The Use Of Motifs In Kitchen By Banana Yoshimoto

Throughout Banana Yoshimoto’s, Kitchen, the protagonist, Mikage Sakurai, goes through the struggles of losing her last living relative, her grandma. Emotionally drained, Mikage does not know how to deal with her grandma’s death and restricts herself from expressing her emotions. However, by getting closer to other characters presented in the novel and dealing with death one more time, Mikage learns how to accept her emotions. Banana Yoshimoto seeks to demonstrate how Mikage deals with her emotion with the use of motifs. Through Mikage’s journey in the novel, Yoshimoto mainly uses the motifs of the kitchen, death and food as a mean to display the change through Mikage. Traditionally, in Japan, a kitchen was the only place where women were able

This can be a valid explanation to why Mikage feels that she has more control of herself when she is in the kitchen. As shown in this quote: “I spent every night in the kitchen [...] in search of comfort and found that the one place I could sleep was beside the refrigerator”, Mikage only felt a blanket of safety and warmth only once she was in the kitchen (Yoshimoto 4). The amount of comfort that Mikage feels with herself in the kitchen enlightens the influence of a kitchen in Mikage’s life. The kitchen was a sort of support system for Mikage and allowed her to become more confident in herself and lift Mikage up mentally and emotionally. At one point in the novel, when Mikage finally lets go of the ropes she had on her emotions and “had a proper cry over [her] grandmother’s death”, she evaluates her surrounding and comes to a realization that she was nearby a

In the beginning of the book it is revealed that Mikage’s “family had steadily decreased one by one as the years went by”, leaving Mikage all by herself (Yoshimoto 4). It is in the introduction of the book, where Mikage started to feel the emotions of feeling lonely. At this point in Mikage’s life, she thought that death only brought bad to her life and saw death a something that only made her weaker. Soon after Mikage’s grandmother’s death, Mikage is able to meet and get close to the Tanabe family, who opened their home to Mikage. At one point in Kitchen, Mikage ad Eriko were discussing about pain in life. Eriko advises Mikage that, “if a person hasn’t ever experiences true despair, she grows old never knowing how to evaluate where she is in life; never understanding what joy really is” (Yoshimoto 41). This despair can connect back to the pain the Mikage feels when she lost someone close to her through death. Without the death of her grandmother, Mikage would have never had the chance to meet Yuichi and Eriko and get close to them. At this point, Mikage learns that there are some positives that death can bring, that with some sadness there can also be happiness. When Yuichi finally tells Mikage about the death of Eriko, both of them joke about the death of their loved ones and says that “there’s always death around [them]” and that