Cartoon Complex In Yoshimotobanana's Novels

Yoshimoto Banana is a controversial best-seller in Japanese modern literature. Her first and famous work Kitchen was popular at home and aboard, which also caused a worldwide fever of Yoshimoto Banana. Literary critics in Japan and China for the evaluation of the novel hold that her works are not only the post-modern creative approach and narrative style, but also has distinctive characteristics of the specific themes and language. Most of her work describes a sad world reflecting the feeling of sorrow and lost of young people, and the warmness and tenderness between lines makes readers soothed and relaxed gradually.Yoshimoto Banana has been very interested in comic since she was a child. it is obvious that there is a close relation between comic and Banana's novel composition. Especially the original Japanese versions are illustrated with many beautiful, comic-like pictures which will bring the readers into a wonderful comic world at first sight. Opening the book and digesting the plots, readers would feel the tenderness and longing for love and be loved which is commonly described in girl comics; and the novels are also full of simple cartoon language and various characters with both stylistic and daily life description which is also common in comic books. It could be said in Banana's novel elements of comic are everywhere. Banana's novel is a kind of language which I read with the same feeling of reading'comic','song'and'animation'. There is no such a need to'read'for naturally you can come into the world in the novel. I could retell that at the beginning many questioning and critics are on'her comic influenced style of writing'. But for the readers grew up in the'usual'environment (like me), the appearance of this kind writer is very natural. Or it could be said that it would have been a very strange thing that there were no such kind writers."Before, comments of Banana's novel have been mainly on the theme of death, superpower and abnormal family and so on; however, there is rare study from the perspective of relation between Banana's novel and comic. This paper analyzes three novels: Kitchen, Honeymoon and N.P. about the influences from comic on plots, characters and language in the novels, and further on the relation between comic and composition of Banana's novel. It is hoped that this research will provide valuable materials on the study of Yoshimoto Banana within China.