요시모토 바나나의 『키친』에 나타난 여성상의 의미

Abstract

Banana Yoshimoto's the collection of short stories,『Kitchen』 (1988), is known in her distinctive writing style and expression and caused the phenomenon so-called ‘Banana Boom’. 『Kitchen』is made up of 3 parts and all stories have been narrated from the first-person point of view by a young woman around the beginning of twenties. In this paper, I discussed about the new image of women what the author trying to make by analyzing the novels. Firstly, 『Kitchen』is full of colloquialisms and personal impression of the heroine. It can be seen that it has worked as a tool to express heroin's emotion and will. This kind of writing style was not seen in the traditional Japanese literature. The another distinguishing characteristic of 『Kitchen』 is asexual love. Male and female characters in the stories continue their relationship as a friend without having any sexual relationships. An asexual relationship might be thought as reminiscent of platonic love. But we can see that it symbolizes young women's identity and independence as an individual. Banana Yoshimoto took a positive view of Japanese young women's sensitivity and will. 『Kitchen』is the novel depicting the proactive way of women's life.『Kitchen』has great significance for the fact that Japanese young woman who live magnificently grew to be a main character in the Japanese literature.