear at times, the overall message of the book is powerful. It is loved dearly by many readers."
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/53.5 starsThis short book features 2 separate stories. Both deal with love, loss, and going on. Both feature a lot of food, though "Kitchen" features cooking as both a way to show love and a way to share and enjoy others' company. Tea features strongly in both stories.The writing feels very unique--somehow to stuff for the subject matter, yet it works. The stiffness feels fairly typical of translated Japanese fiction to me--yet something is different about this book, which must come from her writing.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It´s a wonderful book. As I was reading it, I can see it in my mind as a japanese anime! Lovely and good written.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It is a novel but reads like three short stories, two being connected.First Mikage's grandmother dies. Now she is all alone in the world. Fortunately Yuichi, who cared about Mikage's grandmother too, asks her to stay with him and his mother in their apartment. Mikage accepts and finds herself a new family and a new home with a good kitchen. This is most important as kitchens are the most comfortable places for her.In the second part Yuichi becomes an orphan, too. He is loosing himself and Mikage is one of a few to understand his misery. She understands that the only chance to save him and herself can be found in them being together.The third part is a story called Moonlight Shadow. Again it is about the sudden loss of a beloved one and the way the bereaved have to deal with that loss. It was in fact Yoshimoto's first piece of writing and delivers already many themes which later are parts of Kitchen, like death, the exuberance of emotions and mysterious twists in the plot, like when Mikage decides to visit Yuichi in his hotel and intentionally knocks on the right window without really knowing which room belongs to him.Yoshimoto's stories are sad ones. But she uses language and style to make it easier to endure. Her protagonists are young and lusting for life as well as anxious for it. The process of the stories do not always follow logic, like the panels in comic books. I think this is not so much important for the progress of the story but much more for the psychological background of the characters, which is intentionally not described any further.In an after-word the author states that she has to say things and will continue to write novels until this need is satisfied. Great - I think to myself. I look forward to read Goodbye Tsugumi.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/53.5/5In Kitchen Mikage, rimasta senza famiglia dopo la morte della nonna, dovrà suprerare questa assenza e le saranno di supporto un coetaneo e la sua particolare madre disposti a accoglierla in casa.Romanzo giapponese piuttosto diverso da altri autori che ho già avuto modo di leggere, più simile, come immagini e situazioni ai manga: il concreto delle abitudini e degli stili di vita contrapposto alle riflessioni della protagonista.Kitchen mi è piaciuto, il racconto in coda (Moonlight shadow) un po' meno, troppo buonista soprannaturale.---In Kitchen Mikage, without any family after the death of her grandmother, will have to face this emotional void and she will be helped by a guy and his particular mother, both willing to have her in their home and family.This japanes novel is different from the ones of other authors, it's more similar, in images and situations, to a manga: the reality of habits and lifestyles opposed to the reflections of the main character.I liked Kitchen, the ending story (Moonlight shadow) not quite, to much sentimental paranormal .
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Kitchen contains both the novella, Kitchen and the short story, Moonlight Shadow. Both are minimalist stories of women experiencing different forms of grief and loss and the eventual ways they're able to move on from these periods. These are not sappy tales that one might find in bad movie-of-the-week films. Banana instead manages to take the ingredients found in those tales and weave together something all together different, magical and yet vaguely familiar at the same time. Perhaps it's the minimalist approach, it could be the focus on the grief with a decided lack of focus on back story or the gory details, or maybe it's how she lets go just in time - either way, these stories manage to work in a very lyrical way.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is a wonderful book containing two tales of loss, love and loss of those loved. The first story lends it's name to the title and is the longer of the two. It was a gripping tale dealing with death, love and family. I enjoyed it greatly. The second story Moonlight Shadow was another beautiful tale of loss and personal growth. Kitchen did not allow time for me to make use of a bookmark but I feel it will stay with me for a long while.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Kitchen contains two stories about loss and how crushing it can be, especially when you are young. Although this is a universal theme, it was interesting to read it from a Japanese perspective. The diction was strange, although this may be due to the translation.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Two short stories about young women coping with grief. The first story, Kitchen, is about a student who finds herself completely alone following the death of her grandmother. She is taken in by a boy and his unusual mother, and their relationship, as well as the time she spends cooking, help her to move forward. The second story, Moonlight Shadow, is about a girl who has recently lost her first love to a traffic accident and how her relationship with the young man's brother along with an encounter with a strange woman help her move toward closure. One might think that these themes would make for gloomy reading, but the surprise is that Yoshimoto's writing is at once poetic and fresh, grounded in a zen-like appreciation for taking things as they are, and the hopeful message that embracing difficulty brings it's own rewards. Inspiring.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A nostalgic, atmospheric, and self-contained story about coping with loss in an nontraditional family. The anchoring role of kitchen's and food preparation is actually fairly backgrounded and I get the sense the narrator is young enough to unlearn later some of the lessons she has "learned".
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This novel is charming rather than good, pleasant rather than profound in any way. Is in Japanese chick lit? I don't know.. I know it has reached immense popularity in the author's native Japan, and I did get the feeling that this must be what contemporary Japan is like for 20-something females. The book deals with death. Yes, quite a heavy topic for light reading, and that might be part of its problem. It would seem that the topic would automatically "deepen" the novel... I liked the first part of the book the best (the actual kitchen novella), and I felt a certain connection to Eriko (the transvestite), Yuichi (the son) and Mikage (the narrator), and I found myself cheering for the budding love between Mikage and Yuichi. However, the language and the "depth" of the book seemed superficial at best. It is saturated with clichees (the phrase "I was running around like a chicken with its head cut off" is used as an actual description). It seemed to be written in a way that a self-absorbant 20-something would talk. But does it reflect the original writing or did it get a bit lost in translation????
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I think this book is sweet. It deals with relationships...ones lost, others gained. I like these two stories as well as other books by this author, but don't see why she's such an overwhelmingly popular author. To me, there are many other Japanese writers whose writing is so much more interesting. Perhaps, it's her preoccupation with death or maybe the simplicity of the writing to which people are attracted. I was touched by the ending of the story Moonlight Shadow.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I enjoyed this book very much. It was a very quick read about loss, grief and recovery. Although the book is short, it is charming and thought-provoking. If you want to read a story that you'll always remember and be touched by, this is the book for you.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A lovely story about relationships and the scene with the noodles is beautiful.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Banana Yoshimoto took me by surprise. Kitchen is a thin book pairing two novellas, Kitchen and Moonlight Shadow, that both deal with loss and its aftermath. At first the author's light, easygoing style tricked me into underestimating my emotional involvement with the story. Kitchen begins when Mikage loses her beloved grandmother and is taken in by the Tanabe family she barely knows. From there, Mikage's relationship with the Tanabes--a transvestite nightclub owner and his son--deepens based on shared late-night meals and three lives brushing up against each other in a small Japanese apartment. I was unprepared for the turns this 100-page novella took and how anxiously I rushed to the end, hoping to see Mikage find respite from her overwhelming sense of being alone in the world. The second novella, Moonlight Shadow, contrasted the reactions of Satsuki and Hiirage who both lost loved ones in a tragic accident. Satsuki deals with the loss of her beloved Hitoshi by eating less and less and jogging more and more. Hiirage copes with his double loss--his brother Hitoshi and his girlfriend Yumiko--by wearing Yumiko's old school uniform. Their attempts to console each other are awkward yet touching. As the novella built toward a promised surprise ending, I ached for them to find happiness as well.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5his short book suffers from putting two terribly similar novellas together, forcing us to view the same ideas and themes within different plot. Alone they are enjoyable, comforting tales on life and love and coming to terms to death. In the first two people are thrown together due to the tragic death of their loved ones, the second one, a magic realist tale of a girl trying to come to turns with the sudden death of her boyfriend.The first is the best, sadness and joy are perfectly mixed and the characters are just zany enough to be fun and endearing without being annoying. It's a great love story with a joyful open end romance mixing reality with storybook cutenessand is a pleasure to read. In fact you feel it could be much longer.The second has light touch of magic to aid the grieving process but sadly not a very interesting one and it's peripheral characters do stray too far into oddball territory. Not bad but not great and takes the score down.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5It's hard to understand why this was a best seller in Japan. It's a slight love story. I assume its popularity had to to with the fact that the main character has lost her entire family, and then loses a kind of surrogate mother (who is also a transsexual) and almost loses a boyfriend (because he is oddly emotionally disconnected). But the writing is thin. Yoshimoto continuously and almost exclusively uses the moon as an index of her character's mood. That's commensurate with a long tradition in Japan, but Yoshimoto's descriptions are simple to the point of being threadbare. The character's emotions are indexed to the moon and the weather, but the moon and weather are described so simply -- almost repetitively -- that it isn't possible to see much nuance in her inner life. And it seems there isn't much, aside from an increasing loneliness. There's a difficult issue here to do with translation: as in other contemporary Japanese fiction, there is almost no interest in detailed description; no evident experimentation with language or description; no passages where writing is what matters. The book is like a report, in minimal style, of the character's actions and feelings. This is a difficult issue because it doesn't seem to be a matter of the translation. The English is fine and colloquial, but that can only mean that the original is also written in something like a simple, if not a pallid, style. Can that be right? Is what counts as a novel so disconnected from what counts as writing?
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Simple and beautifully written. Kitchen is a compilation of two short stories with similar themes. Love, loss, grief, depression and moving on. I have never had the experience of reading a short story and coming to love the characters as quickly as I did when reading both stories. I look forward to reading more of her stories.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5A mix of two novellas if you will dealing with tales of free-spirited young women in contemporary Japan. Kitchen tales the story of a women whose family gradually passes away, leaving here increasingly along in the world. The only place she feels safe is in a kitchen. She meets a young man and her transsexual father and through them, finds a connection to herself and her future. The second half of the book is a story called “moonlight Shadow”. It is the story of loss and redemption. A woman has lost her boyfriend and soul mate in an accident. She attempts to reason why and find her way emotional and physically in the world without him. The boyfriend’s brother lost his girlfriend in the same accident and he too takes a path towards coping. They meet a strange woman who guides them deftly to a path to recovery. With most of Yoshimoto’s work, it is constant shift between adept and witty writing and tedious, overreaching prose. Her fame comes largely from being a woman writer, dealing with somewhat serious issues. The issues are uniquely Japanese and not all that strongly oriented to a woman’s point of view. This might be the greatest tragedy, since she has an opportunity. The length and style of her writing prevent her from concocting complicated, longer stories with more background. Has a bit of work to do, but as this was one of her early books, there is room for improvement and the foundation is there.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5I've never heard of this book or author until I read Stephanie Perkins's "Anna and the French Kiss". I ordered two of the books mentioned in Anna and the French Kiss including this one.
Today, I received my copy of the book, it's much smaller than I thought, but can't wait to see what it is about.
I'm half way through the book, and all that comes to mind is one word: "strange". I always have this barrier when reading books written by far easterners, the dragon eyed variety. Their culture is mesmerizing, but for some reason, I don't understand it. I simply can't relate to it, even in mundane emotions... it's as if their feelings and thoughts are related to their mysterious culture. The book is poetic, but I can't give it a five, I simply don't feel it.
It's about death, grieve, kitchens, food, the full moon, first loves, and Transsexualism.
But in all honesty, Kitchen isn't a story, it's about 2 short stories. In the end, this book isn't my cup of tea. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5There are many days when all the awful things that happen make you sick at heart, when the path before you is so steep you can’t bear to look. Not even love can rescue a person from that. (p. 42)
Kitchen is a delightful little collection of stories (two of them, to be exact, “Kitchen” and “Moonlight Shadow”) that deals with death and overcoming the overwhelming sense of loss and despair that follow. Maybe “delightful” is the wrong word to be using, but it’s surprisingly not that far off.
The two stories collected here are about women grieving after the death of a loved one--certainly a depressing subject matter but also one that is handled gracefully by Yoshimoto, who effortlessly shifts the stories to a small place of hope before ending with such a sense of optimism that one has to marvel at the craft displayed here. I wondered at how strange this felt to me, that such a dark exploration of death could somehow bring me happiness. But then I realized, why should this feel strange? Why are there not more stories that gives a person this sense of hope? I don’t know the answer to that one, but I feel that the way this subject matter is treated may be one of the reasons Kitchen is worth reading.
At first I was thrown off guard because both of our protagonists sounded like such valley girls (“Bad as it sounds, it was like I was possessed. His attitude was so totally 'cool,' though, I felt I could trust him.”), but it’s not long before Banana Yoshimoto proves herself as a deft writer who is capable of exploring the despair and hope felt in these stories. Worth a read, especially since it’s so short.
In this world there is no place for sadness. Not one. (p. 23) - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5At first, this was really getting on my nerves, but after what happened to Eriko, the story seemed to gain good direction. I really enjoyed "Kitchen" from that point out, though beforehand it majorly dragged for me. "Moonlight Shadow" was also very good, though there was an element of the cliche in that one that I couldn't seem to get over. Overall, a nice read.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5sad, happy, easy read
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5I wanted to like this book. At first, the writing was superb. The images were soft and crisp, like newly fallen snow swirling in a snow globe. The two novellas focused on loss and its impact on everyday living -- the heartbreaking feeling of trying to put one foot in front of the other while it feels like you are wearing heavy boots filled with rocks when climbing up a steep hill.I wanted to like this book. The characters were compelling and likable. The emotions expressed were described accurately and poignantly.I wanted to like this book, but alas, I grew weary and it felt like the newly fallen snow became gray and slushy.
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Interesting name, and certainly memorable. Sadly, not true of the book, which I gather has been made into a film, which I have seen but also cannot remember. It almost seems churlish of me to rate and review this one at all, but what can I say? I'm a completist.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is one of the few books that I can read over and over again. It's actually two short novellas but both should be read while wearing thick wool socks and sipping burning hot green tea.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5d. It's two stories, one more a novella and the other more a short story, each about love, loss and loyalty told in a minimalist, ethereal sort of style. Kind of like a haiku version of fiction writing. Characters were beautifully drawn, though I think the improbably Eriko with his/her zest for life charmed me the most. The snippets of Japanese life and culture were fascinating, especially in Kitchen 1, and the bits focused on food (I must admit I chuckled over the dismay at which Yuichi faced yet another tofu meal when staying in Isehara and Mikage's rescue mission, wall scaling included.) Kitchen 2 (Moon Shadow) was the more mystical story -- and is a beautiful lesson on learning to live with terrific loss.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A nice little novella, understated and quietly beautiful in tone.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This is Banana Yoshimoto's first novel, and my first time reading anything by this author. The book contains two stories, Kitchen and Moonlight Shadow, both of which are rendered with precisely placed moments of great sorrow and joy, simplicity and complexity. Told in the first person, both protagonists are young Japanese women in their early 20s who have experienced death of their loved ones, and are trying to "find their way back" to lives of meaning. Beautifully illustrates the juxtoposition of deep emotions and mundane every- day actions that foster those exquisite moments of revelation that move positive change and healing just one step closer...
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This is one of my favorite books. More than the story that the book is titled for, I love the second short story at the end of the book. "Moonlight Shadow" captures my imagination every time I read it. Yoshimoto writes about this theme of loss so often and each time she captures a new aspect of the emotions that come with loosing someone.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5In Kitchen, Banana Yoshimoto portrays everyday life and love in a contemporary Japanese setting. The two short stories in this novella are different but at the same time, demonstrate common themes in Yoshimoto's writings.
The first one, the eponymous "Kitchen", the protagonist Mikage Sakurai struggles to overcome the death of her grandmother while drawing close to Yuichi and his transgendered mother. "Kitchen" explores the discovery of food and love against an ever-present background of tragedy.
In the second story, "Moonlight Shadow", a young woman, Satsuki, comes to terms with the death of her boyfriend, Hitoshi, in a car accident and her friendship with her boyfriend's brother. It is in this story particularly that Yoshimoto revisits the themes of grief, loss, and hope present in her other works, though this one has a more surrealist air.
Both stories are good examples of Yoshimoto's writing and the themes she explores, and portray love and grief in contemporary Japan well.
Book preview
Kitchen - Banana Yoshimoto
Praise for Kitchen:
Banana Yoshimoto has become one of Tokyo’s trendiest writers, spinning off-beat tales with a zany, blunt wit.
—Time
It’s easy to delight in Yoshimoto’s light and airy (but never carefree) style. . . . Themes of death and renewal abound in this novella of existential struggle and moral retrieval, though it does not lack in its honest presentation of the costs of violence and loss in urban life.
—San Francisco Chronicle
"Love, death, mourning, and the gradual recovery of the will to live are staple themes in fiction. But they receive a delightfully fresh expression in Kitchen . . . a beautifully understated work."
—Newsday
"Kitchen . . . gives you the sense that you’re meeting a real young woman. . . . Yoshimoto’s attraction to weirdness and her unpretentious approach to it—she’s not trying to be hip, just faithful to her sense of people as they are—are what might make Western readers want more of her."
—The New Yorker
A deeply moving tale filled with unique characters and themes. Along the way, readers get a taste of contemporary Japan, with its mesh of popular American food and culture. . . . Yoshimoto confirms that art is perhaps the best ambassador among nations.
—Library Journal
"Kitchen is cool, gentle, and neat, even within the most chaotic of life crises. . . . This is a modern-day fable . . . [that] leaves a lingering taste for more. Yoshimoto is a writer to watch."
—Boston Herald
It’s clear there’s a significant talent at work here, one not limited by international boundaries . . . a roundabout, touchingly portrayed journey.
—The Asian Wall Street Journal Weekly
"Charming . . . [Kitchen’s] Mikage is both as blameless and as innocently subversive as Holden Caulfield."
—Los Angeles Times Book Review
Supple, precise prose . . . A sense of the fragility of life permeates these works . . . but Yoshimoto’s message, articulated with delicacy and maturity, is that humans have the intellectual and spiritual resilience to overcome tragedy and find meaning in existence.
—Publishers Weekly
Ms. Yoshimoto’s writing is . . . as emotionally observant as Jane Smiley’s, as fluently readable as Anne Tyler’s. . . . She has a wonderful tactile ability to convey a mood or sensation through her descriptions of light and sound and touch, as well as an effortless ability to penetrate her characters’ hearts.
—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
Yoshimoto works with a humorous touch, a sense of the absurd clinging to the humdrum of everyday life. . . . Elegant, whimsical explorations of how we learn to face down our inevitable griefs.
—St. Petersburg Times
Timeless emotions, elegantly evoked with impressive originality and strength . . . Yoshimoto combines traditional sensitivity to nuance and setting with a youthful sense of belonging to a wider, less specifically Japanese world.
—Kirkus Reviews
There are passages of startling beauty and an assured voice which promises great things to come.
—West Coast Review of Books
"Dark and light themes are plaited throughout Kitchen. . . . There is something about the fresh and disingenuous way Yoshimoto writes. She fills her prose with images seemingly lifted from haiku . . . and gives it a nearly irresistible airiness."
—Trenton Times
KITCHEN
BANANA YOSHIMOTO
Translated from the Japanese by Megan Backus
GROVE PRESSNEW YORK
Copyright © 1988 by Banana Yoshimoto
English translation rights arranged with Fukutake Publishing Co., Ltd., through the Japan Foreign-Rights Centre.
Translation copyright © 1993 by Megan Backus
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 154 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or [email protected].
Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America
Cover design by Adriane Stark
Cover photographs © Sigrid Estrada
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Yoshimoto, Banana, 1964-
[Kitchin. English]
Kitchen / Banana Yoshimoto.
p. cm.
Translation of: Kitchin.
ISBN: 978-0-8021-4244-3
eISBN: 978-0-8021-9046-8
I. Title.
PL865.07138K5813 1993
895.6’35—dc2092-12781
Grove Press
an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
154 West 14th Street
New York, NY 10011
Distributed by Publishers Group West
www.groveatlantic.com
13 14 15 11 10 9 8
CONTENTS
Kitchen
Moonlight Shadow
Afterword
KITCHEN
1KITCHEN
The place I like best in this world is the kitchen. No matter where it is, no matter what kind, if it’s a 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 love even incredibly dirty kitchens to distraction—vegetable droppings all over the floor, so dirty your slippers turn black on the bottom. Strangely, it’s better if this kind of kitchen is large. I lean up against the silver door of a towering, giant refrigerator stocked with enough food to get through a winter. When I raise my eyes from the oil-spattered gas burner and the rusty kitchen knife, outside the window stars are glittering, lonely.
Now only the kitchen and I are left. It’s just a little nicer than being all alone.
When I’m dead worn out, in a reverie, I often think that when it comes time to die, I want to breathe my last in a kitchen. Whether it’s cold and I’m all alone, or somebody’s there and it’s warm, I’ll stare death fearlessly in the eye. If it’s a kitchen, I’ll think, How good.
Before the Tanabe family took me in, I spent every night in the kitchen. After my grandmother died, I couldn’t sleep. One morning at dawn I trundled out of my room in search of comfort and found that the one place I could sleep was beside the refrigerator.
My parents—my name is Mikage Sakurai—both died when they were young. After that my grandparents brought me up. I was going into junior high when my grandfather died. From then on, it was just my grandmother and me.
When my grandmother died the other day, I was taken by surprise. My family had steadily decreased one by one as the years went by, but when it suddenly dawned on me that I was all alone, everything before my eyes seemed false. The fact that time continued to pass in the usual way in this apartment where I grew up, even though now I was here all alone, amazed me. It was total science fiction. The blackness of the cosmos.
Three days after the funeral I was still in a daze. Steeped in a sadness so great I could barely cry, shuffling softly in gentle drowsiness, I pulled my futon into the deathly silent, gleaming kitchen. Wrapped in a blanket, like Linus, I slept. The hum of the refrigerator kept me from thinking of my loneliness. There, the long night came on in perfect peace, and morning came.
But . . . I just wanted to sleep under the stars.
I wanted to wake up in the morning light.
Aside from that, I just drifted, listless.
However! I couldn’t exist like that. Reality is wonderful.
I thought of the money my grandmother had left me—just enough. The place was too big, too expensive, for one person. I had to look for another apartment. There was no way around it. I thumbed through the listings, but when I saw so many places all the same lined up like that, it made my head swim. Moving takes a lot of time and trouble. It takes energy.
I had no strength; my joints ached from sleeping in the kitchen day and night. When I realized how much effort moving would require—I’d have to pull myself together and go look at places. Move my stuff. Get a phone installed—I lay around instead, sleeping, in despair. It was then that a miracle, a godsend, came calling one afternoon. I remember it well.
Dingdong. Suddenly the doorbell rang.
It was a somewhat cloudy spring afternoon. I was intently involved in tying up old magazines with string while glancing at the apartment listings with half an eye but no interest, wondering how I was going to move. Flustered, looking like I’d just gotten out of bed, I ran out and without thinking undid the latch and opened the door. Thank god it wasn’t a robber. There stood Yuichi Tanabe.
Thank you for your help the other day,
I said. He was a nice young man, a year younger than me, who had helped out a lot at the funeral. I think he’d said he went to the same university I did. I was taking time off.
Not at all,
he said. Did you decide on a place to live yet?
Not even close.
I smiled.
I see.
Would you like to come in for some tea?
No. I’m on my way somewhere and I’m kind of in a hurry.
He grinned. I just stopped by to ask you something. I was talking to my mother, and we were thinking you ought to come to our house for a while.
Huh?
I said.
In any case, why don’t you come over tonight around seven? Here’s the directions.
Okay . . .
I said vacantly, taking the slip of paper.
All right, then, good. Mom and I are both looking forward to your coming.
His smile was so bright as he stood in my doorway that I zoomed in for a closeup on his pupils. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I think I heard a spirit call my name.
Okay,
I said. I’ll be there.
Bad as it sounds, it was like I was possessed. His attitude was so totally cool,
though, I felt I could trust him. In the black gloom before my eyes (as it always is in cases of bewitchment), I saw a straight road leading from me to him. He seemed to glow with white light. That was the effect he had on me.
Okay, see you later,
he said, smiling, and left.
Before my grandmother’s funeral I had barely known him. On the day itself, when Yuichi Tanabe showed up all of a sudden, I actually wondered if he had been her lover. His hands trembled as he lit the incense; his eyes were swollen from crying. When he saw my grandmother’s picture on the altar, again his tears fell like rain. My first thought when I saw that was that my love for my own grandmother was nothing compared to this boy’s, whoever he was. He looked that sad.
Then, mopping his face with a handkerchief, he said, Let me help with something.
After that, he helped me a lot.
Yuichi Tanabe . . . I must have been quite confused if I took that long to remember when I’d heard grandmother mention his name.
He was the boy who worked part-time at my grandmother’s favorite flower shop. I remembered hearing her say, any number of times, things like, "What a nice boy they have