Review

Rika, a journalist, wants to interview Manako Kajii, a woman recently convicted of murdering five men, all her sugar daddies, in a notorious recent trial. Kajii cooked them gourmet meals and cleaned for them and, in return, received money, meals at exclusive restaurants, luxury goods, and all her expenses paid. She became infamous and reviled, partly for her plumpness. How could so many men have found her attractive, the public sneered?

To gain information from Kajii and permission to write her story, Rika, a career-focused woman who eats only convenience food and rigidly controls her weight, seeks to win her over by visiting her in prison and talking about food. Kajii sets her some missions, primarily involved (at least initially) with eating butter – butter with rice and soy sauce, a special buttery cake – then, with eating particular hot noodles post-sex… and so on.

Under her influence, Rika finds that her life, and the lives of those around her, begin to change. But she also begins to realise that her and everyone else’s understanding of Kajii is even darker and more complex than it appeared in her trial.

*

This is a powerful feminist take on society, body image, unrealistic beauty standards, and women’s pleasure, which I think is particularly relevant in our current return to scary-skinny fashion imperatives. Butter represents the pleasure and sensuality that women deny themselves in order to remain small and childlike in body, and, Yuzuki suggests, in life. I very much enjoyed this book, although somewhat unevenly. I was mostly fascinated with it, but at times it was a little slow. I was primarily interested in Rika and how she was changing, so any time the story deviated from that (e.g. the excursion to the country in the middle of the story, or the part narrated by her friend), I was sulky & hoping to get back to the main action.

Butter also reminded me of the recent, infamous, Australian mushroom murder case, and the public reviling of Erin Patterson. Yes, she killed three (nearly four) people with death cap mushrooms hidden in individual beef wellingtons, but some people seemed weirdly more aghast at her fatness. Lots of fat-phobia coming out there. People: she’s a killer. We can leave the fat jokes at home. It also reminded me a bit of The Silence of the Lambs, with the influence of the incarcerated interviewee on the interviewer.

There’s also the intertextual motif throughout of The Story of Little Babaji, which I’d read as a child when it had a much more racist title. It involves a boy meeting some tigers, which at first take his fine clothes, then squabble with each other, and end up fighting each other and turning into a pool of ghee (clarified butter), which Babaji’s mother uses to cook delicious pancakes. I’m thinking that perhaps the tigers are used by Yuzuki to suggest patriarchal restraints and fears.

I also really enjoyed reading a contemporary Japanese novel. I felt like I learned a lot about Japanese life just from incidental details about supermarkets and so on. It certainly sounds like Japanese women struggle with the patriarchy just as much as we do in Australia… possibly more. And all the way through, there are absolutely delicious descriptions of food. Yum!

I recommend this book. It’s a bit eccentric, and at times loses pace, but I’m really glad I read it. In a way, it was almost fable-like. Suitable for adults, or senior students, Year 10+, although not short at 464 pp.

Some quotes:

• “What the public found most alarming, even more than Kaji’s lack of beauty, was the fact that she was not thin. Women appeared to find this aspect of the case profoundly disturbing, while in men it elicited an extraordinary display of hatred and vitriol. From early childhood, everyone had had it drummed into them that if a woman wasn’t slim, she wasn’t worth bothering with. The decision not to lose weight and remain plus-sized was one that demanded considerable resolve.”
• “The first thing Rika felt was a strange breeze emanating from the back of her throat. The cold butter first met the roof of her mouth with a chilly sensation, contrasting with the steaming rice in both texture and temperature. The cool butter clashed against her teeth, and she felt its soft texture right down into their roots. Soon enough, just as Kajii had said, the melted butter began to surge through the individual grains of rice. It was a taste that could only be described as golden. A shining golden wave, with an astounding depth of flavour and a faint yet full and rounded aroma, wrapped itself around the rice and washed Rika’s body far away.”
• “So this was the butter that Manako Kajii loved so much – the symbol of all the succulent food she’d eaten with the money she’d extracted from her men. It was the same cruel, bright yellow as the butter that the tigers had melted into in The Story of Little Babaji.”
• “The main dish of lamb, cut from the bone as soon as it was placed on the table, was so glorious to behold that it made her heart race. Protected by its wall of sweet breadcrumbs, orange peel and fresh coriander, the meat had the robust smell of a grassy plain.”
  

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Adult fiction; details of deaths – nothing too gory; one (consensual) sex scene… not detailed; a minor character is a pedophile: another character is assaulted (backstory), but there is little detail; various divorces and strained marriages, as well as strained father/daughter relationships; Kajii briefly says that her relationship with her father was emotionally incestuous, which is very icky, but at least not physical; can’t remember if there were swear words… if there were, there weren’t many; mentions of particular weights and sizes for women and of the negative social reactions to women gaining weight, which Rika does; a very minor character has an eating disorder in her backstory; a character fakes being an abused wife as an espionage cover story; Rika’s friend is having trouble conceiving. Relationships are all mlw.

*

Yuzuki, A. (2024). Butter (P. Barton, Trans.). 4th Estate. (Original work published 2017)

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I read this novel for free thanks to Libby — support your public library by visiting & borrowing!