The Catcher in the Rice : KITCHEN, By Banana Yoshimoto ; Translated from the Japanese by Megan Backus ; (Grove Press: $14.95; 160 pp.)

I had been really looking forward to reading Banana Yoshimoto. I’ve long been a fan of Japanese fiction, from the emotionally cryptic but cumulatively powerful work of Nobel Prize-winning Yasanori Kawabata to the “most Western,” sex-and-violence-obsessed Yukio Mishima, plus Tanizaki, Kobo Abe, Yoshiyuki--almost everything translated has been worth reading, with many surprises to be savored along the way.

Banana Yoshimoto has been mentioned along with Haruki Murakami (author of “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World” and “A Wild Sheep Chase”) as part of a new generation of Japanese novelists, and Murakami is amazing, just what the art calls for, so I presumed “Kitchen,” Yoshimoto’s first book to be translated would be, well-- important .

Instead, “Kitchen” is light as an invisible pancake, charming and forgettable, showing every sign of having been written when the author was only 23. It starts out engagingly enough, the young female narrator telling of her love for kitchens: “White tile catching the light (ting! ting!).”

Our heroine, Mikage, has recently been orphaned; her grandmother has died; her parents passed on long ago. A boy she knows, Yuichi, asks her to come live with him and his mother, Eriko. Mikage cannot take her eyes off Yuichi; he seems to glow with white light.

When Eriko appears, she is so beautiful Mikage is stunned. As it turns out, Eriko is a transsexual: She is Yuichi’s father, and changed sex many years ago when Yuichi’s mother died. This circumstance is treated with no particular thought or examination; it just is .

Mikage moves in with them, sleeping on the huge couch. The kitchen passes inspection, and Mikage begins to cook in it the very next day. “That whole summer I went about it with a crazed enthusiasm: cooking, cooking, cooking. . . . And if something came out wrong I’d do it over till I got it right. Complicated omelettes, beautifully shaped vegetables cooked in broth, tempura--it took a fair amount of work to make these things.”

Later on, rather abruptly, we are informed that Mikage has moved out and that Eriko has been dead for a month. Yuichi is in mourning; he and Mikage are both orphans now, yearning for each other chastely, dreaming at one point (amazing!) the same vaguely psychic dream.

The release of information to the reader seems unskilled, or immature, weak in narrative or plot. But that’s helpful for establishing and holding the central mood of the very innocent yearning of the two orphans for each other; there’s no story to get in the way.

It’s entertaining when Yuichi’s former girlfriend shows up at Mikage’s work (she is suddenly revealed to have had a job for some time now, as an assistant to a famous cooking teacher), although Mikage rather too easily maintains the upper hand in the confrontation. “When I imagined the workings of her mind, the senseless anger that spurred her to come here,” Mikage reflects, “I pitied her from the bottom of my heart.”

Later on, separated from Yuichi, Mikage decides to surprise him with katsudon pork and rice. That is, she delivers some takeout as proof of her love. It’s actually quite sweet.

The title novella is only 105 pages long, so another story is included, “Moonlight Shadow,” which shares similar themes with the first: “A lover should die after a long lifetime. I lost Hitoshi at the age of twenty, and I suffered from it so much that I felt as if my own life had stopped . . . I loved Hitoshi--I loved Hitoshi more than life itself.”

OK, so we’re young here. Really young. We’re no Raymond Radiguet (whose “Count D’Orgel” is probably the best 20th-Century novel by anyone around the age of 21). There is really no point, either, in comparing Yoshimoto at this point in her development to Haruki Murakami.

The similarly young Japanese-American writer Cynthia Kadohata might be the best reference point. Both share a certain innocent likability in their writing--not to be underestimated or dismissed--along with a certain insipidity.

In Japan, the notion of being an orphan may have different, much more harrowing connotations than it has over here. Early on in “Kitchen,” Mikage says, “I was tied to no creature in the world, I could go anywhere, do anything. It was dizzying.”

In American culture, such a situation, however sad, is often seen as liberating, giving one the opportunity to reinvent oneself, conquer the world. In Japan, the portrayal of Mikage’s situation may have satisfied some deep, resonant idealized identification, even longing, in the book-buying public.

Family is everything. But family, whether in the form of relatives, employer or school, may not continue to be everything in the brave new future, and it is this possibility of breaking free, of individuality in the Western sense, that Mikage represents. And yet, Mikage does not choose this fate, she is innocent, and in fact, she spends much of her time bemoaning the loss of family connection. Consciously, at least, she believes she misses this comforting tie. She tells herself (and the reader) she does. The truth may be much more complex. She can have it both ways. And she thus serves as a bridge between reassuring order and frightening disorder (which is not without its allure). She is both as blameless and as innocently subversive as Holden Caulfield was over here in 1951 and has been ever since.

The phenomenal success of “Kitchen” in Japan (published there in 1987) is therefore easily understandable. If “Bananamania” is exportable to the United States, I think it will be largely on the basis of this marketable, pleasurable name, Banana Yoshimoto. It has the sound of fun.