A Comparative Study of the Themes of Yoshimoto Banana's First Phase Banana: Tugumi, N.P. and Amurita

This dissertation, "A Comparative Study of the Themes of Yoshimoto Banana's "First Phase Banana" Tugumi, N.P. and Amurita" by Kak-lam, Jimmy, Heung, 香格琳, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: Abstract of thesis entitled A Comparative Study of the Themes of Yoshimoto Banana's "First Phase Banana" Tugumi, N.P. and Amurita Submitted by Heung Kak Lam, Jimmy for the degree of Master of Philosophy at the Department of Japanese Studies of the University of Hong Kong in January 2006 This thesis aims at providing a new direction for the study of the themes of one of the contemporary Japanese novelists, Yoshimoto Banana. Banana made her debut in 1987 and is famous for writing about the theme of death. Her special views towards life and death, together with her unique writing style, made her name not only well-known in Japan, but in over thirty countries all over the world. st Banana's works can be divided into two phases. The "1 Phase Banana" includes all the novels from Kicchin (1988) (the title of the English translation is Kitchen), to nd Amurita (1994) (the title of the English translation is Amrita), while the "2 Phase Banana" refers to all of the works published from 1994 to the present. Banana's works have been widely studied by many scholars. The scholars who are especially interested in the studies of themes can be divided into two main streams. The first stream tries to look at Banana's works from the anthropological aspect. Scholars of this stream study the uniqueness of her themes from a social point of view. The second stream looks at Banana's works in terms of literary criticism. Some of them focus on the story, the main characters and the settings, and the writing techniques while others focus on the themes. However, it seems that both streams failed to st present a comprehensive picture particularly on the themes in "1 Phase Banana" and paid no attention to the evolution of themes. st My research focuses on looking into the characteristic of the "1 Phase Banana" as a whole by studying the core themes in the three novels Tugumi (1989) (the title of the English translation is Goodbye Tsugumi), N.P. (1989) and Amrita (1994) that are st placed in the early, middle and late period in the "1 Phase Banana." It is found that the three core themes, inborn illness, incest and the occult indicate that the main characters all bear a strong death wish because of their ill fates, which are directly linked to the death core theme. On the other hand, the three stories are written about the problems encountered by people in different stages of life. Their problems are solved upon the satisfaction of different levels of wishes. The wishes satisfied by the three main characters match the same order of needs indicated in the Maslow's Hierarchy of needs theory and a development of theme can be seen. The death motifs are further linked to the message of life through something called "near-death experience" (NDE), where a person can restart everything in her present life as if she has died once. After the NDE, the person comes to know the most important things in life, and the strong death wishes she had had been sublimated. Therefore, the ultimate message that Banana intends to convey is not of death, but of st its opposite, life. This is the main idea of the "1 Phase Banana." DOI: 10.5353/th_b3580261 Subjects: Death in literature