The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House is a hearfelt balm for the modern world
Looking Back
There are few feelings more impactful for me than discovering a work of art with which I connect completely; something so good, so affirming, so entertaining that for a moment one can be fooled into thinking all is right with the world. Nor is something so vanishingly rare since I started covering entertainment. Something which has changed my relationship with media irreprably.
For a little under an hour at a time, Netflix's The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House and the profound joy to be found therein gave me hope that may not always be true. Adapted by Hirozaku Kore-eda's from the manga 舞妓さんちのまかないさん (Kiyo in Kyoto: From the Maiko House), we join Kiyo (Nana Mori) and her best friend Sumire (Natsuki Deguchi) as they adjust to life in the Saku house, having travelled from their winter-locked home in Aomori to Kyoto. Inspired by meeting geisha Momoko (Ai Hashimoto) on a school trip, they journey to become maiko — apprentice geishas — in which every moment is emphasised through an adoptive family: mothers, brothers, and particularly a gaggle of excitable "sisters."
Sumire is a natural: elegant and effervescent. As Momoko's apprentice, it is clear she has found her calling. Kiyo, however, is clumsier. She cannot follow the traditional dances, has no musical ear, and lacks Sumire's effortless grace. She is too cheerful, too bubbly, too distracted (in other words, she's a normal teenager). For all her persistence, she is simply not destined to be a geisha.
We begin to understand that Kiyo's presence in the Saku house may be less to do with her own performing ambitions than a profound admiration for Sumire. The nature of that admiration is left to subtext, even as *The Makanai" conjures a wistful love triangle between Sumire, Kiyo, and their mutual Aomori friend Kenta (Kairi Jyo). The latter of whom enjoys a pleasingly close relationship with Kiyo's grandmother as an extension of his feelings for Kiyo, even as Sumire watches on in flashback. Kiyo's feelings are more ambiguous. She loves so many things — community, cooking and the food it produces, and supporting others. Yet, it all comes back to Sumire.
It is to The Makanai's credit that it does not hinder multiple readings of the relationship between Sumire and Kiyo. It could be a welcome celebration of close friendship and treating your friends with an overt adoration. More queer-coded readings, especially as the girls come to rely on each other more as the series progresses, are equally valid.
That closeness is what keeps Kiyo in Kyoto. When she is bluntly told she has no future as a geisha, it is concern for her friends' stomachs that distract her enough to find her real calling. With the house's makanai (in-house cook) injured, Kiyo takes over. Love is never lacking in The Makanai but food is its chosen language.
At home in Aomori, Kiyo's grandmother serves dumpling soup. On the way to Kyoto, the girls eat baked sweet potato while huddling for warmth in the back seat of a coach. In the Saku house, Kiyo serves up special meals for homesick housemates, concerned visitors, and most importantly Sumire. She frets over the maiko getting food before it gets cold, wanders aimlessly around Kyoto's markets — where she effortlessly connects with vendors — and when Sumire falls ill Kiyo spends a tireless afternoon assembling fresh ingredients for a nurturing soup.
Even in Sumire's own journey food is a pivotal beat, as she aspires to one day eat the tiny sandwiches geisha consume to not sully their carefully-applied make-up. Though, she will not have them for the first time unless Kiyo prepares them. All carried off with an effortless chemistry and closeness by Mori and Deguchi.
Kore-eda is renowned for creating realistic tableaus that transcend the barrier of the screen, recently in Asura, across Shoplifters, Maborosi, and most intently felt here: Our Little Sister. Through this, we feel like we are witnessing something special as we watch Kiyo conjure the extraordinary from the most ordinary ingredients — eagerly egged on by her new family who have grown used to takeaways.
It's tempting to imagine The Makanai as a domestic series, spent in the kitchen and in the world of geisha that has been so misrepresented by western media. But Kiyo's presence is an unfailingly cheerful glue that elevates the story into a relatable, almost aspirational, tale of one person creating what appears the perfect environment. The Saku house's residents bring her their woes, their dreams, their crushes; communicated across the kitchen table.
She makes bread pudding for one girl instead of breakfast, presents the former makanai with her grandmother's tomato curry. She says good morning to vegetables and sweet-talks plums she has left in the sun. The closest comparison we can make is to Midnight Diner, in which Kaoru Kobayashi's Master is a consistent host to stories that flow in and out of his own kitchen.
But what makes The Makanai, as with so many Kore-eda productions, are moments. One, in particular, sticks with me. The phone rings. One of the sisters rises to answer while at the same moment one of the house's mothers does the same, only to be stopped when the sister picks up the receiver. In any other series, it would be a perfunctory direction: phone rings — character answers. Here, it's an action layered with realism. It's a pattern that filters throughout: conversations layer over one another in a fullsome noise one might expect from a house full of teenagers.
It's never distracting. It's a sound through which most will be trained to hear. Just as Kiyo's cooking is never anything but a celebration, a serious one, of what food can do so is the Saku house a celebration of community at its best. Like good food, food made with love, it is a balm: it stops cold arguments, lifts spirits, and is therapy to all kinds of ills. For the week or so I entered the world of The Makanai, the best I can say is that, like one Kiyo's dishes, once it was gone I couldn't help but want more.