Asako Yuzuki

I found the premise of Butter: A Novel of Food and Murder by Asako Yuzuki (translated by Polly Barton) to be truly intriguing. The plot revolves around Rika Machida, a thirty-three-year-old journalist who pursues a story on the suspected serial killer, Manako Kajii who enticed men she met on dating sites with her lavish cooking and extracted huge sums of money from them. After three of her suitors were found dead under mysterious circumstances, the now thirty-five-year-old Kajii was found guilty and is currently awaiting her second trial after appeal while being held in a detention facility. Initially reluctant to talk to Rika, she agrees to meet her after Rika expresses her interest in Kajii’s cooking. Though Kajii refuses to talk about the case, she is more than eager to share her views on food (butter being an integral ingredient in her recipes) and as the narrative progresses, we follow how Rika’s approach to life, her worldview, and of course, her relationship with food changes and beliefs about body image change as she is drawn into Kajii’s world.

Inspired by true events (the 2012 case of the 'Konkatsu Killer' Kanae Kijima), this is a slow-moving lengthy character-driven novel that touches upon themes of friendship, food and culture, family, misogyny, societal expectations, feminism, body image and self-acceptance.

The story primarily revolves around how Rika’s life is impacted as a result of her association with Kajii and her obsession with Kajii as a person which often derails her from her investigative intentions before she begins to see Kajii for exactly who she is. Kajii is an interesting character- straightforward, unapologetic and shrewdly manipulative. All the characters are well thought out and the descriptions of the food and Kajii’s recipes make for interesting reading. I particularly enjoyed how the author incorporates folklore into the narrative and found how the parallels between the same and the events in the novel are drawn fascinating.

Please note that the “murder” element is not a central theme of this novel, which I did find a bit disappointing. Several sub-plots are woven into the story and I did feel that the narrative digressed often and lost momentum as it progressed. The author has touched upon several relevant themes in this novel and the author is brutally honest in her depiction of the unpleasantness that women have to deal with in terms of body image and how the same affects one's sense of self-worth. Despite the slow pace and digressions, the story is engaging and kept me invested as details from both Rika’s and Kajii’s lives were gradually revealed with several twists and surprises along the way. Though I didn’t enjoy the novel as much as I had hoped (which I believe was partly because I expected a bit more focus on the criminal aspect), I certainly found it to be an interesting read.

Many thanks to Ecco for the digital review copy via NetGalley. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.… (més)

"I learned from my late father that women should show generosity towards everyone. But there are two things I can simply not tolerate: feminists and margarine."

Rika is a journalist working for a Newsmagazine in Tokyo, and she wants to eventually become the first woman editor in the newsroom, able to write her own articles. Work takes up all of her time; she has a boyfriend she sees on the infrequent occasions they both have the time and energy to spare and her meals are bento boxes or prepared food bought in convenience stores on her way home. Kajii is a convicted murderer who lured lonely businessmen to their deaths with her unctuous care and carefully prepared meals. She was a media sensation after her blog, which explained her philosophy on pleasing men and about her culinary experiences was discovered. Now that the initial media scrum has died down, Rika wants to interview her, hoping to produce something that will help her career, but it's not until she asks about a recipe that she finally gets Kajii's permission to visit. What follows is a sort of cat and mouse game, as Kajii's instructions send Rika on a journey that upends her relationship to food and has a ripple effect on her own relationships, including the one with her best friend, a woman who chose to step away from her career in the hopes of starting a family.

This book does involve both food and murder, but this isn't a crime novel, or one that features recipes. Instead, it's a look at misogyny and fatphobia in Japan and how the expectations placed on women are ones they can never meet. Yuzuki takes her time with this story, using the space to illuminate the different impossible positions women are faced with. Expected to nurture and care sacrificially not just for their children, but also for their husbands, the skills they use to do so are seen as frivolous and unimportant. Expected to devote themselves fully to their jobs, they are constantly reminded that they need to find a husband and have children. While this portrayal of Japanese society is a stark one, there are plenty of similarities to life in western countries.

This novel makes a strong argument for paying attention to what we eat, to choose to make a simple meal over grabbing something pre-made, to learn to enjoy the process of creating something edible and to pay attention to the flavors. The interplay between three very different characters works so well here, leading two of them to find their own ways to exist that give them the strength to withstand the pressures put on them. I remained fascinated throughout the novel and eagerly await for more from this extraordinary author to be translated into English.… (més)

Asako Yuzuki's novel, Butter, is based on the real life story of Kanae Kijima, a talented amateur chef who seduced, financially exploited, and killed three men, for which crimes she was convicted in Japan. The media frenzy that followed this trial was a misogynistic orgy, spreading beyond Kijima's crimes to affect any woman in its periphery, including the cooking school she had once attended. I did not know this before I read the book, and knowing it now, I can't shake off the feeling that the novel is a bit exploitative of the real circumstances: too close to the facts to be fiction, too far from the facts to be truthful.

Having said that, in Yuzuki's fictionalized retelling, a journalist, Rika Machida, reaches out to the fictionalized killer, Manako Kajii. Where others have failed to secure interviews, Rika succeeds - by asking her for the recipe for a dish she made for one of her victims, shortly before killing him. In a series of interviews, Rika is mesmerised, falling under Kajii's spell, only to snap out of it - almost too late. The book is filled with descriptions of food, mostly related by Kajii, who notes, contemptuously, that there are two things she cannot stand: "feminists and margarine". At Kajii's prodding, Rika, who conforms to Japan's obssession with thin women, eats butter - and other things, putting on weight.

The book is a serious exploration of misogyny and the double standards around physical appearances in Japan. It examines how women are pressured to maintain a certain look, and how harshly society treats people who don't conform. It also demonstrates how difficult it is for women to overcome the burden of domestic expectations. Kajii insists that a woman's role is to conform to male fantasies: to cook, to attend, to comfort. Rika, on the verge of professional success in a male dominated field, is the opposite: a stark contrast.

The book is very long and the plot moves quite slowly, but I found it easy to read and interesting enough to hold my attention. I'm a bit ambivalent about how I feel regarding the subject matter, though.… (més)

Rika Machida es la única mujer en la redacción de la revista semanal en la que trabaja. Quizá por eso sea la única que consigue contactar con Manako Kajii, una mujer condenada a cadena perpetua por seducir y asesinar a varios hombres con la intención de usar su dinero para costearse talleres de cocina y comidas lujosas. Así comienza una serie de encuentros entre las dos mujeres que pronto transforman el interés inicial de Rika, meramente profesional, en una extraña fascinación hacia la supuesta asesina.

Kajii no encaja en lo que cabría esperar de una «seductora de hombres», pero su arrolladora personalidad y su determinación por satisfacer sus deseos resulta más intrigante para Rika que cualquier otro tema que jamás haya tratado. A medida que ahonda en ella, la magnética personalidad de Kajii rebasa los muros de la prisión y empieza a influir en las decisiones y comportamientos de la periodista.

Una versión japonesa de El silencio de los corderos con ecos a Emmanuel Carrère.… (més)