#Hiirage Moonlight Shadow

[shimmywhenyoucantbounce]

The Unsleeping City Chapter Two and Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto

Ally Beardsley said, "I get her Kitchen, that really old book" and I perked up a little bit because I know a book called Kitchen, a niche one that I have analytical thoughts about and love as a piece of art and have never heard anyone mention outside of the class wherein I read it. And then they said "it has this really cool trans character in it," and I had to pause the video to scream about this, because the book I know does in fact have a cool trans woman in it. Her name is Eriko. When I had calmed down enough, I pressed play again and Ally Beardsley said "It's by this writer Banana Yoshimoto" and that is as far as I am into that episode because at that confirmation I had to stop and scream again.

Kitchen, the novella, is made of two different pieces: "Kitchen," about short-novel length by itself, and "Moonlight Shadow," a much shorter story. Both stories are about grief, isolation, connection, and food. Notably, both stories start with the main characters already in mourning, their loved ones already dead. We enter their world as one that is notably empty. This parallels the setting of season two, which opens with introductory scenes that still keenly feel Kugrash's absence.

I have been thinking about Kitchen through this entire season, which is part of why I got so excited when Ally Beardsley mentioned it. Kitchen is a book about grief and grieving and relying on others in your time of need to help you and care for you and give you food. Yoshimoto uses light and dark imagery not as symbols of good and evil, but rather of isolation and connection. Multiple times, she brings us the image of distinct points being connected by light in a dark void, including the main character looking up at the moon in a dark sky and, in one of the closing images of "Kitchen," a lighthouse tracing a road of light across black waves. When our narrator meets one of the people who will become her new household, she sees "in the black gloom before my eyes...a straight road leading from me to him" (Yoshimoto 6-7) (I don't have my book with me but I did find one of my old essays about it :) ). The darkness in these images is that which is not known, that which the characters cannot see through, which is why it represents isolation. They do not have knowledge or connection to that place, even though they may in the future. That way, the imagery is also connected to agency and the act of exploring and reaching out to one's world. Kitchen portrays characters in grief and dangerously deep in self-isolation, and the events and relationships that help them deal with that and figure out how they are going to live now. Yoshimoto characterizes the universe not as malicious but uncaring, and proposes that the response to this is to look for meaning instead in each other and the world we make. Which is exactly the struggle our characters are embarking on against NULL! Meaning, value, the things we personally hold dear; and it doesn't matter if they're "cosmically insignificant" or doomed or can be corrupted or whatever because they exist while they exist and they matter while they're there. Aaaaaaaaaa!!!

I've just remembered that one of the characters in "Kitchen" climbs up on someone's roof in the middle of the night to eat katsudon with them. They were not invited there! It was not katsudon that was in the hotel room! They bought the katsudon in the middle of the night and put it in their backpack and climbed up onto the roof and tapped at the window and said "Hello I brought katsudon"! I love this. It's so good. It's also Kugrash behavior.

Victoria Brown also persistently cares for people by providing them food, which is just to say that these two stories are both thinking about the comforting and communal power of cooking for people and eating together.

If I had a nickel for each time a mysterious, apparently-human but probably supernatural figure connected to a liminal location appeared to a character in need and offered them specifically tea in the Unsleeping City and Kitchen, I would have at least three nickels. Also the liminal location in "Moonlight Shadow" is a bridge over a river, which is traditionally a powerful symbol and also something that holds significance in Unsleeping City geography and lore.

In "Moonlight Shadow," a young man in mourning for his girlfriend wears her clothes every day after her death. I'd like to show Ricky Matsui this bit and hear his thoughts on it because of how he has taken on some of Kugrash's role. Ricky feels pressure from other parties as well, the Questing Blade and the Peasant's Sword, to carry on a legacy (that is symbolized by something one wears or carries).

I think that's all the thoughts I have about it for now, except that I seem to remember a line in "Moonlight Shadow" about a cloudy sky hanging heavy like stone, which might characterize the emotional state of New York in Chapter Two as well.

I'd like to know Pete's (and Ally Beardsley's) thoughts on Eriko as a character, and also if they talked to any of the other people in the season's production about the similarity of themes between the book and the series. If anyone has thoughts they'd like to share about this or about Kitchen in general, please do let me know! I vibrate whenever I get to discuss parallels between different media I'm into.