Bee Honey - A Short Story by Banana Yoshimoto - 2000 - Translated by Michael Emmerich

Home Page for Japanese Literature 12 Challenge 

My Introductory Post to The Japanese Literature 12 Challenge 


Gateway to Banana Yoshimoto on The Reading Life

Works I have so far read for Japanese Literature 12

1. “Insects” - a Short Story by Yuchi Seirai, a post Atomic Bomb work,2012
2. The Great Passage by Shion Miura, 2011, a deeply moving work centered on the creation of a Japanese Language Dictionary 
3. "The Whale That Fell in Love with a Submarine" A Short Story by  Akiyuki Nosaka- 2003- translated from the Japanese by Ginny Tapley Takemori - 2015
4. “Bee Honey” - A Short Story by Banana Yoshimoto- 2000 - set in Argentina during the annual Mother’s March for Disappeared Children.

I first read a work by Banana Yoshimoto, Goodbye Tsugumi, during Japanese Literature 3, in August of 2009.  I was so taken with this wonderful novel that I went on to read three more of her novels, Moshi Moshi, Lake, and Asleep.  I also have posted on several of her short stories.  She is just one of the numerous writers that the JLC has made an important part of my reading life.

The story is set in Buenos Aires, Argentina.  The narrator is a Japanese Women.  She is sitting on a bench in front of La Casa de Gobierno, the main government office. (The building is pink, the narrator makes the intriguing to me observation that the pink color was obtained by mixing ox blood with the paint.)  From 1976 to 1983 Argentina was controlled by a fascistic military group of generals called “The Junta”.  Students were in the forefront of protests and many were horribly brutalized or simply disappeared. (Mothers seeking information on their lost children helped Argentina to find the will to over throw the Junta.  About thirty thousand people, mostly young, simply disappeared, all government records of their existence vanished.). Now every year on January 26 the mothers of the disappeared assemble in front of the government headquarters. As the Japanese narrator watches, she buys a commemorative T-Shirt and watches the pigeons, another Japanese woman approaches her.  She talks of the terrible times under the Junta. Our narrator has just broken up with her husband.  When she calls her mother back in Japan to tell her she thinks of her own pampered childhood.  She stays with a Japanese friend, married to an Argentine tango instructor, who is a tour guide for visiting Japanese.  We never learn in this five page story how the Japanese wound up in Argentina.

I read this  story in The Penguin Book of Japanese short stories.  It was as good as I hoped it would be.

Banana Yoshimoto (よしもと ばなな or 吉本 ばなな) is the pen name of Mahoko Yoshimoto (吉本 真秀子), a Japanese contemporary writer. She writes her name in hiragana. (See also 吉本芭娜娜 (Chinese).)

Along with having a famous father, poet Takaaki Yoshimoto, Banana's sister, Haruno Yoiko, is a well-known cartoonist in Japan. Growing up in a liberal family, she learned the value of independence from a young age.

She graduated from Nihon University's Art College, majoring in Literature. During that time, she took the pseudonym "Banana" after her love of banana flowers, a name she recognizes as both "cute" and "purposefully androgynous."

Despite her success, Yoshimoto remains a down-to-earth and obscure figure. Whenever she appears in public she eschews make-up and dresses simply. She keeps her personal life guarded, and reveals little about her certified Rolfing practitioner, Hiroyoshi Tahata and son (born in 2003). Instead, she talks about her writing. Each day she takes half an hour to write at her computer, and she says, "I tend to feel guilty because I write these stories almost for fun." - from Goodreads 

Mel u

Moshi Moshi by Banana Yoshimoto - 2016. - translated from Japanese by Asa Yoneda

Banana Yoshimoto on The Reading Life

My thanks to Max u for The Amazon Card that let me read Moshi Moshi

Moshi Moshi by Banana Yoshimoto, 2016,translated by Asa Yoneda

Goodbye Tsugumi was the first book by Banana Yoshimoto i read. (I posted upon it on August 16, 2009). I went on to read three more of her novels, Kitchen, Lake, and Asleep as well as several of her shorter works.  Obviously i hold her in high esteem.

Moshi Moshi (used as a greeting  when answering the telephone, roughly translated as “Hello, I can talk now”, is Yoshimoto’s most recent novel.  ( As of today the Kindle edition is fairly priced at $3.95.)  

The story line revolves around a woman, maybe 21, as does much of Yoshimoto’s work, and her mother.  The woman’s father, a well known musician, and husband of her mother, has recently committed suicide.  There is a dark mystery involved in that he committed suicide jointly with a woman.  The plot centers on the efforts of the daughter and wife to try to understand why he killed himself.  They skowly learn about the woman.  We are given slices of insight into the marriage as well as the father and daughter relationship.

Shortly after father dies the daughter moves out of family condo, the father left a bit of money, into her own place in a kind of Bohemian area of Tokyo.  She gets a job in a bistro, there are lots of descriptions of foods to whet appetites.  

There are several interesting turns in plot, mother and daughter both evolve as they cope with the emotionally devasting suicide.  The characters are very well developed, the conversations ring true.  We get a feel for life at the bistro.

Moshi Moshi was a pleasure to read.  Yoshimoto is a very talented writer.  

Banana Yoshimoto (よしもと ばなな or 吉本 ばなな) is the pen name of Mahoko Yoshimoto (吉本 真秀子), a Japanese contemporary writer. She writes her name in hiragana. (See also 吉本芭娜娜 (Chinese).)

Along with having a famous father, poet Takaaki Yoshimoto, Banana's sister, Haruno Yoiko, is a well-known cartoonist in Japan. Growing up in a liberal family, she learned the value of independence from a young age.

She graduated from Nihon University's Art College, majoring in Literature. During that time, she took the pseudonym "Banana" after her love of banana flowers, a name she recognizes as both "cute" and "purposefully androgynous."

Despite her success, Yoshimoto remains a down-to-earth and obscure figure. Whenever she appears in public she eschews make-up and dresses simply. She keeps her personal life guarded, and reveals little about her certified Rolfing practitioner, Hiroyoshi Tahata and son (born in 2003). Instead, she talks about her writing. Each day she takes half an hour to write at her computer, and she says, "I tend to feel guilty because I write these stories almost for fun." - from Goodreads 

"Newlywed" by Banana Yoshimoto - Project 196 Japan

"Newlywed" by Banana Yoshimoto - Project 196 Japan

Project 196

Japan

Banana Yoshimoto

29 of 196

Project 196 Posts

Project 196 is my attempt to read and post on a short story by an author from each of the 196 countries of the world.  So far I have posted on stories from 29 countries.  I am discovering a lot of new to me writers, including some I for sure want to read more of, and learning more about the short story as a factor in differing literary cultures.  Japanese fiction is one of my core interests.

Banana Yoshimoto (1964, Tokyo) is one of my favorite contemporary writers.    I have her on my read everything that has been translated list.   I think either her Kitchen (her most popular work among book bloggers) or Goodbye Tsugumi (my personal favorite) would be a good first Japanese novel.   (There is more information on her in my prior posts on her work.)

"Newlywed" is a really fun to read paranormal story with strong elements of magic realism.   It is told in the first person by a newly married man. It is about a very strange experience he had writing the train in Tokyo.

He is on his way home from a late night drinking session which has left him pretty intoxicated when a very ragged old man gets on the train and sits near him.  The train is not crowed and the three other people in the car move to another car but he stays in the car with  the man.   He can barely stand the smell of the man and is totally shocked when the man tells him he knows why he does not want to go home.   The old man appears to know details about his domestic life with his wife.   Then he looks back over at him and the old man has vanished and in his place is a very beautiful woman.    At first he thinks he is hallucinating because of his drinking.  He begins an intimate conversation with the woman.   The question then becomes what is she?  It appears she is a spirit of a dead woman who spends her time riding in the train talking to strangers.

The plot sounds light but is really well done and makes you think a lot about who the woman could be.   Or the old man.  Maybe the entity takes the shape or persona best for the person they are speaking with.

I read this story in The Penquin Book of International Women's Stories.  It was translated by Megan Backus.

This will be my last project 196 post until April.  March will be devoted to Irish Short Stories.  I have decided the very last short story I post on for Project 196 (which will stay open until 2017) will be an Irish short story.


Mel ulm

Asleep by Banana Yoshimoto よしもと ばなな

Asleep by Banana Yoshimoto (1989, 176 pages, translated by Michael Emmerich)


"No small art is it to sleep: it is necessary for that purpose to keep awake all day" - Thus Spoke Zarathustra



Japanese Literature on The Reading Life

Banana Yoshimoto (1964, Tokyo) is one of my favorite contemporary writers.    I have her on my read everything that has been translated list.   I think either her Kitchen (her most popular work among book bloggers) or Goodbye Tsugumi (my personal favorite) would be a good first Japanese novel.  

Asleep consists of three long short stories about young women in love with sleeping and confused about their lives.

Like many of her works, death is at the center of these pieces.    All are unconventional love stories.    One story involves the central character's relationship with a now dead woman with whom she once lived.    The deceased woman had an unconventional job that she admits is kind of like being a prostitute.   She sleeps with people for money but she does not have sex with them and they do not want it from her.    All the people want is not to be alone and have the illusion that someone cares about them.  

All the stories are very interesting and emotionally involving.   Sometimes a good nights sleep can solve a lot of problems.  

Please share with us your experience with Banana Yoshimoto.


Mel u

"Moonlight Shadow" by Banana Yoshimoto

Moonlight Shadow by Banana Yoshimoto ( 1988, 44pages, translated from Japanese by Megan Backus) is a beautiful story about loss, young love, and loneliness.   It is published as a companion piece along with her longer work Kitchen.  (It was her decision to publish the works together).

The central character of this short novella is a 20 year old woman.   She has just lost the first love of her life, Hitoshi.    They had four years together.

After all, we were still young, and who knows whether it would have been our last love?  We had over come many first hurdles together.   We came to know what it is to be tied to someone and we learned to judge for ourselves the weight of many kinds of events-from these things, one by one, we constructed our four years.   Now it is over, I can shout it out:  The Gods are assholes!-I loved Hitioshi-I loved Hitioshi more than life itself.

 Time goes on.   Our lead character meets the younger brother of Hitoshi, Hiiragi whose girl friend has recently died.   He wears the school dress of his deceased love as living memorial to her even though all in his family beg him not to do this.   I will not relay all that happens as I know a lot of people are going to one day read this story.   Much of the beauty of the work of Yoshimoto can be found in these closing lines of Moonlight Shadow:

One caravan has stopped, another starts up.   There are people I have yet to meet, others I'll never see again.   People who are gone before you know it, people who are just passing through.  Even as we exchange hellos, they seem to grow transparent.  I must keep living with the flowing river before my eyes.

Of the four works of Yoshimoto's I have read, this story seems to most directly express the themes of Yoshimoto. 

One thing I really liked in this book were the closing remarks in which Yoshimoto (I really feel it would be ok to call her "Banana") does the normal thanking of her publisher and her father (a well known Japanese academic).   What touched me was the thanks she gave to the other women who worked as waitresses with her as she wrote this story and Kitchen.   She thanks her boss at the restaurant for giving her some freedom to write on the job when work with slow.   To me the works of  Banana  Yoshimoto are like a funny gentle friend that is far wiser than you might first guess.     I have her on my read everything they have written list (in reality all that is translated into English) along with Kenzaburo Oe and Junichiro Tanizaki.

A link to all of my posts on Japanese Literature is here

Mel u

"Hard Luck" by Banana Yoshimoto

Hard Luck by Banana Yoshimoto (1999, translated from Japanese by Michael Emmerich, 2005) is published in the same book as Hardboiled.   I have already posted on Hardboiled.

Hard luck centers on a young woman waiting for her hospitalized sister to pass away.   Her parents, the fiance of the sister and his brother keep rotating vigil at her bedside.   The finance is not faithful in his attendance in the bed side and is dispised by the ill girls parents and sister.   His brother actually shows much more concern for the young woman than her fiance does.   The sister begins to feel an attraction to him but she does not know if it is just based on her growing feeling of  loneliness and  her admiration for the good character of the brother.  In her mind, she knows once the sister is lost the brother of the boyfriend will leave her life also.   The feelings in this work are below the surface.    Anger at the boyfriend is displaced anger over the young death of the sister and daughter. 

A feeling of sadness, of course, permeates this work.   We sense everyone will go on after the woman in the hospital is gone but no one will be quite the same.   

The sky is high and lonely and makes me feel alone.

Death is present in every aspect of life.

This is also a book about families, the ones we are born with and the ones we create.    

Mel u

"Hardboiled" by Banana Yoshimoto

Hardboiled  by Banana Yoshimoto (89 pages, 1999 translated by Michael Emmerich) is the third of her works  which I have  read.   It is a beautifully told story of a woman who goes to a mountain inn on the one year anniversary of her lover's death in a fire, the only female one among a number of males.   It is a story of a  half love brought on by the fear of loneliness.   It is a great ghost story.    Any fan of ghost stories knows a strange isolated inn can have some surprises

I'm a woman.   Once, just once, I went out with another woman,   She could see things that other people couldn't.  Maybe it rubbed off on me, or maybe being with her sharpened an instinct that I had always had, I don't know.

One of the themes in  the works of Yoshimoto is what loneliness and the fear of being alone can drive women to do.  The protagonist of Hardboiled, about thirty years old, never felt deeply for her former lover and seems to have developed her relationship with her more out of boredom than anything else.   When the relationship ends the narrator soon returns to her normal routine of life.   She had been raised by her mother, a beautiful woman who works in a bar.    The mother is depicted by the narrator as a good mother, a woman with many lovers but she keeps them away from her daughter.  

While at the inn, a woman comes in from the room next door.  She says she has just had a terrible fight with her prone to violence male lover and needs to stay in the narrator's room for a while.    She acts strangely so the narrator goes down stairs to get the manager.   The manager tells her that there are no other guests at the inn that night.    It seems a couple long ago had made a mutual suicide pact.   They brought enough pills to kill each of them.   The woman took much more than half the pills in order to spare the life of her lover.   Women in the inn have often spoken of being approached by a distraught woman.   The female manager of the inn is depicted at the start of the story by the narrator as being totally unattractive in looks and personality.   Events change the narrator's perceptions enough, or at least that is her excuse, that she ends up spending the night on the mat with the inn manager.   We get little or no sense of passion from the narrator, only the sense that she does what she does to avoid loneliness.  

This work is perhaps the most beautifully told of her works that I have read so far.   The production qualities of the book, published by Faber and Faber are very high.   Included in the same book is Hard Luck.    It appears that the two stories were originally published together.   Hard Luck is about a woman keeping vigil over her sister who is in a coma.   I will post on it soon also.   Some people see Banana Yoshimoto as kind of a "light weight" writer.  I do not.  Her works are short and the main characters are relatively young women.   She for sure is fun to read.    She evokes Buddhist  and Shinto themes in her stories.   She might not be the Japanese Dostoevsky but she is very smart, very knowing , she tells a great story and I have added her to  my read all they have written list along with Tanizaki and Oe.  I think I would start reading her works with Goodbye Tsugumi  and if you like than I think you would probably like any thing she has written.  

November Novella Challenge-a beautiful perfectly developed novella-this is my second work for this challenge-I committed to read one novella but may try for four, the second level.

The Japanese Literature Challenge 3-

Woman Unbound Challenge -I think there is a special kind of loneliness that women are prey to that men are not.   I know not every one or maybe most people will not agree with this but I think Yoshimoto sees it.   That is ok but Hardboiled shows us why a woman made the choices she did, what she did to avoid being alone.   Her mother was mostly alone also and we see the second generation effects of this.   

Mel u

"Kitchen" by Banana Yoshimoto

Kitchen  by Banana Yoshimoto-(1988-translated by Megan Backus)

After Snakes and Earrings by Hitomi Kanehara and The Day He Himself Shall Wipe Away My Tears  by Kenzaburo Oe I felt a need to read something a bit less grim.   Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto (whose Goodbye Tsugumi  I really enjoyed reading) sounded like a perfect book for my next read for the The Japanese Challenge III .

Mikage, the central character, was raised by her grandmother after her parents died.   We meet her shortly after he grandmother dies.   She ends up moving in with her male friend Yoichi and Yoichi's mother.   It turns out Yoichi's mother used to be her father.    Mikage  feels  very alone without her grandmother.

I feel an immense loneliness.   I was tied by blood to no other creature in this world 

 Mikage at once is awestruck by the beauty and grace of Eriko, now the mother of Yoichi.

"Mikage', he said, "were you a little bit intimidated by my mother?"

"I have never seen a woman that beautiful"

"Guess what else--she's a man".   He could barely contain his amusement.

Mikage loves kitchens.   In the joy of being in a kitchen I liked so well, my head cleared.

Mikage has learned some lessons in life at a young age.

When was it I realized that, on this truly dark and solitary path we all walk, the only way we light is our own?

Although I was raised with love, I was always lonely. 

Mikage begins  a sort of relationship with Yoichi, her housemate.   A lot turns on her love of cooking and kitchens which is lovingly detailed for us.   She has a dream job as the assistant to a cooking show host.  She never can escape her deep loneliness:   at the bottom of a deep loneliness that no one could touch.

Mikage hides from her loneliness in the kitchen, cooking is her refuge.   

There are some exciting plot events here.   We learn something about staging of a cooking show.

I liked both this book and her Goodbye Tsugumi  very much.    I would characterize her books as likable in that you could see her books as friends.

One could go deeper in this work than I have done here.   It is a tale of bottomless loneliness, a worship of beauty for its own sake, of masks and of the love of food.    Maybe I needed a break from the pure grimness of some of the works I have recently read for the Japanese Literature III Challenge.

Maybe the fact that a tale that turns on loneliness and transvestism for its theme can be somehow seen as 

sort of light tells us something about the post war Japanese novel.

Mel u

 

"Goodbye Tsugumi" by Banana Yoshimoto- Sunday Salon

I am simply crazy about my second book for Dolce Bellezza's Japanese Literature Challenge. Goodbye Tsugumi by
Banana Yoshimoto (1989, translated by Michael Freeman 2002, 186 pages) started a little slow for me but by the time this story was nearing its ending I was wishing it was 1000 pages long so I would not be cut off from the world Banana Yoshimoto created with such economy. I was drawn very deeply into the lives of the lead characters, two female teenage cousins whose lives center around a small town inn outside of Tokyo. The title character Tsugumi is 18, her cousin and narrator of the story Maria is 19 and Yoko the sister of Tsugumi is 20. The parents of Tsugumi own the Inn. Marie's is the only child of a single mother.

Tsugumi has a serious illness and a personality that grates on most people at first. At first I did not like her but
by the time of her action scene that I am sure will amaze all readers I was cheering so much for her. Goodbye Tsugumi contains a lot of themes. It is a story of sibling and family conflict. It is a coming of age story of the two cousins. It is a love story. It is a tale of a revenge so sweet you will howl with delight even as you are shocked by what happens. The novel gives you an intimate look at life in a small town Japanese Inn trying to compete with hotels run by giant corporations. It is a story of the pull of the big city and the shadow it casts.

There are some wonderful descriptive phrases of nature throughout the book.

"I get the feeling that in towns near the sea the rain falls in a more lonely fashion than in other places"

"It's a marvelous thing, the ocean. For some reason when two people sit together next to it, they stop caring whether they talk or stay silent".

Here is an observation that to me echoed my first book for the Japanese Challenge After Dark by Haruki Murakami:
"Night time turns people into friends in next to no time"

Both Maria and Tsugumi read a lot. Maria tells us "She was always reading books about all kind of things, she knew a lot".

We are shown how books read long ago can create bonds.

" ''You remember that book Heidi we read when we were kids. I feel kinda like that friend of hers with the bad leg.'
Tsugumi chuckled sheepishly."

It is not labored over in the novel, nothing is, but we can see Maria and her cousin both read a very lot. They read to learn, to pass the time and because they enjoy it. They are raised in a tradition that respects the written word. this reading echos in Maria's observations on nature and in the characters reading of each other.

I really enjoyed Goodbye Tsugumi and I flat out loved the last twenty pages. I hope a lot of others will read this book so I can see their reactions. Banana Yoshimoto has five other works translated into English and I will read them all. My next book for the Japanese Challenge will be Real World by Natsuko Kirino.

Mel u