Discussion About The Kitchen Of Banana Yoshimoto

Banana Yoshimoto is a famous contemporary female fictionist in Japan. Herrepresentative work Kitchen has aroused a great sensation in Japanese literaryworld since it was published. It sold1,200,000in less than two years and quicklyascended to the bestseller list in Japan. Since then,it has been translated into manylanguages,and has won many prizes in Asia, Europe,America and other countries.Banana Yoshimoto and Haruki Murakami are called Japanese “queen of literature”and “emperor of literature” respectively.In Banana Yoshimoto’ s works,the thought contents are compactly close tothe current situation of contemporary Japanese society,directly reflecting the livingconditions and psychological states of contemporary Japanese. In particular,herspecial attention is paid to the female survival state,social status and emotionalneeds in postwar Japan. She especially concerns the female status in family andthe changes in viewpoint of family. As Banana Yoshimoto’s representativework,Kitchen is a piece of work that cannot be ignored in exploration of herliterary features. In the novel,Banana Yoshimoto shows us an entirely new familypattern. Different from “blood relationship” in traditional families,the relationbetween family members in this “family” has been changed radically. The waythat family members get along is changed from the mode of “son is obedient tofather’s commands” in the previous stage to a purely emotion-maintained modethat is freer and more diverse when compared with blood relationship and familyaffection.In postwar Japan the main family form was transformed from traditionalfamily to core family and the quantity of non-kin families has increased year byyear. With respect to the traditional family which emphasizes blood relationshipand whose members are not equal in status,the members in the non-kin familywhich is described in Kitchen are more equal and free.