"Kitchen": Self-construction Under the Influence of Others

Banana Yoshimoto, a renowned modern Japanese novelist often hailed as the “Queen of Japanese Literature”, gained widespread acclaim for her masterpiece “Kitchen”, which was honored with the 6th “Kaienn Sinnjinn Literary Award” and the 16th “Izumi Kyoka Literary Award”. Within Yoshimoto’s “Kitchen”, there exists an aesthetic charm reminiscent of traditional Japanese literature while also incorporating Western writing techniques. This paper is grounded in contemporary cultural contexts and Japan’s traditional cultural framework, and employs postmodernist and feminist theories. It interprets the relationship between the other and self-construction within “Kitchen” from two dimensions: cultural subjectivity and female subjectivity.

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