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Healing With Cooking

Healing With Cooking


Good Morning Blog,

I have just finished reading Kitchen, and I absolutely loved it. I really enjoyed the “sweetness” in her writing, or as Ann Sherif says, “[Banana Yoshimoto] handles serious subjects with a remarkably light hand or even, as many critics have noted, a studied nonchalance.” (279). Also, there was something about the symbolism of the kitchen and food that made me really love this novel, too. Before reading this novel, I didn’t realize the significance of meals in this novel; this element helped to play a large role in the healing of the characters.
To begin, when Mikage stays over the summer with Yuichi and Eriko, she gathers everyone together with her home-cooked meals. Even when everyone has such differentiating schedules and they hardly get the chance to see each other, “[I]t was because of my cooking that the three of us ate together as often as we did…” (57)
This is the time that all three of them can come together, bond, and eat like a family. These meals come to symbolize happy memories for all of them. Later, these happy memories become an anchor for Mikage and Yuichi. It serves as a memento for a happier time. After losing Eriko, it is with remembering these happy memories of eating together that they learn to overcome their grief, “Truly happy memories always live on, shining. Over time, one by one, they come back to life. The meals we ate together, numberless afternoons and evenings.” (100).
These meals play such an important role in the development of Mikage and Yuichi. They have both suffered a lot of loss in life, but, the happy memories help to become a shining light in their darkness. It is with sharing a meal, katsudon, that Mikage is able to pull Yuichi back together. Sharing a meal again reminded them of all the times everything was good and right, “Even in the absence of Eriko, a lighthearted mood had reestablished between us. Yuichi eating his katsudon, me drinking my tea, the darkness no longer harboring death. And so it was all right again.” (101) 
These meals symbolize their happy memories, times where everything was just right. Thus, the characters learn to heal with these memories, over these meals together. 
I think I understand now why the author chose to name this novel, Kitchen. I also enjoyed reading Moonlight Shadow at the end of the book. I hope our next novel is as interesting as this one.

Bye for now!

Works cited: Banana Yoshimoto, Kitchen, (trans. Megan Backus) Ann Sherif, Japanese Without Apology: Yoshimoto Banana and Healing


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