Banana Yoshimoto’s ‘The Premonition’Appears Too Clever for Its Own Good

When a reader has to walk that vulnerable space between style and substance, falling deeply into the former at the sake of the latter, there’s a literary problem. If a writer consistently offers a surfeit serving of style that suffocates basic plot structure and purpose, there is a literary problem. Such has been the story, arguably, with writer Banana Yoshimoto. As a relative wunderkind who came onto the scene in 1988 with Kitchen, the template is more than familiar: Take some offbeat characters (usually a family), have them motivated by grief, dreams, gut feelings and love yearnings, and watch them come to some sort of understanding. Yoshimoto’s characters and her stories really don’t go through exposition, rising action, climax, or denouement.

Perhaps this apparent stagnation in her novels, this slow movement from beginning to the end, is in keeping with a cultural tradition. A predominant shift in Japanese literature over the past four decades, led by such writers as Haruki Murakami, has been toward an evocation of atmosphere. Whether this takes us somewhere is always besides the point. The thrill is in the ride. We trust the conductor, so we’re willing to get on this train, no matter where it might take us. Motoyuki Shibata, English to Japanese translator and founder of Monkey literary magazine, put it this way:

“Now, young translators listen to the Japanese prose and try to reduce that sense of music (in the Japanese language) in their translations.”

If The Premonition is anything, it’s another in Yoshimoto’s reflections on “urban existentialism.” First published in 1988, the same year as the breakthrough Kitchen, The Premonition’s 2023 English translation proves one thing very conclusively: Sometimes mood is just not enough. Yayoi is a 19-year old Tokyo resident who lives with her parents and younger brother Tetsuo. Her “perfect” life (a doctor father and former nurse mother) is the apotheosis of upper middle class domesticity. Yayoi is haunted, though, by a sense that something is missing. What happened? Do we really have to know? She’s forgotten something crucial from her past and her inability to define it is key to her character.

Visions abound in The Premonition. Yayoi sees someone who seems to be her sister (though she only has a brother.) Her mother reveals her own experiences with premonitions as a child. Yayoi uproots herself from the comfort and safety of her family life to spend time with her eccentric thirty year old Aunt Yukino, who lives alone in an ivy-covered house, repeatedly watching Friday the 13th and eating junk food deep into the lonely hours. Yoshimoto puts it this way in the first few pages:

“Time had no foothold in that house. Until I turned up, my aunt had lived there quietly on her own, as though asleep, for years.”

Certainly it’s difficult to build a narrative in which a reader can hold on from such a premise. The story could either veer off into flights of excessive fancy and fantasy, magic realism and grotesque flourishes for the sake of ugliness, and Yoshimoto’s restraint is admirable. Asa Yoneda’s translation is equally careful as it speaks in Yayoi’s voice, showing us what she sees in this magical home of her aunt:

“…I felt as though I were at the bottom of a green ocean. All the world seemed to be lit up by shafts of light…I had a premonition of setting out on a journey and…ending up far, far away from where I started.”

Here is the problem, and it’s certainly no fault of Yoshimoto’s. The naivety and sincere innocence of her prose is a real time capsule that doesn’t have a steady grip in 2025. We’ve been there many times in the past, not just in her work but in so many jewel box precious novellas about young people finding themselves in the mist, cutting through thick fog to get from here to there. Her prose is precise, crystalline, and focused and the unsettled nature of the dream world she creates here is nicely realized. Yayoi is a world weary nineteen year old, uncomfortable about facing the past and unclear about the trauma (real or not.) Family secrets, unconventional life choices, and isolation are all grist for Yoshimoto’s mill. There just seems to be something missing in the final recipe.

The driving force of this novel, however mild that proves to be, is Yayoi’s relationship with her eccentric aunt Yukino and the very nature of the latter. Yukino is a music teacher, a thirty year old spinster, a music teacher. Yukino disappears and this sets Yayoi and her brother Tetsuo off on a journey of recovery:

“In the pitch-black wood, between dark-windowed houses that rose like ghosts in the dark…we walked. Deep green air seemed to ripple out into the night sky…”

In essence, The Premonition is probably too precious for its own good. This is by no means to diminish its significance and meaning. It just lacks the power to resonate or be remembered as a key text by this esteemed writer. The best way to understand Yoshimoto and her work, as exemplified in The Premonition, is accepting that it’s a story reflecting the Buddhist acceptance of life’s impermanence. If a reader has trouble letting go of attachments and transient things, fully accepting its strength will be difficult.

Consider this line from Kitchen:

“If a person hasn’t ever experienced true despair, she grows old never knowing how to evaluate where she is in life; never understanding what joy really is. I’m grateful for it.”

Banana Yoshimoto has been an important part of contemporary Japanese literature since her 1988 debut as a 24-year-old staking her claim to dreamlike stories about young people trying to find themselves The problem with The Premonition is that it’s also too clever for its own good. There are flashbacks within flashbacks, the merging of landscapes, confusion and deception that misdirects the reader as if to say “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.” The only difference here, and it’s profound, is that Banana Yoshimoto is no wizard. She’s a novice finding her voice. Had this English translation been released concurrent with its 1988 Japanese publication it would have been a revelation. As is, this is a charming and interesting curio essential for Yoshimoto completists and interesting (but certainly not required) reading for fans of contemporary Japanese literature.