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In this paper, an attempt is made to analyse cooking and kitchen spaces as channels of healing, as portrayed in the novella Kitchen, by Banana Yoshimoto. Cooking food becomes the nonverbal language of expressing loneliness and rejuvenation by the characters. Roland Barthes’ idea of food as a system of signs will be used to show how food expresses grief and intimacy. Georg Simmel’s theory of urban alienation and the “blasé attitude” adopted by city dwellers as a defence mechanism, will be roped in to understand how the kitchen becomes a haven for the protagonists after the loss of dear ones. Michel de Certeau’s theory of highlighting everyday practices as meaningful acts which aid in healing and providing comfort, will be used in the analysis. These theorists will be used to show how cooking food and the kitchen space become emotional arenas that help individuals to cope with grief and handle the alienation of modern existence. The paper begins by locating the importance of food in Japanese Literature and then moves on to the analysis of the novel. This paper highlights the act of cooking and the kitchen space as emotional anchors that can combat the loneliness of modern life and help the characters rebuild their broken lives.
Dr. Rajkumari Sujata Singha. “Food, Kitchen and Healing in Banana Yoshimoto’s Novella Kitchen.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 3, June 2026, pp. 560-572. DOI, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n3.34.
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