Kitchen

Kitchen / Banana Yoshimoto;

 trans. from the Japanese by Megan Backus

New York: Grove Press, 2006, c1988.

152 p.

Making my list of 100 Best WIT nominees yesterday made me realize that I have never talked about one of my most cherished reads on my blog. I read it so long ago that it was pre-blog years, imagine!

So I reread it this week, and enjoyed it all over again. Reading it alongside some of Yoshimoto's later works shows that she was already an accomplished writer by the time this first work was translated.

Kitchen contains both the title novella and a slightly shorter one, Moonlight Shadow. Both are clear and simple, in her patented style, and feature food, love, loss, and a tinge of the supernatural. These themes and stylistic signatures remain in her later novellas.

In Kitchen, Mikage loses her grandmother, her last living relative. She ends up moving in with Yoichi and his mother Eriko -- she only knows them slightly but they take her in during her time of grief, when she has to move out of her grandmother's old apartment as well as dealing with her death.

She becomes emotionally involved with this eccentric duo, and when tragedy strikes again, she has to return the favour and hold Yoichi stable in his grief.

It's a beautiful story, with lovely imagery, some thoughtful commentary on love and grief, and with a thread of hope and positive resolution running through it.

Moonlight Shadow is a briefer look at the same themes: Satsuki and Hitoshi are soulmates, but when they've been together for four years, Hitoshi dies suddenly. Satsuki's overwhelming grief is shared by Hiirage, Hitoshi's younger brother, who also lost his girlfriend in the accident.

There is a much stronger presence of the supernatural in this story; Satsuki takes up running as a solace, and comes across a very unusual woman on the bridge that is the midpoint of her run. This woman invites to return on a specific day to see something unusual and wonderful that only happens once every hundred years. Satsuki is mystified but feels a strong sense that she should believe this woman -- the reader can pretty much guess what the outcome is going to be, but it's still a lovely journey through Satsuki's confusion and grief to the kind of end that we all might wish for. 

This book is still a compelling read, one that engages and wraps you in its storyline despite the brevity and the very simple narrative style. Somehow the simplicity increases the importance of the daily mundane activities that Yoshimoto describes, and imbues them with grace. 

Still a favourite. I'd recommend starting with this and then going right on to a much more recent work, Moshi Moshi, a longer and more complex book but with all the same concerns.