Novel set in COPENHAGEN at Christmas
Novel set in TOKYO, Japan
4th November 2024
Butter by Asako Yuzuki, novel set in TOKYO, Japan
TR: Polly Barton
Shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year 2024
Butter, by Asako Yuzuki (and translated by Polly Barton), is a novel set in the greater Tokyo region of Japan. The book is easy to spot on the bookshelf, because with its bright yellow cover it resembles an enormous slab of butter. It centres on a theme of food and on Japanese attitudes to women, which in certain episodes verges on misogyny. It is based on the true story of a woman convicted of murdering her male lovers. I absolutely delighted in the detailed and vivid descriptions of food, and it has a wonderful sense of place, but I felt that the book was overly long, and the plot didn’t carry through to the end.
Rika Machida is a female journalist on a weekly newspaper. She is single but with a part-time lover; living in a way that conforms, for the most part, to societal expectations. We learn a lot in the early pages about the way that Japanese institutions work from the example of Rika’s daily life and the constraints that custom, family and history impose on a young Japanese woman. Rika is ambitious but she sees woman around her falling by the wayside as their careers fail to progress. She decides that she needs to do something different, and she begins to research an article that she hopes will be sensational: an investigation into a female food blogger and convicted murderer, Manako Kajii.
Kajii is an unpleasant character, whose crime was to kill three men, having lured them into her trap through her bewitching ways with food. Surprisingly, she doesn’t seem to have poisoned them all: they died in different circumstances. The Japanese public has judged Kajii harshly, not just for the crimes but because it’s rumoured she had been a paid escort. She’s currently on remand awaiting an appeal. When Rika visits the remand centre, she also seems to fall under Kajii’s spell, and soon she too is obsessed with food. Kajii suggests to Rika that she experiences the most exquisite ingredients and Michelin-starred restaurants as part of her research, beginning with an expensive brand of French butter. Rika feels that this is almost a condition of being granted interviews by Kajii.
The experiences with food quickly change Rika’s outlook and behaviour. She puts on weight (anorexics beware of this topic!) and is judged harshly by others, leading her to reconsider almost every aspect of her life so far. In a weird reversal of Stockholm syndrome, the young journalist falls under the spell of the captive Kajii, and it begins a long journey of introspection alongside her investigations.
The author successfully employs the device of contrasting Rika’s life with that of her best friend (with the confusingly similar name of Reiko), who has chosen to marry and give up her career in order to have a family. The bond between the girls gives an insight into expectations and the inner turmoil each experiences when making choices about their future lives. For me, the plot became more than a little confusing when there is a kind of role reversal between the girls: Rika is bogged down with her inner torment and Reiko takes on the investigative role.
The beauty of Butter – and it is a delightful book – lies in the author’s descriptions of food and its consumption; all the senses are invoked as Rika explores new gastronomic experiences, and the author makes the reader’s mouth water in anticipation. She also transports us to the settings she describes, contrasting the inner-city buzz with the tranquil timelessness of the country villages that Rika visits. It’s easy to feel the inner torment as the characters break various societal rules in their different quests, and to empathise with them, even though these experiences are likely to be different from anything a Western reader has encountered. For these aspects of the book, I heartily recommend it. I found the plot conclusion rather unsatisfactory, but others will disagree! The fact that the book has been a huge success suggests that many of the conversations about society’s attitudes it depicts are well overdue.
Sue for the TripFiction Team
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