Customer Reviews

Kitchen

5 star:		(61)
4 star:		(34)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I think it would be a mistake to write of Kitchen or Yoshimoto as a literary lightweight, a common knock against her. Mikage and Yuichi's struggles in the aftermath of shocking and devastating deaths was incredibly moving. Their need to create a brighter, happier life together in a death-filled world, to discover how to continue to live in a cruel and uncaring environment ... isn't that what we all are trying to do to some degree or another? Kitchen is a 4.5/5 star book in my opinion. If you liked Kitchen, I'd recommend Haruki Murakami ... especially "Dance, Dance, Dance" which touches on some similar themes but deals with them in very different ways.

Moonlight Shadow was a little whimsical for my tastes. The characters deal with the same issues as Mikage and Yuichi, but with a science fiction touch. Yoshimoto seemed to be trying too hard to make her point about moving on after death, rather than developing a good short story. It was a disappointing follow-up to Kitchen.

This is the first book of Yoshimoto's that I've read ... thanks to Kitchen, I'll be sure it's not the last. But I can only hope that the rest of her work is as well-writen as Kitchen and not like Moonlight Shadow.

One last comment: I read the Japanese version first, and I think the translator did a good job of getting Yoshimoto's style into English. It felt like the ending of the translation was more abrubt than the Japanese version, but I'm not sure why. Not sure if I'm the only one who felt that way or not ... In any event, I would definitely recommend Kitchen- see for yourself if you like it and Yoshimoto's style.

Kitchen contains two stories, both of which concern a different young woman living her life in the aftermath of a terrible loss. In the title story, Mikage has just been left alone in the world after the passing of her grandmother, who was her last living relative. She is generously taken in by an acquaintance, a boy named Yuichi who knew her grandmother, and his transsexual mother Eriko. Eriko lets her stay for free as long as she promises to cook for them from time to time, and the three of them build a new family of sorts. Eventually, though, Mikage finds herself confronted with another tragedy.

The second story is called "Moonlight Shadow." Satsuki has lost a boyfriend in a car crash which also claimed the life of his younger brother's girlfriend. One day she meets a mysterious woman with a secret she wants to share. This story has a slight element of fantasy to it, a touching piece of magical realism.

The author has a deceptively simple style of writing which enables her to deal with weighty issues without them feeling oppressive. These works are deeply affecting, but they are poetic rather than doom-laden. I preferred the second story, which is tighter and has a definite resolution, whereas the first is more of a slice of life and though longer, felt a little incomplete. As always, I enjoyed the look at Japanese daily life.

A couple of years ago, while waiting outside my Japanese teacher's office, I was flipping through a book of Yoshimoto Banana's essays paying particular interest to one titled Oyogu hitobito or "People Swimming." It was a simple essay concerning a drunken Yoshimoto and an outing that she had with her drunken friends. Anyway, while I was reading the book, a visiting professor from the Kyoto University bent down, I was sitting on the floor at the time, and he asked me what I was reading. I showed him the book, he laughed, and said that Yoshimoto was only for young women.

Oh well.

I read my first Yoshimoto novella during the summer of 2001 between readings of a couple of Murakami Ryu's novels and, of course, that novel was Yoshimoto's debut novella Kitchen. Judging the book by its cover, I can definitely agree that it looks like it belongs in the "chick-lit" section, as do the rest of her novels, but I believe that Kitchen carries a bit more weight than say the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.

Yoshimoto is often lumped with her fellow contemporary writer Murakami Haruki because their writings are quite well-received in the West and that they both weave fictional worlds threaded with magical realism. Another similarity is that the theme of death looms over the majority of their fictional landscapes. However, unlike the gloomy, Lacanian worlds of desire that Murakami weaves, one can never acquire again the object of one's desire because only substitutes for said desire exists, Yoshimoto's characters, although still in a melancholy state, are able to heal the emptiness left by the loss of a loved one.

Kitchen centers on Sakurai Mikage, a young woman whose grandmother has just passed away. In a state of shock, Mikage spends her nights sleeping in the kitchen next to the constantly humming fridge. However, the apartment is too big and too expensive for her to live in alone, so she must move out. Yet, because of her current situation she is unable to gain the motivation to do so. At that moment fate enters the story. One day while tidying up some magazines for recycling, Tanabe Yuichi rings her doorbell. A fellow student, Mikage knows little about Yuichi besides the fact that he works at a flower shop and that her grandmother favored him highly. Therefore, she is quite surprised when he asks her to move in with him and his mother... While quite shocked at first, Mikage soon falls in love with the Tanabes' couch and kitchen and slowly with Yuichi himself because she can see a lot of herself within him.

Yoshimoto's book is quite simple, but it does work its way into one's heart especially if one has recently gone through a loss similar to the one Mikage has suffered from. While she has written many more novels, novellas, short story collections, and essay collections, Kitchen, which she wrote at twenty-four, is still quite a slice of nostalgic sweetness enwrapped in almost dreamlike language. Easy to read in one sitting, and if liked or not, I believe that Kitchen should be read by most individuals interested in contemporary Japanese literature.

In Japanese, "Kitchen" is not the kitsch piece of trash the English translation makes it out to be. Even so, I'd hold off reading "Kitchen" until another translation appears, unless you can read it in Japanese.

Here's why:

As others have said, the translator took some liberties and manhandled the feel of the novel. In several cases the translator (Backus) completely removed sentences (does a 100-page book need abridged?), and in other cases replaced prose, elegant in its simplicity, with cliche.

An example of the latter is the very last sentence of the second part, "Full Moon" (this isn't a spoiler). In Backus's translation: "I launched into what time I'd be in and what platform I'd be on." In Japanese, it's literally "I started to explain my arrival time and what platform I'd be on." I can't remember the last time I got so excited I fell out of my seat and "launched" into telling someone something mundane like I was going to be home at 3:20pm.

It's the gross overuse of cliche in the translation that destroys that fragile atmosphere Yoshimoto Banana created in the Japanese prose. For example, when a page is filled with a few precise words, it's like a Monet painting: hundreds of tiny strokes carefully arranged to create a greater image. But to translate those emotionally-loaded carefully chosen words into goofy cliche is to take a Monet painting and make a few strokes with a floor mop. Spare yourself of this translation.

The first thing I thought about this book was that it reminded me of Kazuo Ishiguro's work. Not because he's also a japanese writer, but because their style is extremely similar. Does it have to do with japanese literary style? I'd love to learn more about authors like Ishiguro & Yoshimoto...Right now, all I know is that I've discovered (although a little late! ... since "Kitchen", Yoshimoto's first work, was published quite a few years ago...)one more favourite author.

"Kitchen", as you've read in most of the other reviews, has 2 parts. Some reviewers thought that "Moonlight shadow" (second part) didn't have a place in the book, at least not as much as the first part. The thing is, "Moonlight shadow" is so mesmerizing that if it had been put first in the book, readers would probably be wanting it to last more, & "Kitchen" to be excluded! What I'm trying to say is that both parts of the book are equally good, & both share the same main subject: that subject is loss.

Food and, for that matter, the kitchen, are offered as a means for consolation. The young heroine in the first part of the book only can fall asleep, after her grandmother dies, while lying next to the refrigerator, listening to its humming which comforts her. Food, friends (as the woman in "Moonlight Shadow"), heartfelt conversations, music...all these can help. But if after finishing Banana Yoshimoto's book you still feel there's no immediate & clean-cut solution to the problems presented in the book...well, that to me is what makes "Kitchen" a brilliant piece of literature, & very much true to life. Because there are no "endings", no clean endings in life, it's all continuous, going from good to bad, to mediocre & back again...it's what we make of this process, how we move in time, that matters. And of course...how we learn (or maybe ultimately, never learn) to deal with loss.

After closing the book, a funny thing happened: the wonderful but melancholic music of Mike Oldfield's "Moonlight shadow" kept coming to mind. I was amazed to find that that was what inspired Yoshimoto's short story...

Banana Yoshimoto is one of the most gifted writers I have ever read. Her novel, "Kitchen", takes you to an emotional rollercoaster of love and loss. The pain one feels when someone one cares about dies -- the painful and the seemingly endless grieving process and then finding the strength to move on.

The two stories are beautiful and emotional, she has a way with words, the writing is very beautiful. I will definitely check the other books from this author.

When my friend Mini sent me this gift, I wanted to immediately loose myself in the pages. I kept thinking it was truly a book I would want to read all in one sitting. I wanted to curl up on a couch and have my two cats sleeping at my feet. How right I was.

Once I started reading, (my husband sound asleep upstairs, cats sleeping at my feet, and the house deathly quiet except for the quiet humming of the refrigerator), I was immediately drawn into Mikage Sakurai's world.

Banana Yoshimoto uses luscious descriptions of food and kitchens. She describes people and places with such poignancy, you truly feel connected to them. Her thoughts burst onto each page with such honesty, you cannot help but fall in love with her innocent, charming writing style.

There are life and death issues in "Kitchen," we can all relate to. Her evocative writing will fill you with nostalgia for some of the cooking spaces you have perhaps left behind. Mostly I love my grandmother's kitchen best. The familiar creak of the oven door, the scooting sound of the chairs as we sit for a cup of tea, and the racks of cookbooks patiently waiting on the shelves.

To imagine this kitchen without my grandmother, is to imagine the entire house without a soul, without love, and without peace. When we almost lost my grandmother once to a heart attack, I stood in her kitchen and felt the emptiness. I was not ready to loose her, and I believe I never will be.

This is the emotion Mikage feels as she sleeps on the floor in her grandmother's kitchen. After loosing her grandmother, Mikage is lost, lonely and depressed. Her soul longs for the comfort of another soul who can understand her torment. She feels as though death surrounds her and she cannot escape.

For a time she finds happiness with Yuichi, who knew her grandmother well. He is living with his mother Eriko. Mikage goes to live with them until she can learn to handle her emotions.

Yuichi's girlfriend is not impressed, even though the relationship is purely platonic on the surface. Deep within their souls they are soon to become twins, bearing the scars of a common life experience.

Banana Yoshimoto's writing is fresh, real and casts a spell on the reader. I would have preferred the book to end on page 105. She does truly seize hold of your heart and I wanted the book to either end or I wanted one more chapter in place of Moonlight Shadow. I found the second book did not belong with the beautiful yet somewhat unfinished story of Yuichi and Mikage. I think you will agree. In fact, I suggest that when you get to page 105, you close the book and come back later to read the second story.

I find her writing to be most inspirational when she has fully developed her characters. In the future, I hope she will write one story per book and make them as memorable as Kitchen. To truly appreciate this book, you must love food and kitchens, that is the magic.

~The Rebecca Review

Some say that "Kitchen" is a mere shoujo manga written in the format of a novel. Doubtless they mean this in a negative way, (although I was rather intrigued) dismissing this book because it is a whimsical romance. This doesn't do "Kitchen" justice. It is quite whimsical, in a haunting and sometimes unsettling way. Yoshimoto's touch is so light and deft, you will look around you and wonder how on earth you got to where you are. What better way to illustrate life? "Kitchen" is, at its heart a romance - that is true too. Yes, there is a wonderfully intricate realtionship between a boy and a girl, but it is a romance with life that really moves this story. It is a romance with couches and kitchens and houseplants and ripe red tomatoes. "Kitchen" captures the importance of being a romantic -- of truly, deeply experiencing each moment and all the pain and beauty it provides. The companion short story "Moonlight Shadow" hightens this feeling even more. "Carpe Diem" always bears repeating even, especially, in the face of tragedy.

As someone who likes Banana very much, and checked three translations of Kitchen, (English, German, French), I have to confess that the worst translation of three was the English one. The translator makes so many obvious mistakes in the book that it can be a little bit too bothering for someone who knows the original very well. I do not underestimate the power of the original book to survive (even bad?) translation, but still, cannot help hoping someone should do a new translation....or at least, the translator to change some of the bits she mis-read the context. (Needless to say the simple transcription mistake of MOMOKO KIKUCHI into MOMOKO SAKUCHI)

Banana Yoshimoto writing style is artless, perhaps a product of her innocence and inexperience as a writer. These qualities serve her well as she grapples with themes of death and loss in the novella and short story that make up "Kitchen".

Japanese dishes are meant to be elegant and perfect in their simplicity -- Banana seems to have taken the lessons of Japanese cuisine to heart in the title novella, "Kitchen". She combines a few elements -- the death of a grandmother, a lonely girl, a beautiful transsexual, the transsexual's son, hunger (for love and food), and the wonder of new healing relationships -- and the result is a simple story endearing in its whimsy and bewilderment. The short story that follows "Kitchen" continues to address themes of loss with that same simplicity, but does so with less depth.

At the time of this writing, Yoshimoto was obviously still a young writer with much potential. May she never lose the innocence that made this book so charming.