Kitchen by Yoshimoto Banana

 Kitchen
 Yoshimoto Banana. I heard her name many times and my Japanese teacher asked me that had you read any of her works before. Her name, Banana, was dragged my interests, so I came to read the "Kitchen" in our school library. As like her name, the novel was soft and sweet.

1. Juxtaposition in characters
 The name of book is "Kitchen" but it includes two stories, 'kitchen' and 'moonlight shadow'. The interesting thing is that these are two totally different stories but they have some similar points. First, main character of both stories are the woman who lost their lovers. In 'kitchen', Mikage lost her grandmother at the beginning and Satsuki from 'moonlight shadow' lost her boyfriend Hitoshi by car accident. Both of them suffered with great pain.
 Also main male character lost their lover too. In 'kitchen', Yuichi's mother, who had been his father once a while, was killed by customer, and Hirragi, the brother of Hitoshi, also lost her girlfriend and his brother at the same time. So all characters from this novel stuck in sorrow mood and terribly suffered. However, in each story heroine and male character helps to save each other. Mikage and Yuichi shared memories with Mikage's grandmother and Yuichi's mother, Eriko. Every time they missed the time with grandmother and Eriko, they depend on each other and get hopeful feeling back. Also Satsuki and Hitoshi shared their lovers memories too.
 Additionally, the most interesting character to me is the Eriko. After her(his) wife dead by cancer, she decided to live like woman and after a long time she killed by the man in her shop. She missed her wife so much, that she also reminded me Hirragi from 'moonlight shadow', who dressed up her dead girlfriend's school uniform everyday.

2. Juxtaposition in events
 Mikage ate Gatsudon in diner in the hotel. Satsuki ate tempura in another(or maybe same) diner with Hirragi. Both foods looks like be made by special skills and nicely prepared, and helps two heroines took rid of their pain.
 In many Japanese art works, they leave the important meaning on food. They believe the food made out from heart (?) delivers deep happiness and impression to one who eat it. I think that's true, and with that crispy foods, Mikage and Satsuki could forget their sorrow for a while.

3. Mystery
 I felt like that whole stories in this book used mysterious and beautiful mood. The things that usually can't happen or can't be believed appears in the story, for example, Mikage and Yuichi dreamed same thing once and Mikage decided to visit Yuichi in the midnight, even they were in far distance. Mikage also took risk of sneaking in hotel and crossing over the roof to meet Yuchi, who she didn't sure she loves him or not right before.
 In 'moonlight shadow', the more mysterious events happened. Urara, the super-mysterious women met Satsuki and Urara looked like she understood what Satsuki had been through and what she felt now. Also thanks to Urara, Satsuki could meet Hitoshi again and say good bye, and at the same time, Hirragi met her girlfriend again for short time too. Totally unbelievable and fictional, but I like the way it is. I think most readers feel same with me, whether it is true or not is not important, it is fiction anyway. The events make the story beautiful and that's enough.

4. However...
 The story was soft and dreamy, and even though it was English translation, I can feel the beauty of vocabularies and expressions that writers chose. However, I think the power of the message is little weak. And I realize some of other Japanese film or novels feel like the same way too. They are beautiful work and warmhearted, but because of some reason, the stories are weak. I don't mean to say badly about Japanese work, but it just feel like they depends on beauty too much sometimes. Maybe I'm still young to understand this novel fully yet. But it will be better to develop how they feel in mind deeply, or how they overcome their pain and how they feel afterward, - the ending of 'kitchen' was , kind of, so sudden - or how the food give effect on them more. I don't know, maybe I expect too much about the food before I read this novel - it's because of the title, but I'm little confused while I was reading the book.
 Anyway, it was sweet novel and it was the first time to read Japanese novel in English, and it was like really impressive experience. Maybe I try another work of Banana later.



“Truly happy memories always live on, shining. Over time, one by one, they come back to life.”

“I realized that the world did not exist for my benefit. It followed that the ratio of pleasant and unpleasant things around me would not change. It wasn't up to me. It was clear that the best thing to do was to adopt a sort of muddled cheerfulness.”

"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. Where tile catching the light (ting! Ting!)”