Summary
Mikage is still thinking about her encounter with Okuno when Yuichi comes home. She tells him she will be going on a trip soon, but she asks if he would like to have tea in a café right now. He agrees; she remarks that they’ve had tea so much at home, but never out together.
At the café, Yuichi says that he remembers how Mikage was after her grandmother died, and he now understands her blank expression and listlessness. She replies that she is glad he is talking about his feelings, but she stops short of saying he should come to her if there is anything he needs.
Night falls. In the car waiting at the light, they watch people come and go, all heading someplace warm. Suddenly, when Mikage wonders if Yuichi held the door open for that other girl in the same way that he did for her, she realizes that she is feeling jealousy for the first time.
Yuichi and Mikage say goodbye. She promises to bring him something, and she clings to him in the sharp wind. He tells her to come by and they will go out for tea again. Mikage does not know whether she or Okuno is winning.
Mikage has a memory of Eriko telling her about the first plant she got, the pineapple. When Eriko was still a biological man and her wife was dying of cancer, she would go to the hospital every day. At the time, she still had faith her wife would improve, but it was very hard. One day, her wife remarked that it would be nice to have a living thing in the room, so Eriko went to the flower shop and picked out the simple potted pineapple. Her wife was delighted. One day, three days before the end, her wife urged Eriko to take the plant home so it would not be infused with death. Eriko walked out with the plant and cried. This was the first time she thought that she did not like being a man. In the empty home, it felt like she and the plant were the only creatures in the world—the only things that understood loneliness. Not long after that, her wife died and the plant withered; Eriko realized she had to do better at taking care of things. She decided to adopt a “muddled cheerfulness” (81) and become a woman.
Mikage ruminates on how people have so little choice: we are always defeated; “we make dinner, we eat, we sleep. Everyone we live is dying. Still, to cease living is unacceptable” (82).
The next day, Mikage gets a phone call from Chika, Eriko’s friend and the person to whom she willed the club. Chiko is much manlier in appearance but still beautiful when made up. Chiko invites Mikage to lunch and tells her she has something to tell her.
At the soba shop, Chika greets her effusively and they order food. Chika explains that she called about Yuichi. Last night, he came to the club and was desperately unhappy. He wanted to do something fun, and Chika was surprised to see how defeated and weak he was. She wanted to help him but she could not leave, so he said he’d go somewhere alone. Chika gave him the name of an inn and suggested that Mikage go with him, but Yuichi said that Mikage had to go somewhere for her job and she should not be mixed up with his problems. At that moment, Chika says, she realized the two were in love. Thus, she says she will give Mikage the address and phone number of the inn, and Mikage should go to him.
In shock, Mikage says she has to go somewhere for work. She does understand Yuichi’s need to get away, though, and she has a sense he is not planning on coming home for a while.
Chika laughs about work and teases Mikage for being a virgin, or for her and Yuichi not having slept together. Mikage says she will think about contacting him.
Chika becomes serious. She remembers the man who killed Eriko, though she was not there that night. She wishes Eriko had confided in her because she is sure that, had she done so, she would not have been killed. Yuichi is the same way in his aloofness. Chika begins to cry; she bursts out that she is miserable and cannot believe in the gods anymore.
Mikage walks her out and Chika apologies. She slips Mikage Yuichi’s info and walks away. Mikage feels utterly overwhelmed.
The next day, Mikage sets out for Izu with her team. This trip feels like a gift—like she is being set free from the events of the last half-year. She feels very different now, but she wants to get away for a time.
That evening, she asks her Sensei if she can go out for some food, and they tease her that she did not eat anything at dinner because she disliked it all.
Mikage dresses warmly and heads out. It is after ten. Walking alone in the moonlight, she thinks how she’d like to travel forever. This life seems free and serene. However, she knows that she is knit together with Yuichi.
Drunken tourists walk through the streets. The dark shadows of the mountains loom and the stars shine. Mikage is lighthearted in this strange place.
She enters a restaurant and orders a hearty dish of katsudon. She likes the vibe of the place, and while the food is cooking, she heads to the payphone. She calls Yuichi, who is pleased to hear from her. He laughs that the food at the inn is all tofu and he is still hungry. He likes the place well enough with its waterfall and big windows, but he wants warm, fattening food.
Listening to him, Mikage thinks this is a crucial moment. She does not want Yuichi to stay away for a long time, but she senses he might. They say goodbye.
Mikage ruminates that defeat seems to come from within, not from external forces. She feels weak and hopeless. However, the katsudon revives her and she is stunned by how fantastic it is. She eats with enthusiasm; in a moment of inspiration, she orders another one to go.
Mikage hails a taxi. The driver is surprised because it is so far but agrees to take her to Isehara. Mikage is exhausted and stares out the car window at the moon, stars, mountains, trees, roaring trucks, and glittering asphalt. In Isehara, the town is quiet and dark. The driver stops before a small hill, which Mikage will have to climb to the inn. The driver waits for her.
Unfortunately, the inn is not a conventional one. It has an automatic glass door and no one answers the phone. She suddenly feels foolish standing there in the freezing dark. She walks around to the back. The windows are all dark, but she sees the beautiful waterfall illuminated by green lights. Suddenly, she glimpses a window reflecting the green light; she is certain it is Yuichi’s.
She doesn’t think and manages to climb up a ledge and onto the roof. She cuts her arm and feels a little dizzy lying there on her back. For a moment, she reflects that we don’t really choose our own paths; rather, choice happens unconsciously. She knocks on Yuichi’s window.
Shivering in the cold, she waits for Yuichi to answer. He is flustered but pulls her into the warm room. She holds out the katsudon. Yuichi responds that something like this happened in a dream they had. Mikage asks him for some tea and says she will leave after that. She slowly warms up back to life.
Inside the room is a heavy, mournful feeling. She asks Yuichi if he is trying to separate himself from his life and start over here alone. She does not want him to lie to her. It is a tomblike atmosphere. She is nervous that this is the way things are now, but Yuichi notices her hand in surprise and breaks the spell.
Yuichi also begins to eat the food, and Mikage’s spirits lift. Memories flood her of their good times together, as if they were coming back to life.
A lighthearted mood pervades them both. Mikage states that she has to go back to the taxi. She then tells him frankly that she does not want to lose him; they’ve both been lonely and felt the heaviness of death, but she wants them to go on to happier places together. She hopes that he will take his time and think about it, rather than disappearing on her.
Yuichi smiles that it is the best katsudon he had ever had, and he apologizes for being cold. He says he wishes he could see her when he was being more manly. She laughs that he should tear a telephone book in half for her.
Yuichi tells her to take care of herself and she leaves, smiling. In her warm room at the inn, Mikage burrows into her blankets and sleeps deeply. The night before feels like a dream when she wakes up. It is snowing outside and she has a deep sense that Eriko is truly gone.
On the last night of her trip, the team has French food. The rest go back to the hotel, but Mikage goes for a walk along the beach. It is bitingly cold, the sea is shrouded in darkness. Suddenly, a lighthouse swings its light through the darkness, and Mikage knows her life will be full of pleasure and suffering, with or without Yuichi.
She returns to her hotel room and takes a hot shower. Suddenly the front desk calls and says she has a phone call, patching through Yuichi. Mikage’s heart feels light. He says he is calling from Tokyo and asks her if she has eaten a lot of good things. She tells him what she ate and that she sent things to her apartment, which he can pick up. They joke a bit; he says he is picking her up at the station tomorrow and asks what time she will get in. Joyfully, she tells him.
Analysis
Mikage’s life is both going well and is beset by complications. While she is excelling at work, Yuichi’s depression has worsened and Mikage has realized that she is in love with him. He may or may not be in love with her as well, but he is too disconsolate from his mother’s death to know how to be there for another person. Whereas Mikage’s strategy to cope with depression is to be sad and then rally because she knows life is worth living, Yuichi’s seems to be escape, dissolution, and isolation. Mikage only learns about his fleeing to an inn because Chika, Eriko’s friend and now owner of the club, calls her up and tells her that she knows that Mikage and Yuichi are in love and that he needs her.
Mikage is not immune from the desire to escape, of course; she sees her work trip as a much-needed respite, but she knows that Yuichi “would stay there as long as his money held out. This was the same Yuichi who had delayed telling me about Eriko’s death and kept his depression to himself. That was his nature” (91). When Mikage gets up the nerve to call him from the restaurant in Izu, she has a sharp sense that these moments are perhaps definitive ones. She paints a scene of being “just at the point of approaching and negotiating a gentle curve. If we bypassed it, we would split off into different directions. In that case we would remain forever friends” (91). Since that is no longer what Mikage wants, she decides to act.
Yoshimoto fills Kitchen with both food and the natural world, showing how both are revivifying to the human soul. Walking through the cold and quiet streets of Izu, Mikage feels “strangely lighthearted. I was excited. Alone under the stars, in a strange place” (88). After the brisk air, the katsudon is so fulfilling, so delicious, and so comforting that she knows she has to bring it to Yuichi so he will feel the same sensation. The cold weather and the warm soup are both parts of Mikage’s heightened sense of purpose as she takes a cab to Yuichi, climbs onto the roof, and knocks boldly on his window. She knows it is a bit crazy, but instead of just thinking, Mikage takes action. She admits that it is not entirely a conscious choice—“We all believe we can choose our own path from among the many alternatives. But perhaps it’s more accurate to say we make the choice unconsciously. I think I did”—and realizes that often “we decide as though by instinct” (97).
Yoshimoto leaves Yuichi and Mikage’s encounter in the room at the inn ambiguous as Mikage vacillates between moments of hope and moments of despair. She is happy he remembers the dream they both had, but then she is struck by the palpable sense of despair that hangs in Yuichi’s room like a cloud. This terrible moment is alleviated by Yuichi’s concern for her hand and then the memories they shared bubbling back up to her consciousness. Finally, Mikage speaks her truth to Yuichi, stating that she wants them to “go on to more difficult places, happier places, whatever comes, together” (101). She says he does not have to decide right now, but they end with a bit of humor and he tells her to take care of herself. Again, it is not entirely clear what will happen: will Yuichi rally, or will he sink further into his sadness?
Yoshimoto uses both the natural world and food again at the end of the novel to provide meaning and foreshadowing. First, the next day it is snowing, the cold white flakes covering everything. This obliteration of the recognizable, the “whiting out” of the world, makes Mikage think, “Eriko was no more. Watching that scene, I really knew it for the first time. no matter how it turned out with Yuichi and me, no matter how long or how beautiful a life I would live, I would ever see her again” (103). Second, she goes for a walk along the beach and is struck by how freezing it is. Yoshimoto uses words like “jet black,” “foggy,” “frozen,” “shadowy,” “endless,” and “rugged” to describe the sea. The waves are “crashing” in the sea that is “shrouded in darkness,” and she “felt a strange, sweet sadness” (104). Suddenly, though, “the beacon of the faraway lighthouse revolved. It turned to me, then it turned away, forming a pathway of light on the waves” (104). In this symbolic act, light penetrates the darkness, offering hope. When Mikage returns home, Yuichi calls. In this third example, they discuss happily discuss food. It is now clear that Yuichi has indeed rallied and is prepared to step back into the world with Mikage at his side.
