Review: BUTTER, Asako Yuzuki

• 
  This edition from Amazon on Kindle
  
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0CBYJNKTT
• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Fourth Estate (29 February 2024)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Print length ‏ : ‎ 448 pages
• Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0063236419
• Translated from Japanese into English by Polly Barton

Synopsis (Amazon) 

The cult Japanese bestseller about a female gourmet cook and serial killer and the journalist intent on cracking her case, inspired by a true story.

There are two things that I can simply not tolerate: feminists and margarine.

Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in Tokyo Detention Centre convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen, who she is said to have seduced with her delicious home cooking. The case has captured the nation’s imagination but Kajii refuses to speak with the press, entertaining no visitors. That is, until journalist Rika Machida writes a letter asking for her recipe for beef stew and Kajii can’t resist writing back.

Rika, the only woman in her news office, works late each night, rarely cooking more than ramen. As the visits unfold between her and the steely Kajii, they are closer to a masterclass in food than journalistic research. Rika hopes this gastronomic exchange will help her soften Kajii but it seems that she might be the one changing. With each meal she eats, something is awakening in her body, might she and Kaji have more in common than she once thought?

Inspired by the real case of the convicted con woman and serial killer, "The Konkatsu Killer", Asako Yuzuki’s Butter is a vivid, unsettling exploration of misogyny, obsession, romance and the transgressive pleasures of food in Japan.

My Take

This novel really isn't crime fiction, despite the fact that the elephant in the room is a person who has been convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen. Manako Kajii is in the Tokyo Detention Centre awaiting the court's confirmation of her guilt. The problem is that each of the 3 businessmen seem to have died from natural causes, nor is there any obvious motives for their deaths, if they were murdered. 

Her mentor suggests that journalist Rika Machida try to write a definitive piece explaining what Kajii's motives were. The problem is that Kajii is refusing all interviews. Eventually Rika, after writing several letters, gets an interview, but then the novel takes a direction which the reader does not expect.

Rika finds that Kajii will only agree to continuing interviews if they talk about food, and in particular, about butter in cooking. Not only that, Rika has to agree to cook the food that Kajii wants her to cook, and then report on how she felt about that experience.  The prime ingredient that Kajii wants Rika to use is butter, currently in short supply in shops and supermarkets in Japan. Kajii determines the recipes and the circumstances under which Rika produces and eats the food.

The novel wears on, and Rika's whole lifestyle changes. And the issue of whether Kajii can be fairly convicted of murder persists.

‘You really didn’t kill them, then? You never actually laid hands on them?’ Kajii shook her head. In that moment, Rika believed her entirely. This is the truth, she thought. This is what I’ve been coming here all this time for – this moment. ‘Did you have the intention to kill them, though? That will be what the trial hinges on.’

My rating: 4.4

About the author 

Polly Barton is a translator based in Bristol. A winner of the Japanese Agency of Cultural Affairs's International Translation Competition, she has received the Kyoko Selden Memorial Translation Prize and the Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize.

Asako Yuzuki was born in Tokyo in 1981. She won the All Yomimono Award for New Writers for her story "Forget Me, Not Blue," which appeared in her debut novel, published in 2010. She won the Yamamoto Shugoro Award in 2015. She has been nominated multiple times for the Naoki Prize, and her novels have been adapted for television, radio, and film. Butter is her first novel published in English.