Eriko Yoshimoto Gender Roles

Gender is a particularly relevant subject in today’s culture, and Japan is undoubtedly part of the conversation. During the 1980s, Japan had a wave of economic boom and developments that still continue now. With it came the shifting mindsets and societal beliefs. Kitchen is a novella that brings great focus onto this progression in history through the lens of gender fluidity. Yoshimoto uses her characters as a way to express the emotions of the people who lived through the postmodern era.

The many boundaries in gender roles are broken through one of the most critical character in the book: Eriko. Her reasoning behind undergoing a sex change was to become Yuichi’s motherly figure and also to step out of the emotional restrictions and pressures put on a man; “Because I was crying my eyes out, I couldn’t take a taxi...That may have been the first time it occurred to me I didn’t like being a man” (pg81). Eriko embodies the fluidity and wide spectrum in gender identity. She shares similarities with Mikage in that she does not meet the
On page 52, Eriko claims in her letter that “When I married your mother, her parents cut off relations entirely. And then, when I became a woman, they cursed me”. Her experience with her in-laws introduces a new perspective that was never previously mentioned in the novel. The in-laws represent the stubbornness of a part of society that was unwilling to change or adapt to a progressive mentality evident in Eriko, Yuichi, and Mikage. Despite the fact that Eriko was continuously represented in a respectful manner throughout the book (correct pronouns were used and she was not depicted as abnormal or indecent), the idea of transgenderism and gender identity being specifically targeted in this case is very significant as brings awareness to the hardships and mistreatment of transgender individuals during that time