Factbook

Long before Japan’s Foreign Ministry had developed its official Japan Brand Program (a framework it uses today), in the 1990s its officials decided to hand out hundreds of copies of a newly translated novel, Kitchen, by Banana Yoshimoto with media packs to the hundreds of international journalists attending the 1993 Tokyo Group of Seven (G7) summit. 

The novel, which was especially popular in Italy, one of the Group of Seven nations, where an edition was published in Italian translated by Giorgio Amitrano in 1993, helped Banana Yoshimoto to become Japan’s first author to “go-global”, a feat that perhaps only Haruki Murakami has managed to replicate since. The novel sold more than 90,000 copies in Italy alone and sold well in many other international markets. 

It wasn’t just the Japanese Foreign Ministry that promoted the book. International publishers also invested heavily in the book’s marketing at a time when Japan’s economic bubble was starting to deflate. This said, international interest in Japan (a nation that some thought was about to overtake the United States to become the world’s new economic superpower), was still extremely high.

This young Asian woman with the odd sounding name Banana, who found comfort in kitchens, sparked international curiosity and fame. Long before Japan’s so-called lost decades when interest in Japan alongside its economy declined. 

When the book was initially published in Japan in 1988 it triggered an amazing response that was dubbed by the media as Bananamania. The novel went on to win several literary awards and establish Yoshimoto’s reputation as an important contemporary Japanese author.  

Kitchen, which was Yoshimoto’s debut novel, has now been adapted for both film and television and is often included on must read book lists by Japanese authors helping position Yoshimoto alongside Haruki Murakami as one of Japan’s two most famous and global contemporary authors.