Kitchen (Style)

Style

Symbolism

In the opening pages of the novella the significance of the kitchen is explained. Mikage introduces herself and explains that she has been sleeping in the kitchen after her grandmother's death, indicating that the association with warmth and food was what she needed to comfort her worried soul. There is even a reference to Linus, the character in the Peanuts cartoon who carries a "security blanket" that provides him with psychological support against the furies of the world. The symbol of the kitchen makes sporadic, but significant, appearances throughout this novella.

Mikage establishes herself at the Tanabe residence by forming a special bond with their kitchen; her love of the kitchen, or perhaps her love of Eriko and Yuichi, prompts her to understand cooking. This understanding leads her to find her place in the outside world, among the likes of Nori and Kuri and their Sensei, or teacher. Most of the other major symbols in the story have to do with the kitchen too. At Mikage's moment of lowest despair in the first half, after she has been watching a dirigible float away with all her hope, she is brought back to happiness by the sight of a kitchen outside of the bus window. Later in the story the katsudon that breaks down the emotional barriers is only vaguely reminiscent of kitchens, capturing the sense of nurturing that food has without bringing in the kitchen's various physical qualities.

Narrator

Much of the drama in this story is due to the narration of this particular first-person narrator, Mikage. Another narrator would have emphasized different events — the strangeness of the dream that Mikage and Yuichi have simultaneously, for instance, or even the fact of Eriko's sex change. To Mikage, these events are no more or less mystifying than the juicer that Eriko brings home or the great taste of the katsudon at the late-night diner. She is young enough to be delighted with small, unexpected treats, yet old enough, having lived with her old grandmother, to recognize the joys of traditional, home-based values. She is urbane, both in the sense that she is a product of city life and because she accepts different cultural practices easily, having moved among all of the different sorts of people that compose a metropolis like Tokyo.

Mikage undergoes a huge change from the first part of the novella to the second. In Part 1, "Kitchen," she is consumed by grief, and so is a more passive narrator, observing the things around her without taking a hand in her fate. The Tanabe household is clearly a happier place than before her arrival — both Eriko and Yuichi say so — but life goes on pretty much as it had before. Something, probably the fading of her grief, happens to Mikage between the first part and the second part, called "Full Moon": When she reappears after Eriko's death she is more in charge of her surroundings. She has an apartment and a job. The Mikage of Part 1 may have admired kitchens for their comforting emotional associations, but she would not have trained herself to work in the kitchen the way that the Mikage who appears in the second part has done.

Resolution

Kitchen does not come to a definitive resolution. The main character's problem is not solved by the end of the story, at least not in any way that gives readers confidence that she will not wake up tomorrow faced with the same problems that she felt free of today. She does come to an implied realization regarding Yuichi.