Summary
Mikage Sakurai, the first-person narrator, says she loves kitchens more than any other place in the world, no matter where it is or even how dirty it is. She would like to breathe her last breath in a kitchen.
The kitchen is the only place she can sleep right now after her grandmother’s death—right next to the refrigerator. Her grandmother died just the other day, and her parents had died when she was young. She is stunned that she is now totally alone, and time seems to pass normally even though this wrenched thing has happened.
Mikage wishes she could just exist in a stupor, but she cannot; reality is too wonderful and she has to go back to it. She knows she will have to get a new apartment, but moving is such tremendous effort.
One cloudy spring afternoon, the doorbell rings. To Mikage’s surprise, she sees a young man, Yuichi Tanabe. He goes to the university as well (though she has taken time off). She remembers him from her grandmother’s funeral, and she thanks him for being such a help.
Yuichi invites her to come over to have dinner with himself and his mother. To her own surprise, Mikage says yes. Yuichi has a cool manner and she trusts him. At the funeral, he seemed much more upset than she was, his tears falling like rain.
Later, Mikage remembers that Yuichi worked part-time at her grandmother’s favorite flower shop; her grandmother often remarked upon how nice he was. He is nice-looking but a bit aloof, and Mikage admits to herself that she barely knows him.
Mikage walks through Chuo Park, which separates the apartment she lives in from the building where the Tanabes live.
When Yuichi opens the door, she notices the most massive, marvelous sofa and how the whole house is filled with plants. Yuichi says his mother will be home soon, and he asks which room she’d like a tour of. He smiles that people think they can learn a lot from other people’s rooms. She replies that she’d love to see the kitchen. As she tours the space, she “[falls] in love with it at first sight” (10).
Sitting on the couch with tea, Mikage suddenly a strange sense of dizziness: she is truly alone in this world and can go anywhere and do anything. It is a fascinating and lonely thought. When she turns to ask Yuichi why he invited her, he says that her grandmother was so kind to him. He then asks if she is moving and she replies that she is. He asks casually but naturally if she wants to move in with them.
Before she can reply, Yuichi’s mother, Eriko, comes in. She is stunning, elegant, and perfect; Mikage can hardly believe that this woman is real. Eriko warmly greets Mikage; she says that she has to get back to the club, but she hopes Mikage will spend the night and she will see her in the morning.
After Eriko leaves, Yuichi can tell that Eriko intrigued Mikage. Then, with a smile of amusement, he tells her that Eriko is actually his father. Eriko is a man, but she decided to live as a woman and has had surgery to this effect. Mikage is shocked, especially when Yuichi shows her a picture of his actual mother, a plain woman who died a long time ago. Eriko lived with his wife’s family growing up and was quite attached to her. Now, Eriko is a woman and owns a nightclub. Mikage’s amazement grows.
The night passes. Yuichi and Mikage watch a video; Yuichi shows her the shower and the blankets and pillows for her to sleep on the sofa.
Yuichi retires and Mikage wraps herself in blankets in the now soft, still, and dark living room. She has a sense that all of this—the sofa, the plants, someone sleeping in the next room—is perfect and what she was waiting for.
In the morning, Eriko is bustling around the kitchen but laughs to Mikage that she will order them takeout for breakfast. Mikage volunteers to cook and makes cucumber salad and soupy rice with eggs. While she cooks, a feeling of nostalgia comes over her.
It is a warm and lazy afternoon. Eriko tells Mikage that Yuichi had told her that Mikage reminded him of a dog they once had. She also ruminates on what a good kid Yuichi is but how his untraditional upbringing means that some things have fallen through the cracks. He is a bit distant with people and “confused about emotional things” (19).
After a minute, Eriko tells Mikage that though people say things they don’t mean, she truly means it when she says that she wants Mikage to stay here. Mikage staying here would make Eriko happy, and she understands what it is like to have nowhere to go. Mikage agrees.
Inside her old apartment, Mikage remembers how nerve-racking it was to live with an old person because she always felt like they were going to die at any minute. This wasn’t necessarily a conscious thought with her grandmother, but it was there. Good memories of the times they spent here flood back, but Mikage also knows that even though her grandparents raised her with love, she was still lonely.
This is why she decides she can live with Yuichi and Eriko. She gives herself permission to be lazy until May, and finally, little by little, “light and air [come] into [her] heart” (21).
Yuichi is at school and Eriko is at work most of the time, so the three of them are not often home together. It takes a bit of time for Mikage to get used to things, as she dragged out going back and forth from her old place to this new one, but eventually, she settles into not just the wonderful sofa but also life at the Tanabe place.
One day, she is picking up things at the old apartment and the phone rings. It is Sotaro, her ex-boyfriend. He gives his condolences regarding her grandmother and asks if she'd like to meet. She agrees.
They meet at a park, and Mikage thinks about the fact that most men she’s been connected with have a thing for plants. She and Sotaro were always happy when they were together at university, and she still feels very comfortable with him as they sit together on a bench.
After a bit of casual conversation, he asks abruptly if she is living at the Tanabe guy’s place. She is surprised, and he explains that in the cafeteria the other day, Yuichi’s now-ex-girlfriend slapped him because of this. Mikage shrugs that she does not know Yuichi very well, that his mother is there too, that they took her in like a dog. Sotaro admits it does sound like a good thing for her.
They stroll through the park and she points out her new place. She remembers what it was like to be with him, and she reflects that, if they were still together, he’d force her to go back to school. What she needs now, though, is the tranquility of her life with the Tanabes.
They part, and Mikage can see that there are no romantic feelings between them anymore.
Back at the Tanabe place, Mikage asks Yuichi about his girlfriend and her being here. He is angry, but she can see that, deep down, he is abysmally sad. He cares about things more than people because that is who he is, and she can only see that because she is not his girlfriend. She understands him; this is a breakthrough.
Mikage idly wonders if this means she might fall in love with him, but she also knows that she will have to move out. She does not know when this will happen, and she even begins to fill out change-of-address cards to the Tanabe place, but yes, she insists to herself, she will move out.
Time passes. Mikage notices how much Eriko and Yuichi love to buy things, particularly electronic things. Eriko buys Mikage a moving-in gift of a beautiful glass, and Mikage nearly cries with happiness.
Mikage is finally done moving things out of her old apartment. It is difficult; all the smells that were once there are gone, all the memories dissipated. Back outside, she reflects that at least now she would not be torn between two places.
She gets on the bus and endures an irritating ride home. She watches a dirigible outside the window. A grandmother points this out to a child, who is less than impressed, but then the child finally smiles at her grandmother’s gentle words. Mikage is hit with a wave of sadness that she will not see her own grandmother again. She begins to cry, and she gets off the bus. She stumbles into an alley where she sobs uncontrollably. It is her first cry since her grandmother died.
Looking up, she sees inside a kitchen and feels a wave of peace. She “implored the gods: Please, let me live” (35).
Mikage comes home and falls asleep on the sofa immediately. She has a dream of cleaning her grandmother’s kitchen with Yuichi. He tells her that she should not move out; it would be wrong right now, and he is the only one who can tell her that. Yuichi begins mopping the floors and they sing together. In the dream, she worries about waking up her grandmother. She also realizes that Yuichi is a prince.
Mikage wakes abruptly, the dream still fresh. It is chilly and very quiet.
The real Yuichi approaches her and she jumps. He says he is hungry. She invites him to sit on her sofa, and they talk for a few minutes. He mentions her grandmother’s floor being yellow-green, which disconcerts her—how could he know this? She decides they can talk about this someday, but not today. They have all the time in the world.
One evening, Eriko and Mikage are talking. Eriko explains that it is not easy to be a woman. She says that the way she learned to really stand on her own two feet and understand her limitations was to care and feed someone/something else. A person never knows where she is in life or what joy is unless she experiences true despair. Mikage replies that she thinks she understands, and Eriko compliments her on her honest heart.
Mikage knows she will have to move out someday, and she will probably look back on this time nostalgically. Today, though, she is here with this mother and the boy with the gentle eyes. She will get older and she will have troubles, but she will not be defeated. She will have countless dream kitchens in her heart or in her travels.
Analysis
Kitchen is a slim novel, but one full of life despite the centrality of death within its pages. Yoshimoto’s lucid prose and dreamy tone tell the story of Mikage, a young woman who is truly alone in the world after her grandmother, who raised her, dies. There is not much in terms of traditional plot or conflict in the novel; readers follow Mikage’s months after the funeral to see if she finds a way to endure.
The first thing readers learn about Mikage is that she loves kitchens more than any other space in the world. Kitchens to her are places of comfort, security, and warmth. Food is central to her relationships and it is the way she shows that she cares. She loves kitchens so much that she wants to breathe her final breath in one. The only place she could sleep after her grandmother died was in the kitchen, and it is the first place she inspects when she visits the Tanabe apartment. She falls in love with that kitchen just like she falls in love with Eriko and Yuichi; it is not surprising that she volunteers to make Eriko breakfast, an act that is then followed by Eriko inviting her to move into her home. And when she has an emotional breakdown on the bus because she is grieving for her grandmother, it is a stranger’s kitchen in the alley where she is crying that brings her back to life: “From inside came the sound of happy voices at work, soup boiling, knives and pots and pans clanging” (35).
Mikage has certainly faced more death than many people her age, with both her parents and her grandparents dying. Without any siblings or any known extended family members, Mikage is quite alone. While Yoshimoto does not describe her as shy, she does seem more introverted and circumspect about how she spends her time. We learn she had a boyfriend, Sotaro, but that they were no longer together. The reasons for their breakup are unknown, but she thinks, “I loved his hearty robustness, I thirsted after it, but in spite of that I couldn’t keep pace with it, and it made me hate myself. In the old days” (26). Though she has learned not to hate herself for her lack of “robustness,” she still knows that she doesn’t exactly possess that quality.
Mikage is perspicacious and contemplative. She knew, for example, why her life with her loving grandmother wasn’t always easy: “To live alone with an old person is terribly nerve-racking, and the healthier he or she is, the more one worries” (20). Having only one person as an anchor, especially if that one person is old and may die any minute, is tough, and Mikage admits to herself that “No matter how dreamlike a love I have found myself in, no matter how delightfully drunk I have been, in my heart I was always aware that my family consisted of only one other person” (21). Unlike most young people, who live life blithely confident that death for themselves and those they love is in some abstract, faraway future, Mikage knows firsthand that “Someday, without fail, everyone will disappear, scattered into the blackness of time” (21).
These are heavy thoughts indeed, but overall, Mikage is largely an optimist and a person who values life. She feels the temptation to listlessly drift through life in a depressed fog after her grandmother dies, but she decides, “I couldn’t live like that. Reality is wonderful!” (5.) Though she is initially skeptical about the Tanabes’ invite, she is brave enough to accept it and take it in stride. She lets her guard down enough to feel a sense of peace her first night sleeping in the apartment, musing, “Maybe I had been waiting for this” (16). She is mature enough to tell herself that she has “permission to be lazy” (21) in the weeks after the funeral while she is transitioning to living with the Tanabes. She does not chide herself for her idleness, but rather knows that she is healing: “Little by little, light and air came into my heart. I was thrilled” (21). She enjoys every moment of her time with the Tanabes, and due to her particular understanding of the brevity of life, she can picture it in a nostalgic capacity even when she is still living there: “Someday, I wondered, will I be living somewhere and look back nostalgically on my time here? Or will I return to this same kitchen someday?” (42). And at the end of Part 1 of the novel, she thinks to herself in beautifully honest and brave words, “As I grow older, much older, I will experience many things, and I will hit rock bottom again and again. Again and again I will suffer; again and again I will get back on my feet. I will not be defeated. I won’t let my spirit be destroyed” (42).
