Volume 40, Number 14 · August 12, 1993
Weeping Tears of Nostalgia
By Ian Buruma
Kitchen
by Banana Yoshimoto, translated by Megan Backus
Grove, 152 pp., $14.95
A year ago in Tokyo, two Japanese films achieved great success with a public consisting largely of young girls and homosexuals. This was because they had a common theme. Both films were about young women forming relationships with gay couples. One was called Okoge, meaning fag hag; the other was entitled Kira Kira Hikaru, which might be translated as Shining Brightly. In Okoge, directed by Nakajima Takehiro, a spirited young woman called Sayoko offers her bedroom to a male couple she has befriended at the beach. While the men make love upstairs, she crawls into her futon in the living room, and leafs through a book of Frida Kahlo paintings. She can only enjoy the passion of her two 'lovers' vicariously, but at least she is spared the oppressiveness of more conventional arrangements.
Review, 2680 words
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