This proposal will explore how Japanese author Banana Yoshimoto utilizes dialogue as a tool to express emotion between characters. Banana Yoshimoto, real name Mahoko Yoshimoto, is a distinguished author from Japan who has received praise for her novels worldwide. Yet, what sets her apart from other contemporary authors is that her writings “do not harbor the darkness of much other modern Japanese fiction” (Sherif 279). This idea presented itself boldly as I began my first reading of Kitchen; I found the characters exuding cheerfulness despite the dark mood developed by Yoshimoto. After I finished the novel I decided that I needed to explore her writing further in order to understand how she crafted such an intricate story. I initially took
In my research I began to discover how Yoshimoto’s writing style challenges traditional literature and how her writing is regarded as New Age. Before I began my research I regarded the conversations in Kitchen as being dull or perhaps mis-translated. The sentiments that Yoshimoto’s gender degraded her work was not uncommon as phrases such as “Women are not capable of speaking logically,' are commonly heard in daily conversation" (Inoue 1). Many critics also shared this viewpoint in that "they regard her command of language as less than mature and her style as undistinguished" (Sherif 280). Yet as I continued to explore the subject of Japanese literature I discovered a genre commonly attributed to Yoshimoto called Shōjo. Shōjo literature typically is targeted to adolescent women and invokes feelings of innocence and youth. Yoshimoto embodies the Shōjo genre through her dialogue in her stories. Her characters typically go through traumatic and violent events but through these tragedies Yoshimoto exposes the simplistic emotions underlying each character. The seemingly naive conversations match the youthful genre and allow us to see the world from eyes of the characters themselves. Instead of traditionally expressing the feelings in the scene, "she frequently cushions the readers from direct impact by creating a sympathetic narrator or character who experiences trauma indirectly" (Sherif 293). By using young female protagonists Yoshimoto is able to present the story through a perspective that is rarely depicted in contemporary works. I now understand that in Banana Yoshimoto’s writing, dialogue between characters exists not as a means of furthering the plot but instead as a way to communicate emotions too abstract for a writers