Banana Yoshimoto - The Lake

Banana Yoshimoto, The Lake (Melville House)

A long time ago now, one of the Sunday papers published a supplement on 'cult fiction' with pieces on all kinds of books that they thought fitted that epithet. Against each book were symbols representing Horror, Sex, Drugs, etc. to signify which of those categories it belonged to. Banana Yoshimoto's Kitchen was one of the few, perhaps the only one, to be awarded all six, I think it was, of these badges and so, inevitably, I thought I'd better read it. It was a nice book, strangely comforting and discomfiting in a dreamy world of ordinary unworldliness. I followed it up with the short story volume, Lizard, which remained a favourite and since then I've kept up with Banana as best I can although it has to be noted that this new translation into English was first published in Japanese in 2005.

After a while I came to wonder if the characters, often traumatized or locked into themselves, who find some transcendently close relationship with another lost soul, weren't becoming a little bit formulaic and when I found myself sitting next to a specialist in Japanese literature at dinner in Oxford, I asked if Banana Yoshimoto was taken seriously as literature or was really 'chick-lit'. I got no straight answer until the lady turned round to find me talking about the football results with the person sitting on my other side.

'Ah. One minute you want to know if she is chick lit and now you're talking about football.' So I'm afraid I still don't know.

This new book breaks precious little new ground. Chihiro's mother has died and she is haunted by her memory. She lives opposite the quiet reclusive Nakajima, but their relationship develops from a growing correspondance in their nearby but solitary lives. Chihiro is an artist, working on a mural. Nakajima has a deep attraction for her although neither of them are eager to repeat their first sexual enconter together.

Nakajima's trauma turns out to be due to an episode in his life when he was kidnapped and brainwashed by a cult. In the meantime, their relationship is on some special, zen-like level that we are led to understand is beyond anything that most people have ever felt.

I felt as though we had been walking like this forever. at the edge of this lake. Through scenery so gorgeous it seemed like another world. 'I'm sure I'll walk like this with lots of other people', I thought, but I'll probably never feel like this again.

There are many, many such magical passages in this short novel, as there are in all of her other books. They are contrasted with the terrible darkness that such love provides salvation from. Although apparently beautifully and simply expressed, there is no telling in translation how this reads in Japanese. Very attractively, one must assume. But there does seem an ongoing solipsism in this theme when one feels some identification with it and recognition of it and then reflect that the specialness of Banana's characters' feelings takes no account that we might all have felt it, too, and they might not be as special as they think they are so perhaps they are less illuminated and touched by a special grace but somewhat vain.

The Lake is no more or less than Banana's previous efforts, all of which outline this dualism of agony and ecstasy, a gentle and optimistic feelgood motif of young devotion and deep humanity.

It is a few years since I read my last Banana book. In the meantime I might have grown out of their mystical psychology and lifestyle statements.

I met Banana one last time, by the lake. I could see that she was as beautiful and perhaps still as special as when we had first met many years before. I knew that she would love others and others would love her just as I had but as I watched her disappearing into times of my life that had now passed, I could only think that the good times that we had were over and I already loved others more than I now loved her.