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the Complete Review
the complete review - fiction



Butter

by
Yuzuki Asako


general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

To purchase Butter


Title: Butter
Author: Yuzuki Asako
Genre: Novel
Written: 2017 (Eng. 2024)
Length: 452 pages
Original in: Japanese
Availability: Butter - US
Butter - UK
Butter - Canada
Le beurre de Manako - France
Butter - Deutschland
Butter - Italia
La gula - España
from: Bookshop.org (US)
  • A Novel of Food and Murder
  • Japanese title: Butter
  • Translated by Polly Barton

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Our Assessment:

B+ : ambitious and solid take on contemporary Japan

See our review for fuller assessment.



Review Summaries
Source Rating Date Reviewer
The Guardian . 16/2/2024 Laura Wilson
The Guardian B+ 10/3/2024 Josh Weeks
The Japan Times B+ 12/4/2024 Kris Kosaka
El País . 10/6/2023 Sara Cucala
Sunday Times . 18/2/2024 Laura Hackett
Wall St. Journal . 2/8/2024 Liesl Schillinger
The Washington Post . 31/8/2024 Lisa Levy


  From the Reviews:
  • "Although some of the social commentary is heavy-handed, this is a thought-provoking and surprisingly feelgood take on friendship, transgressive pleasures, and society’s impossibly contradictory expectations of women." - Laura Wilson, The Guardian

  • "Yuzuki exposes the misogynist gristle, resulting in an incisive, at times thrilling novel about fatphobia, the pleasures of consumption and the often murky relationship between food and trauma. (...) Part of the brilliance of Butter is its framing of individual eating habits as a mystery to be solved, which in the case of both Rika and Kajii leads back to their upbringings – particularly their relationships with their respective fathers. This is not to say that the novel always hits the spot. In places, the plot development leaves an artificial taste, and for all the catharsis of the finale, the buildup is a little slow. It’s at its best when it fully commits to its foodie pretensions" - Josh Weeks, The Guardian

  • "This friction stemming from food culture and gender stereotypes plays out between the women, but Yuzuki also brings authentic, multifaceted depth to her male characters. While the book is a commentary on patriarchal Japan, the men in Rika, Reiko and Manako’s lives are infused with vulnerability and honesty, adding important balance and believability to the novel. Sometimes, however, the author is too thorough; Butter occasionally feels heavy, both in its lengthy descriptions of food and philosophical ideas. Like any decadent meal, though, the overindulgence is worth it." - Kris Kosaka, The Japan Times

  • "La narración es detallista, circular y un tanto reiterativa. Una reiteración que recuerda a las maneras de contar de otros autores nipones y que, en este caso, es necesaria para comprender la denuncia que proclama la autora: las mujeres sumisas, los hombres sin personalidad, la gordura acusada en la sociedad japonesa y relacionada con la falta de cuidado, el rechazo a las mujeres sin hijos, la sociedad de Tokio alimentada de ultraprocesados, las cocinas pequeñas, la ausencia de mesas para compartir, la soledad." - Sara Cucala, El País

  • "(T)this rather well-worn tale of a thirtysomething woman making mistakes in the city transforms into a thrilling murder mystery. (...) Sometimes this sociological analysis is wearing. (...) But look past that. Butter is a full-fat, Michelin-starred treat that moves seamlessly between an Angry Young Woman narrative and an engrossing detective drama and back again. Yuzuki has crafted an almost Dickensian cast of fleshy characters, with just as many surprise connections, and Polly Barton’s skilful translation maintains a little of the sparse strangeness we’re used to in Japanese novels while prioritising the lusciousness of the foodie prose." - Laura Hackett, Sunday Times

  • "The lure of Butter is the lure of butter: rich, salty and unctuous. (...) Butter is both an exploration of the life of an unusual femme fatale and a subtle polemic against the impossible beauty standards to which women are held." - Lisa Levy, The Washington Post

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       The central character in Butter is thirty-three-year-old journalist Rika Machida. She works at "an old-man paper", Shūmei Weekly -- where she is: "the sole female journalist who was also a permanent-contract employee". Among the points of interest of the novel is the insights it offers into old-school Japanese media and the workplace (with the company Rika works for, Shūmeisha, being: "one of Japan's biggest publishing companies" and also having a literary publishing arm, where her more-or-less boyfriend, Makoto Fujimura works) -- as also, for example.:

     At the Shūmei Weekly, the task of writing up journalistic reports into publishable articles was exclusively the work of the editorial desk. It was Rika's goal to one day have something printed that she'd written with her own hand.
       Rika thinks she might be onto something with the case of Manako Kajii, a woman who had: "extorted money from a succession of men, and stood accused of killing three of them". A jury had found Kajii guilty and sentenced her to life imprisonment -- "Despite a lack of concrete evidence for any of the charges against her" -- but she had appealed and was currently awaiting her retrial. Kajii had run a blog, in which she wrote especially about the food she enjoyed -- and she certainly enjoyed it, as one of the things the public harped on most about was her weight, over seventy kilos. She did not meet society's expectations or ideals:
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.
       Rika is particularly interested in this aspect of the case, finding it: "steeped in intense misogyny" -- though she's aware that it may be a hard sell to and in the men's weekly magazine she works for ..... She tries to connect with Kajii, repeatedly writing her -- but Kajii: "was well known for refusing to meet anyone from the press, and was apparently particularly icy towards female journalists".
       A friend suggests Rika try to play off of Kajii's love of food, and that does the trick: Kajii agrees to see Rika, and a relationship of sorts develops, as Rika repeatedly visits and communicates with Kajii. Claiming: "My entire day is taken up by my work", Rika doesn't pay much attention to what she eats, and doesn't really cook at home; when Kajii asks her what is in her refrigerator the only food she can think of is margarine. Kajii is, of course, disappointed and shocked -- going so far as to say that: "there are two things that I simply cannot tolerate: feminists and margarine". (Somewhat in Rika's defense, it must be noted that there is an ongoing butter-shortage during the time when the action is set, and butter can actually be hard to obtain, certainly in any larger quantities; still, of course, Kajii is right: margarine is simply unacceptable, for ... anything.)
       Kajii -- limited basically to prison food -- educates Rika some, and lives vicariously through her a bit, and Rika enjoys some good meals -- and gains some weight, a fact she is both conscious of and is made conscious of, not least by semi-boyfriend Makoto: presumably thinking he is well-meaning, for example, he explains to/reminds her that:
     Men putting on weight is different from women putting on weight, though. I'm only saying this for your sake, Rika.
       And adds:
     I'm being deliberately harsh when I say this, but for the record, I definitely don't think it's a good idea for you to put on weight. I haven't got fixed ideas about the way women should look or anything, but if people around you think you're not making an effort, you'll lose their respect.
       The different standards for male and female behavior and appearance play a significant role in the novel. In this regard, too, Rika's appearance and role -- as the only really full-time female journalist at the magazine, and being unmarried and (male-like) career-focused, always busy at work -- are noteworthy, as Yuzuki also repeatedly describes her as being, or having been boyish. Rika went to an all-girls' school -- and had: "played the role of the school prince" there, "a kind of substitute for a male presence", with a now-married former classmate recalling, for example, how, as: "there were no boys around, and since you were the most boyishly handsome person in sight, I had no choice to become obsessed with you". Rika only reached menarche in her mid-teens, long after most of her classmates -- but she hadn't minded at the time:
In fact, while all around her girls were undergoing puberty and having to reckon with the difficulties that being a woman brought, it had been pleasurable to retain a body like a young boy, and act so freely.
       (By contrast, apparent man-eater Kajii got her first period when she was just nine .....)
       Even now, Kajii finds: "There's something rather boyish about you, Rika. Like a middle-school boy" -- and at one point Yuzuki notes (admittedly when Rika has put on men's boots): "Given the girth of her legs, she looked altogether like a strong, sturdy man". Yet when Rika plumps up some, it's the feminine aspect that comes to the fore, both for observers and the observed -- perhaps most obviously:
When she'd had her bra size measure at an underwear shop in the station between work appointments, she found she'd shot up from a B to a D cup. Her body was the type where excess weight went immediately to her breasts.
       Much of the novel chronicles Rika's interactions with Kajii as well as her actions as a results of this -- including enjoying food in a variety of ways encouraged by Kajii, as well as meeting Kajii's family -- mother and devoted younger sister -- and eventually also enrolling in a private cooking class, Le Salon de Miyuko, that Kajii had participated in just as she was involved with the men who died. By the time the six-part series Rika is writing on Kajii is published she's gained ten kilos, now weighing in at 59 kilos (130 pounds, on a five foot five frame). At that point, Rika has seemingly also resigned herself to a single life -- surprise, surprise, things with Makoto do not work out (not that their relationship was really a fully developed one in any case, given how little time they spent together) --, as a career woman.
       The expectations for women in this society feature prominently throughout, including, or especially, as mothers. Kajii's ideal is her paternal grandmother: "She was a beautiful, domestic woman, with a great talent for supporting men. My aim is to become like her". And when Rika asks her:
     'Do you still want to have children ?'
     At this unexpected question, Kajii's eyes began to glisten.
     'I do. The ultimate happiness for women is to find their soulmate, raise his children, and make delicious food. And to do so is to make a contribution to society.'
       Yet Butter is littered with broken and damaged families, as this ideal seems unachievable. Most notably, Rika's parents divorced and her father died when she was in middle school -- an obviously still-lingering trauma for her. Kajii had been close to her father, but her parents clearly were ill-matched; he had died as well. Other significant figures in the novel include Rika's friend from university, Reiko, whose own parents: "had been de facto separated but continued to live under the same roof. Both openly had lovers". Reiko was married, to Ryōsuke, and had given up her job; she wants to be a mother, devoting herself to family -- but she hasn't gotten pregnant yet, and Ryōsuke isn't helping, as she laments that: "I think when I packed everything else in and decided to focus my energies on having a child, he felt a sense of pressure".
       There's also the divorced father Yoshinori Shinoi, a television commentator who feeds Rika stories of the sort that he can't use ("There were certain things that newspapers and national news channels couldn't report on: politicians' affairs, information about the victims of crimes, the personal lives of normal citizens who'd found themselves in the limelight") -- a relationship that is friendly but professional, with Rika appreciating his tips: "But why me ? Rika was often left asking herself. The question unsettled her. She didn't have anything to offer Shinoi in return".
       While Shinoi doesn't seem to expect anything from Rika, she is all too aware that: "in her industry there were women who used their sex to their advantage" -- with professional ethics in Japan apparently rather more lax than elsewhere:
It was up to the individual how they comported themselves, and in this world, where the quality of the story was everything, it would have been seen as crass to find fault with and lambast such methods.
       The issue of course also comes up regarding Kajii's behavior: she had clearly seduced a variety of men -- but what was the form and extent of her seduction ? She aimed to please -- and to enjoy what their money made available -- but sex itself did not seem to be central to what she did or why the men were taken by her. In the cooking class Kajii had taken, where the other women were wealthy wives, she seemed as eager to learn their secrets, and about their way of life as she was about cooking itself. As to other human connections, she did not seem to have or want to make friends, telling Rika that: "I don't need friends. I'm only interested in having worshippers" -- suggesting, perhaps, also what she hopes to get from Rika. Rika, meanwhile, thinks: "The object of Kajii's desire wasn't past lovers or celebrities she had crushes on, but her own body" -- as, indeed, at least Kajii seems comfortable in her plus-sized body, itself a reflection of the (culinary) pleasures she (had) indulged in.
       Kajii certainly has issues, but she is both perceptive and manipulative, and Rika is an ideal target of sorts, with Kajii suggesting why Rika was motivated to pursue this story, understanding that it is the death of Rika's father that still weighs so heavily on her, Kajii telling Rika:
     I've finally understood why you're so attached to me. As you yourself know full well, you're a murderer. Virtually the same as me. The reason you can't take your eyes off me is because you seek validation. If I'm proven innocent, you'll be able to forgive yourself. It'll be two birds with one stone.
       Rika is not what one could consider a murderer -- certainly not in the criminal-code sense -- but there are significant unresolved issues for her surrounding the death of her father (and their admittedly awful circumstances). As to Kajii, it seems hard to consider her a murderer either, certainly on the flimsy basis of the facts as they are known and presented in court. (That she could have been sentenced -- to life imprisonment, no less -- solely on the basis of what can only generously even be called circumstantial evidence is astonishing enough, and what we see of the retrial doesn't offer much else.) In fact, Butter isn't much concerned with Kajii's guilt (as far as actual law-breaking goes), but rather the complex psychology and societal issues surrounding her actions and their consequences (because, admittedly, the men did die ...); the novel does extend to the period of her actual retrial, but it's far from front and center at that point.
       Rika comes to realize that she was: "sucked into the vortex of Kajii's ominous power". Kajii used her -- but then Rika also used Kajii, not least (but far from only) in the hopes of professional advancement, and admits that in approaching her had targeted her: "weakest, most unprotected spot" -- with Rika (being rather hard on herself) thinking of this as her having: "been playing the dirtiest game imaginable"
       Rather than being about Kajii's (supposed) crimes, Butter is, in fact, a novel of a woman -- Rika -- figuring out her life and what she wants to do with it, and coming into her own. Early on Kajii diagnoses one of Rika's problems:
You don't have any walls in your life, you see. Your work and your private life, your true feelings and your social self -- everything is mixed up. It's frankly tiring to watch.
       Put most simply, Butter is a novel about Rika becoming a woman. It's no coïncidence that Yuzuki harps on Rika's boyishness, down to the late onset of puberty, with Rika having found it: "pleasurable to retain a body like a young boy, and act so freely" -- because the expectation for a girl or woman in this society did not allow for such freedom. Rika's physical transformation is part of it -- Rika gains wight, taking on a more rounded, feminine figure (even as such inattentiveness to appearance is frowned upon by society) -- but Rika's journey is also one of finding satisfaction as a woman -- but on her terms, and even if it means not living up to society's expectation. So also one of her significant acts, once she's started to figure everything out, is in purchasing a large apartment -- not least to be saddled with the mortgage, forcing her to take her career seriously (since she needs the money from her job to pay it off): she understands that she would not be satisfied with the usual retreat from career that so many woman accept when they get married. While she sees that she will likely remain unmarried and childless, she nevertheless creates an environment -- including with her new apartment -- that encourages a closer form of friendship. Significantly, the finale in the novel, as it were, has her accomplish something that Kajii had hoped but failed to; preparing a large meal for guests, her invitation is nevertheless of the sort unthinkable for a typical housewife, down to the fact that she asks her guests to bring cushions to sit on, since she doesn't have furniture yet -- yet another demonstration of how she can accept not living up to societal expectations and its empty forms.
       Another student from the cooking school that both Kajii and then Rika attended tells Rika:
I feel like Kajii was more man than she was woman. That's a bad way of putting it, isn't it ? When I say "man", I mean one of the dominant ones in society.
       Kajii was indeed able to assert her dominance -- and continues to, in the end -- but fails on a personal level in finding a comfortable place in this society. Rika, too, realizes neither traditional male nor female roles suit her, but she manages ultimately to go her own way.
       Butter also includes a strong set of secondary figures, notably Reiko. The male figures are also interestingly drawn: Shinoi does not take advantage of his position, for example -- almost surprising in this society, where he could clearly get away with a lot. Ultimately, he is most interested in reconnecting with his own estranged daughter. Meanwhile, erstwhile Rika-boyfriend Makoto turns out to be a fan-boy, of a girl-band, who matures surprisingly as well (it takes him a while, as he struggles with his favored singer also putting on the pounds, but he comes around). Reiko and Ryōsuke's relationship and how they deal with their difficulties is also well-presented.
       Reiko is a particularly strong character -- not least because she seems much better-equipped to be an investigative journalist than Rika is. Yuzuki does also allow her to come to the fore for a time -- to the extent even that one chapter consists of her diary-entries, in a novel that is otherwise written in the third person. However, as with several of the novel's other threads, Yuzuki doesn't seem quite sure where to go with this (or rather, with Reiko), and doesn't follow through enough.
       Not entirely inappropriately for a novel about a protagonist struggling with her identity, right down to her fluctuating weight, Butter struggles at times to stay on (some sort) of course. Yuzuki packs a great deal in, and along the way some characters and plot-lines get shorter shrift. (Kajii's trial(s) and the question of her (legal) guilt is also presented entirely secondarily, with Rika digging up very little of any sort that might be considered evidence; Butter is decidedly not a courtroom/legal drama.)
       There are also occasional infelicities, such as the suggestion, of a woman with "almost-white" hair, that it: "was hard to work out where the woman's hair ended and her silky alabaster skin began", or the time when Kajii is described resembling: "a giant blancmange".
       Presented as: A Novel of Food and Murder, Butter is focused much more on the former than the latter -- and the food-talk and description is good, and serves the novel well. As to the 'murder'-aspect ... well, in the very broadest sense, of somehow being responsible for another's death, some 'murders' are significant here -- but mystery/thriller fans will not be impressed. Which is fine: that's not the point of the novel.
       At a time when translations from Japanese are dominated by mysteries or novels with fantastical/utopian/dystopian elements, or slim Akutagawa Prize-winners, the weightier Butter is a welcome different kind of look at contemporary Japanese society. It falls at least partially short in a number of ways, but is still well worthwhile.

- M.A.Orthofer, 31 July 2025

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Links:

Butter: Reviews: Other books of interest under review:

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About the Author:

       Japanese author Yuzuki Asako (柚木麻子) was born in 1981.

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© 2025 the complete review

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