Summary
Eriko dies in the late autumn after Mikage has already moved out. A patron of the bar was obsessed with her and found out she was once biologically a man, so he attacked her with a knife. She grabbed a barbell and killed him before she died, breathing her last words that it was self-defense.
Mikage finds out because Yuichi calls her and tells her about it, but it had happened a while back. He admits he could not bring himself to tell her right away. Mikage feels like “my insides had been gouged out” (45) and tells Yuichi she is coming over immediately.
On her way over, Mikage tries to remember the last time she saw Eriko. It was a pleasant visit at the mini-mart late at night, and Eriko had asked her to visit soon. They had parted smiling.
Mikage walks up the wintry street to the Tanabe building. It is cold and dark, and her senses blur. She wants to give up living; all of these people dying in her life is too hard. Now, though, she has to see Yuichi.
Yuichi answers the door and is relieved to see that she is not mad. Mikage says she could never be mad. At first, it is strange to be in the apartment, but she becomes comfortable. Yuichi politely asks her about her job, and she replies that it is a lot of fun.
Yuichi sighs that up until the funeral he could not comprehend what had happened. It was so like Eriko, he smiles, to die in an unconventional way. He just found that he couldn’t call Mikage; he was so confused.
Mikage tries to comfort him, explaining that she does not know why so much death surrounds them but that it is amazing they are friends. Yuichi is a bit more cheerful, but tears stream down his face when he comments that he is an orphan.
They decide that Mikage will have Eriko’s favorite sweater. Yuichi shows her a letter that Eriko had written to him. Eriko began by saying that she had a feeling of danger recently, but she was sure it was nothing. She exhorted him to stay with Mikage if she, Eriko, died, and never to contact her own cruel family. She explained that she chose to be beautiful, to live, and to be dazzling, and she knew that, body and soul, she was a woman. She loved her life. She loved taking Mikage in and she wanted him to tell her hi. She finished that the will is included; she left him everything but the club.
Mikage knows that the familiar perfume scent on the letter will soon be gone. Night falls and the nostalgia is sharp. She remembers Eriko coming home late while she was sleeping on the couch, and the familiar sounds always made her feel at peace.
The next morning, Yuichi prepares to head off to school. Mikage wonders if she ought to go home after dinner, and both of them decide they will have a glorious feast. Mikage happily prepares a list of things for Yuichi to buy.
After he leaves, she sits alone in the quiet apartment. The space feels like other spaces do when someone dies. It is as if a light had gone out, and Eriko had been a tremendous light.
Mikage is very gloomy, but she decides to get up because if she falls asleep she will have bad dreams. Instead, Mikage cleans the kitchen top to bottom and feels a deep sense of comfort, like she is making a new start.
That summer, while she was still living with the Tanabes, she had taught herself to cook. She read her cookbooks everywhere she went and practiced as often as she could. She had a crazed enthusiasm that Yuichi and Eriko loved and teased her about. They ate frequently together. It had been tough for Mikage to master the precision needed to achieve the desired effect, but she improved more and more. She got a job as an assistant to a cooking teacher, which she found invaluable. She thinks it was because the other women who applied, though qualified, had a different attitude: they were happy. They did not know sorrow, so they could never know real joy, which was what she emanated when cooking. Mikage thrilled to the challenges and saw that summer as one of bliss. Her awareness of death and the fact that she would die made life wonderful.
Yuichi comes home with the groceries, which requires both of them to take a trip down to the garage to bring them up. Yuichi compliments her on being an artist in the kitchen. For a second, Mikage thinks that if she has Yuichi, she needs nothing else.
It takes two hours for her to complete dinner. She and Yuichi avoid talking about Eriko’s death, but she has a sense that those “unpaid bills would come inexorably due” (62): eventually, it will have to be mentioned.
Yuichi is very drunk at dinner, which is not like him. He sighs that everyone tells him he seems to be handling things well, but this bothers him. He remembers often stumbling down a street, seeing a phone, and knowing he ought to call Mikage, but he never did. He’d go home, sleep, and have nightmares that she was mad at him.
In a sleepy and drunk tone, he says that he feels happy at the moment. He was sure that Mikage would be mad at him, and he was prepared for it. He continues to talk, almost as if to himself, saying that he has not eaten good food recently—only drink. He did not have the confidence to tell Mikage how upset and lost he was.
Mikage gently tells him that he is always like that. He wishes this night would not end, and he says she ought to move back in. Mikage wants to, but she asks under what label she would do so: as his lover? As his friend?
Yuichi smile wryly and says he honestly does not know. He can’t think about anything right now. He is sad that he has gotten Mikage wrapped up in his sorrow and confusion, and he mutters that he won’t remember this tomorrow.
Mikage is distressed and has a daydream that she and Yuichi are staring into the cauldron of hell together. They do not hold hands, and they seem to want to stand stolidly alone.
Yuichi is asleep now. Mikage does the dishes and cries.
The next morning, someone calls the house phone, and Mikage answers. When they hear her voice, they hang up.
Mikage heads to work. The operation has a whole floor in a building, with the Sensei’s office, the kitchen, and the photo studio. Today, Mikage is helping the Sensei prepare for the three o’clock classes. She asks Mikage if she would like to accompany them to the Izu Peninsula for a research project. Mikage is elated and agrees; she knows it is a good idea to get away from Yuichi, Tokyo, and her sadness.
Mikage talks amiably with her work friends, Nori and Kuri. They are both pretty, upbeat, and kind. They are very different from Mikage, but she likes them a great deal.
A little after two, someone knocks on the door. Mikage hears her own name mentioned. A girl enters. She is a little younger than Mikage, round and curvy, with red lips and curled bangs. She says her name is Okuno and she has come to talk to Mikage about Yuichi. She warns Mikage to stay out of his life because she is not good for him.
Mikage tries to protest, but Okuno stops her, lambasting her that she does not know how to be in a relationship. She just likes to have fun, she is not serious, and when she is around, Yuichi is stuck.
Mikage fires back that Okuno does not even know her and she is not being fair. Privately, though, she almost pities Okuno because she realizes what a pathetic mission this is for her. Mikage states that she is not insensitive, but she has nothing to say—does Okuno want her to be crazy and chase her around with a kitchen knife? Okuno scowls and leaves.
It is over, but there is a bitter aftertaste. Nori and Kuri comfort Mikage and say that Okuno is crazy. Mikage simply feels weary.
Analysis
Death hits Mikage yet again; this time it takes Eriko, who was her surrogate mother for a brief, idyllic time. Eriko is a beautifully drawn and nuanced character, though we only know her through Mikage. She is a trans woman who “passes” as cis easily; in fact, Mikage has no idea that Eriko was once biologically male when she first meets her, and she is utterly stunned by her perfection. Eriko demonstrates compassion, warmth, generosity, and understanding in her acceptance of Mikage, explaining to her that “I understand what it’s like to be hurt and to have nowhere to go” (19).
Readers learn a bit more about Eriko through her stories and Mikage’s observations. We learn of her wife’s tragic death and how this was the first time she decided she did not like being a man. In her letter to Yuichi, we hear of the cruel way her family treated her when she transitioned. We know she is a business owner, that she is proud of the club, and that she has chosen to be happy. She tells Yuichi succinctly, “I have loved my life” (52). However, though Eriko seems to have a perfect life now, Yoshimoto indicates how Eriko’s decision to transition to being a woman was still controversial to some in the wider society. Violence against trans women was and is incredibly high, and Eriko does not escape it. Importantly, though, she does kill her attacker as well, allowing her a modicum of power even as she expires.
As Mikage is reflecting on how Eriko’s death affects her, she also reveals to the reader that she has taught herself how to cook and now works as an assistant to a woman with a cooking show. Once again, the kitchen, in all of its symbolism, asserts itself as a core part of Mikage’s identity. Critic Tomoko Aoyama discusses food in contemporary Japanese literature, beginning by explaining that there are a few different representations of food. The first is celebration, in which food brings people together. In Kitchen, Mikage “cooks not out of duty or obligation but for her own pleasure, and for the pleasure of her surrogate family.” Her interest in cooking is not gendered, either: “None of her ‘dream kitchens’ oppresses her or represses her with the old ie (family) system and its patriarch”; “Mikage learns cooking not from her mother but from books, television, and her professional (female) sensei (teacher), whose gentle demeanor presents a striking contrast to the rigor of the father or husband who teaches the female protagonist to cook in Koda Aya’s stories and essays from the 1950s and 1960s.”
The subverting of traditional gender roles and characteristics is clear in all three of the main characters. Critic Amy Borovey notes how Mikage “looks ambivalently at her bourgeois colleagues, Nori and Kuri, with their golf lessons and middle-class families.” And while Mikage herself has joined a “middle-class family” with Eriko and Yuichi, Eriko is a trans woman and Yuichi, a young man, is effeminate and diffident. Borovey sees that “while Kitchen bows to the satisfactions of a middle-class home with a traditional mother, it also recuperates food and domesticity as something more heroic, even macho. The final scene of the novella features Mikage heroically climbing the fence of Yuichi's inn with the perfect katsudon, to feed his need to 'sink [his] teeth into something solid' after a meal of tofu. Food is re-codified as hearty, heavy, and sustaining, as the heroic Mikage feeds the wasted and effeminate Yuichi.”
Yuichi is indeed rather effeminate, making him a refreshing and uncommon depiction of a young, college-aged man. Mikage first notes how “his tears fell like rain” (7) at her grandmother’s funeral and how he works at a flower shop. He has “pretty features” (8), good manners, and a sense of aloofness. There is neither swagger nor arrogance in him; instead, Mikage notices “He was terribly, terribly sad” (29). He has a difficult time connecting with other people and gives off a sense of “excessive unnaturalness” (29). After Eriko dies, he is nearly insensate with grief. His mind is blank, and in his eyes, “everything was dark” (49), he tells Mikage. He admits frankly that “I didn’t have the confidence, the courage, to explain all this to you so you could understand what was going on with me” (64), which is, again, not a common way for a young man to describe himself. Ultimately these characteristics are what draw Mikage to Yuichi and why she feels better with him than with a man like Sotaro.
