The UK has seen a huge rise in popularity of Japanese literature. Perhaps this is due to its refreshingly simple prose and pleasure in descriptions of the ordinary. Asako Yuzuki’s Butter fits neatly into this mould.
Junior journalist Rika Machida, seeking to be the first woman on her newspaper’s editorial desk, pursues a series of interviews with suspected murderer Manako Kajii. Despite its claim to be a ‘novel of food and murder’, Butter is more than a crime novel, defying lazy classification and instead exploring a quasi-erotic dynamic between the two women.
In a series of interviews within prison, Kajii is unwilling to reveal the details of her incarceration; she embarks on a mission to, wait for it, expand Rika’s tastebuds. As Rika is drawn in by this, the food she cooks holds lengthy passages in the novel, described in delicious morsels of prose. Finding herself being ‘lured’ in, she slips away from her former life.
Butter is an illuminating insight into the sexist beauty standards of modern Japan. Rather than focussing on Kajii’s murderous nature, the public is sordidly fixated on her weight, in disbelief at her ability to draw her victims in given her ‘size’. Though food is nourishment and ‘warmth’ it seems that the emotional and physical reality for many women is moderation and restriction.
Though the innocence of Kajii is left ambiguous, Butter celebrates transcendence of societal judgement. Yuzuki’s Butter is neither concise nor conventional, but all the better for it.
“Three gentleman of Japanese literature” is marked with Public Domain Mark 1.0.