Forest of memories

Banana Yoshimoto’s The Premonition is about disturbing secrets at the heart of families and the possibility of negotiating with them to find closure.

It is sakura blossom time in Japan now. In over a thousand different sites across the Japanese islands, along riverbanks and mountain passes, trees with clouds of pink or white cherry blossoms float in the air like benediction from an unseen spirit.

This seems like an appropriate moment to enter Banana Yoshimoto’s world, made famous by her bestselling 1988 novel, Kitchen: it is a world where she turns her relentless gaze on families, until they start unravelling. On the surface, The Premonition could just be a coming-of-age saga of the 19-year-old narrator, Yayoi, the daughter of a family of four. Her life seems ordinary enough. She lives with her caring and hard-working parents and her younger brother, Tetsuo. They have just moved back into their old house after its renovation. Tetsuo busies himself building a wooden kennel for a puppy he has been promised. Everything seems perfect, like a Japanese folding screen with exquisite drawings of cherry blossoms.

The Premonition

By Banana Yoshimoto, translated by Asa Yoneda

Counterpoint LLC

Pages: 144

Price: Rs.1,740

But there are secrets lurking under the floorboard. Yayoi’s mother, who is a nurse, is baffled by her daughter’s “visions”, which could be a form of what is sometimes called past-life regression. They float unheralded into their conversations. The three words “dark feminine magic” are unfurled like a bamboo tatami mat in the spare, bare rooms of Yayoi’s middle-class family, superbly described by Yoshimoto.

During a particularly disturbing episode, Yayoi sinks into the water of a leaking bathtub and finds a rubber duck while stepping out of it. She imagines that a baby has been killed, but her mother does not respond to her queries.

Cover of The Premonition | Photo Credit: By special arrangement

Yayoi and Yukino

Eager for a break, Yayoi goes to stay with her mysterious aunt, Yukino, who lives in a ramshackle house in another city. That Yoshimoto has a gift for evoking the strangeness of a particular place becomes apparent here again. Yukino is a music teacher in a school where she is loved by all her students, particularly by a young man named Masahiko.

But Yukino disregards all norms of a regulated life. She lives in her pajamas, hardly combs her hair, and rarely cooks proper food. She lets Yayoi sleep on the floor and wakes her up at 2 am for a drink. She dumps everything she wants to forget in her backyard. I wondered if this was a metaphor for the way Japan has attempted to forget its historical past in its effort to imitate the Western (read American) way of life after its defeat in the Second World War. Or is Yukino’s chaotic way of life a personal ploy to protect herself from disturbing memories? Whatever it may be, Yukino’s eccentric lifestyle has a liberating effect on Yayoi, who starts recovering repressed memories, which threaten everything she knows about herself and her family.

Yukino disappears into the hills—first to a famous resort named Karuizawa and later to Aomori in the north, also celebrated for its cherry blossoms. But she leaves enough clues for Yayoi to find her.

Unruly emotions

At Karuizawa, where Yukino has a cottage, Yayoi is joined by Masahiko and Tetsuo. It would be unkind to reveal what transpires there, except to say that there are some detailed descriptions on how to prepare food. Masahiko is particularly good at braiding together strips of a Japanese taro vegetable named konnyaku, which Yayoi adds to a meal they have together. Domesticity and its lack (represented by Yukino) somehow intertwine to result in the decisive revelation Yayoi has been waiting for. It has much to do with the “dark feminine magic” that, the author tells us, defines her nature.

This reminded me of a popular video game called Genshin Impact, originally from China, which makes use of Japanese anime. Each of the seven natural elements in Genshin Impact is represented by a female character who is something like a dominatrix. Their male counterparts wield deadly weapons and are prone to violence. Are these 21st century versions of the images one finds on the walls of Tantric Buddhist shrines? By giving a visible form to brutality, do such figures in a way exorcise barbarity?

One can also draw parallels with Indian forms of storytelling like Kathakali or shadow puppetry, which often make use of violent imagery or lewd sexual gestures to vent these emotions in the safe space of the performance.

Yoshimoto’s Kitchen had asked some tough questions by depicting a family with a transgender mother. In The Premonition, too, some disturbing issues are addressed, although not as effectively. At the same time, the narrative is limpid and compelling, with the constant sense that something unexpected is about to unravel in the next page.

Yoshimoto’s original was published in 1988. Her characters would now be a part of Japan’s ageing population. Torn by forces beyond her control, Yukino finds solace in nature: in today’s lexicon, she embraces the trendy art of forest-bathing. That might seem like a lame solution to the deep, dark problems which had beset her, but Yoshimoto leaves it at that.

Geeta Doctor is a Chennai-based writer, critic, and cultural commentator.