Literary Tropes and Familial Incest in Banana Yoshimotos

Literary Tropes and Familial Incest in Banana Yoshimoto’s Kitchen the transmission and transfiguration of Noh and post-nuclear family structures Presenter: Michele Gibney, University of San Francisco

Structure of Presentation • Critiques • Poetical allusion • Evocation of Noh structures and themes • Post-World War II women writers – Family structure – Incest

Critiques of Banana • She focuses on the • international and cosmopolitan to the detriment of Japanese cultural references Inclusion of American popcultural icons – “Wrapped in a blanket, like Linus, I slept. ” (5) – “The scene reminded me of the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland. Thinking, what a fake looking green, I turned around…” (96) • Saccharine and overly upbeat

Traditional vs. Modern • “Traditional sensibilities underlie those hip attitudes, and this duality drives much of her work. ” – Nicole Gaouette

Poetical Allusion: Ono no Komachi • “My dreams were always about Hitoshi. After my painful, fitful sleep, whether or not I have been able to see him, on awakening I would know it had been only a dream —in reality I would never be with him again…I would feel abandoned in the chill and silence of dawn. It was so forlorn and cold, I wished I could be back in the dream. ” v (Yoshimoto, 112) • Thinking about him, I slept, only to have him Appear before me — Had I known it was a dream I should never have wakened. • Ono no Komachi v (Keene, 78)

Traditional vs. Modern • “In Noh plays, ghosts appear. And sometimes a character’s personality changes entirely. Just by putting on a mask they suddenly become a demon. I think that what I write is very close to that tradition. ” – Banana Yoshimoto

Moonlight Shadow and Noh • Shite - Satsumi • Waki - Urara • “Seed” - origin • Poetry – plot impetus • Absentee heroes – Hitoshi • Ghost - closure • Life to Death vs. Death to Life • Moralistic conclusion

Shite and waki • Shite = main performer, doer – Satsumi • Waki = the witness, the enabler of the shite – Urara

“Seed” - origin • A Noh play begins from a “seed”—usually “from suitable traditional sources. ” In general this means a poem or a group of poems. – Terasaki, 29 • “Moonlight Shadow” is a song by Mike Oldfield. – “Four AM in the morning Carried away by a moonlight shadow I watched your vision forming Carried away by a moonlight shadow Stars move slowly in the silvery night Far away on the other side ‘Will you come to talk to me this night? ’ But she couldn't find how to push through”

Absentee heroes - Hitoshi • Terasaki calls them: – “ ‘absentee heroes’; without physical presence, they exist mainly in the memories or fantasies of the protagonist, are represented as desire or a void in the women’s psyche. ” (12) • “His presence is powerfully evoked through a set of verbal constructs. ” (37)

Poetry – plot impetus • “There was an electric charge between our hearts and its conduit was the sound of the bell…I could hear it even when he wasn’t there. ” (110) – – Element of sound Gift of a bell Present in every encounter Informs plot thru memory and absence

Ghost • Introduced • Takes center stage • Relegates living to background • The ghost as the “other” is “(dis)placed outside the strongly conventional system of social norm. ” (Terasaki, 13) • Social stigma/socially marginal • However…

Critics of Banana • She focuses on the • international and cosmopolitan to the detriment of Japanese cultural references Inclusion of American popcultural icons – “Wrapped in a blanket, like Linus, I slept. ” (5) – “The scene reminded me of the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland. Thinking, what a fake looking green, I turned around…” (96) • Saccharine and overly upbeat

Saccharine and overly upbeat • Marginalized ghost • More emphasis on the living • Comparison with Osama Dazai – “glorify suffering, negativism, and death. ” – “encouraged by Yoshimoto’s novels, and find in them an optimism and brightness absent in their own lives. ” v Ann Sherif.

Life to Death vs. Death to Life • “Death appears not an end but as a starting point: the starting point of the transferal of the story, that is, of its survival, of its capacity to go on, to subsist, by means of the repeated passage it effects from death to life, and which effect the narrative. ” v Shoshana Feldman. Terasaki, 20

Moralistic conclusion • “Parting and death are both terribly painful. But to keep nursing the memory of a love so great you can’t believe you’ll ever love again is a useless drain on a woman’s energies…So I think it’s for the best that we were able to say a proper, final good-bye today. ” (148)

Kitchen and Moonlight Shadow (Re)definition of family structures

Post-World War II Women Writers • Kono Taeko (1926 -) • Oba Minako (1930 -) • Sono Ayako (1931 -) • Ariyoshi Sawako (1931 -1984) • Takahashi Takako (1932 -) • Kurahashi Yumiko (1935 -) • Tomioka Taeko (1935 -) • Masuda Mizuko (1948 -) • Yoshimoto Banana (1964 -)

Philosophy of post-nuclear female authors • Reject social norms/challenge social conventions – Marriage – Motherhood • Explore marginalized sexualities – Androgyny – Incest – Homosexuality • De-phallicize the male/patriarchy

De-phallicize the male and reject patriarchy Kitchen • No father figures – Yuji Eriko • Reassertion of patriarchal society – Stabbed to death by a knife (phallic)

Exploration of marginalized sexualities Androgyny • “One is struck by the absence of explicit sexual contrast—like the absence of sex itself—from Kitchen. Mikage and Yuichi, like the so-called boy-girl pairs in all of Yoshimoto Banana’s works, retain unarguable signs of maleness and femaleness only in the gender of their names. ” (Treat, 291)

Exploration of marginalized sexualities Incest • “quasi-sibling, quasi-sexual relationship” which “always teeters on the incestuous. ” (Treat, 290) • “the task of measuring the distance and space between two persons. The incest motif indicates, on the metaphysical level, a desire to shorten the distance and space; in other words, a desire for the purest and the closest relationship of love. ” (Muta, 151)

Exploration of marginalized sexualities Incest • “although we have always acted as brother and sister, aren’t we really man and woman in the primordial sense, and don’t we think of each other that way? ” (Kitchen, 66) • “we’re all brothers and sisters when we’re in trouble, aren’t we? I care about you so much, I just want to crawl into the same bed with you. ” (Moonlight Shadow, 143)

Exploration of marginalized sexualities Incest • Kitchen Yuichi: “Why is it everything I eat when I’m with you is so delicious? Mikage: “Could it be that you’re satisfying hunger and lust at the same time? ” (100) – Bloodied hand; “with all the joy of a nursing mother” (Treat, 287) • Moonlight Shadows Satsumi: “I always enjoyed what I ate when I was with him. How wonderful that is, I thought. ” (142) – “I’ll do Hitoshi” – Bell sound Hiiragi’s laughter

Conclusion • Transmission and Transfiguration – – – Poetical allusion Noh Themes of Japanese women writers in the post. World War II era • Past, Present and Future – Past - abandoned – Present - hopeful – Future - incestuous