When I read the synopsis of Butter I was immediately intrigued and wanted to know more. This book is supposedly based on a true story which makes it all that much more intriguing.
Manako Kajii is a gourmet cook and serial killer all in one - or is she? Kajii is convicted of killing several men and has become an interesting case and talk of the town. After these men dine with Kajii, several days or weeks later they are found dead. Is it Kajii or is it coincidence? Rika investigates.

Whilst I was hoping this book would be twisty and keep me on my toes, it didn't do quite that. Don't get me wrong, for the first half of the book, I was unsure where it was going or what to expect but as it continued, I became more and more disappointed in the perspective it took on.

I was hoping for more mystery and less commentary on misogyny and weight in modern society.
Whilst I can appreciate the commentary and know it should absolutely be spoken about (because 55kgs IS NOT overweight!!) I felt it was overdone and took time away from the main element of what this book was supposed to be about. The plot and the lesson (commentary) didn't feel as interconnected as I believe it should and it often felt a little forced. Perhaps I just wasn't connecting to the writing? Perhaps it was lost in translation?

Whilst I did enjoy the writing style and it's unlike anything I have read before - with some delectable descriptions of food, Butter could have been a shorter more succinct novel with a larger focus on the plot.
If you're going to promote a book to be a mystery, there are expectations that follow the genre. Perhaps this one was less mystery, more literary fiction?

Not a bad book just not what I was expecting.

Now that I live in Tokyo and have some small understanding of Japanese culture and gender dynamics, I can appreciate how transgressive ‘Butter’ by Asako Yuzuki would be. It is well worth a read for anyone interested in those matters and particularly in Japanese food. I learnt so much about food and culture from this book, even beyond what I’ve learned being a recent expat. Including that apparently ramen is best consumed at 3am after sex. Good to know.

This is the story of a journalist trying to secure an interview with an infamous female serial killer known for feeding her victims decadent foods, lulling them into a fall sense of relationship, stealing all their money and mysteriously contributing to their inexplicable deaths. The serial killer is shunned by society because she is (get this) 63kgs and uses her unfettered femininity for evil.

For our English book readers, I’d describe it as having the zero fs given of ‘Milk Fed’ by Melissa Broder with a sprinkle of the lushness of ‘Land of Milk and Honey’ by C Pam Zhang and a dash of murder but make it fun à la ‘How To Kill Your Family’ by Bella Mackie.

To my mind ‘Butter’ has been marketed a bit oddly as a murder mystery whereas the alleged murders and concomitant criminal trial are not really what this book is about. It’s more like ‘Notes on an Execution’ by Danya Kukafka in that is an in-depth look at the serial killer’s motivations set against the compelling backdrop of Japanese societal paradigms and what seem to be inconsistencies therein.

Interestingly I have mentioned this book to a few Japanese women and they have imperceptibly bridled. I think this one might be controversial here and I am hoping to find some daring Japanese friends to discuss it with.

#tokyo #japanesefiction #japan #translatedfiction #womenintranslation #japanesebooks #netgalley #butter #asakoyuzuki #asakoyuzukibutter

Butter by Asako Yuzuki is, as suggested by the title, focused on food. It is an unusual story and while I found myself intrigued by the cooking aspects and the tasting of different foods and the quality of ingredients, it wasn’t an easy read. It was a slow burn and didn’t quite reach boiling point. While it was an interesting commentary on Japanese society and culture, especially the attitude about women, it lacked depth.

With such a focus on cooking and recipes, I was disappointed that there were no receipts provided at the end of the book.

Interesting but not riveting read.

This review is based on a complimentary copy from HarperCollins Australia via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

#Butter #NetGalley

What an interesting concept "Butter" is! I found myself lured in by the premise, and I was enjoying it for the most part. I did dtart to find myself internally cringing at some scenes, and I struggled to relate to the novel. But nonethless it was unique and an easy read.

Butter is a contemporary translated fiction novel that will make your mouth water and cause you to think deeply about the many flaws of modern society.

The story is told from the perspective of meek Rika Machida, a journalist in her early thirties, who sets out to get an exclusive interview with the infamous serial killer and chef Manako Kajii. Kajii is said to be inspired by the real Japanese case of the ‘Konkatsu Killer’, who was convicted of conning and killing several men and ridiculed by the public for her lack of conventional beauty and subsequent believability of being able to pull this off with several men.

Kajii is arrogant and unwilling to talk to the press, but Rika slowly finds a way in through Kajii’s love of decadent food and comes to find her interactions with Kajii are not what she expected.

I really enjoyed this, it was beyond what I expected. Butter successfully explores themes of contemporary culture and gender roles in Japanese society. The descriptions of food are so beautiful and genuinely made me hungry. It had me craving butter ramen at 4am.

Thank you HarperCollins Australia and Fourth Estate for the advance copy.

Despite not meeting my initial expectations, I absolutely loved this book and highly recommend it. Asako Yuzuki is a new author for me, and after reading "Butter," I'm eager to explore more of her work.

Butter by Asako Yuzuki was phenomenal. Every character was fascinating, infuriating and so very, very human. The plot itself was excellent, and it also had a lot of commentary about the infantilism of men, misogyny, gender roles, body image, and how society is filled with contradictions. It was a very satisfying read.

DNF @ 34% I did not finish this book unfortunately.

While I really enjoyed the descriptions of food and the commentary on society's fatphobia, it was very long winded. I found the parts that I read to be mostly interesting however the book felt very slow moving. The chapters were too long (~30 pages per chapter) with what felt like not much occurring. The sentences were also very long winded which made it difficult to read, as I had to keep re-reading the sentences to make sure I understood what was being said. I feel like this may have just been a negative side effect of translation.

Additionally, I was expecting more of a fast paced, psychological thriller while the book itself is slower paced and more centered on self-discovery and social commentary so this definitely impacted my experience.

It got to the point that I wasn't enjoying it as much and felt like I was forcing myself to read it so I decided to DNF.

Thank you to NetGalley and HarperCollins Publisher Australia for providing me with an eARC in return for an honest review.

Rika is in her 30s and is building a strong career at the magazine where she works. Having pushed aside any ideas of marriage or children, her main focus is on getting her job done and getting promoted into a more senior position.

When an opportunity arises to interview Kajii a woman accused of murdering three of her lovers after seducing them with her cooking, Rika is manipulated by Kajii who opens her eyes to new culinary experiences.

I’m still not quite sure how I’m feeling about this book. It’s got a lot of complexities and layers to it and it attempted to do a lot.

I enjoyed the cooking element of this one and it’s definitely not a book to read while hungry! The recipes and food mentioned show a complexity and range to the foods eaten in Japan and I liked that it didn’t focus on specifically Japanese food.

I also liked Kajii as a character. She’s complex while appearing almost too simple. Her manipulation of Rika is slow but as a reader we can see it coming and I liked that there was a strong female villain.

I did however think that this book was trying to tackle too much. It almost felt like two different books combined into one.

Along with the main plot of Rika and Kajii, the book tries to tackle the way Japan sees women, especially women in careers and women who don’t match a particular body stereotype. Some parts of this were done well but it just made the book feel a little disjointed.

I’d recommend this book mainly for the food. I have written down a few of the recipes which I can’t wait to try.

Thank you to NetGalley, HarperCollins Publishers Australia and the authors for the ARC in exchange for an honest review

Bizarre, rambling and unpleasant.

Why two stars instead of one? Because I tried to abandon this book 3 times, but kept going back and managed to finish it. If I could ignore the strong anti-feminist and body negativity messages, it could probably be the quirky Japanese foodie/murder novel I was hoping for. But I couldn't and it wasn't.

"Butter" by Asako Yuzuki feels like a true crime/literary fiction take on the infamous Kanae Kijima serial killer case, with an interesting mix of social commentary and food metaphors. While I really appreciated the ambitious concept behind this book, it fell a little short in its execution for me, specifically with its pacing and main plot.

The book is marketed as a serial killer thriller but its pacing certainly didn't reflect one, as the book is quite slow in following the day-to-day investigation and personal life of our main protagonist Rika. The murder case itself is used as a medium to connect themes of misogyny, sexism, obsession, and loneliness in Japan, and a large cast of supporting characters weigh in with their own experiences/opinions. It was interesting to read about different accounts of misogyny in Japan, but after a while, the book became repetitive as Rika continues to make the same observations.

The investigation into the case also moved at a snails pace, with more focus building on tangents with side characters and food descriptions - and man did these descriptions fill pages and pages. I can see foodies really liking these parts but I ended up skim-reading them most of the time as they didn't add much to the story.

Overall I appreciated what this book was trying to do but ultimately, it was just really slow and quite boring to read. I think if I had the right expectations of this book prior to going into it, it might've made a better impression on me but because I was expecting a gripping mystery, I felt quite disappointed with where the story headed. Nevertheless, the book was insightful in exploring Japanese culture in especial y their treatment of women and the food descriptions did make me hungry more than once.

Enjoyed this! For some reason, I’d had it mentally filed as a psychological thriller, but this was more slow burn and less thrill. Plenty of meandering social commentary about contemporary Japanese society and the place of (especially) women within it. It does serve on the psychological front though, delivering sophisticated character studies towards a satisfying ending.

Machida Rika is making a mark in her career as a journalist. She’s managed to secure an exclusive interview with notorious alleged serial killer Kajii Manako, detained in prison in the lead-up to her retrial. What follows is Rika’s sumptuous dive into Manako’s world of domestic decadence, as she attempts to understand what may have led her rumoured lovers to be met with murder. And of course, food aplenty. The descriptions will have your mouth watering!

I loved it best as a thoughtful study into what makes people who they are, how the self is governed by rules and expectations here imposed by a capitalist, gendered urban society. How this pressure to conform can kill. People at large become more concerned with appearances and enforcing rigid beliefs and expectations about how things are ‘supposed’ to be vs the well-being of a person, and society as a whole. It was also fascinating as an examination of idol culture/parasocial relationships and how it intertwined with the morbid fascination with true crime, both feeding into narcissistic tendencies, for better or worse.

Everything is political - even butter! It becomes a metaphor for these various intersecting struggles. A folk story about hungry tigers that devoured little Babaji before assimilating and being ground down into butter that itself then comes to be devoured underpins the narrative as a further visual framework. A visit to the town where the killer is from, renowned for its dairy production, further compounds the point: before it was milk/butter/dairy, it was blood. The line between pain and pleasure is thin, a never-ending cycle. That which sustains us has less to do with the superficial, and more to do with the bonds of love and compassion we choose to forge between us.

Interestingly, this was based on the real-life ‘Konkatsu Killer’ case, something I knew nothing about. I don’t think you need any prior knowledge of the case but learning about it did deepened my appreciation for what the author has accomplished with the novel. BUTTER / バター was first published by @Shinchosha in 2017, this English translation by Polly Barton to be published later this month. Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for this complimentary copy.

Butter is the first novel, of several award-winners by Japanese author, Asako Yuzuki to be translated into English by Polly Barton. After many frustratingly unsuccessful attempts to visit convicted serial killer, Manako Kajii in the Tokyo Detention House, a suggestion from a good friend finally gains Shumei Weekly journalist, Rika Machida, access to this enigmatic woman.

Kajii gained notoriety when, over a period of six months in 2013, three of the wealthy men she found via an online dating service, on whom she lavished attention with gourmet meals, and who handed over large sums of cash, or funded lessons at the exclusive all-women cooking school, Le Salon de Myuko, all died, apparently by suicide or accident.

Kajii was convicted after a misogyny-tinged trial that seemed to ignore alibis and evidence, and two years on, is awaiting retrial. It felt to Rika that Kajii was tried for her appearance (not young, not beautiful, too fat) and her attitude to men, wanting “‘a mature man, with the capacity for both emotional and financial generosity”, and attacking her concept of chastity. “A woman who didn’t hide the fact that she used her sexuality as a weapon was met with such fierce scorn, and even a kind of terror.”

Rika’s clever request for the recipe that Kajii fed her last victim results in conditional approval for a visit: nothing at all about her trial or conviction may be discussed. Instead, Rika comes away with a recommendation for a very simple dish that requires top quality butter, a commodity currently scarce due to the widespread occurrence of mastitis in cows. She’s still hopeful that at a later visit she may be permitted an interview.

Meanwhile, Rika, with “taste buds are like a child’s. I’m perfectly happy with convenience store bento boxes and curry from cheap restaurants” tries the recipe and is hooked. “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.” Eventual further visits net recommendations for other dishes, and eating establishments to try.

Rika wonders if “To make something yourself that you wanted to eat and eat it the way you wanted – was that the very essence of gratification?” But her best friend, Reiko Sayana observes that Rika seems to be in thrall to Kajii: “You don’t try to see anything she hasn’t shown you”, and Rika admits to herself that she has doubts about Kajii’s guilt, although thinking that her victims displayed “the excessive self-pity felt by lonely men” feels a lot like victim-blaming. Was she losing her powers of judgement?

Some of Kajii’s opinions, though, seem valid: “Japanese women are required to be self-denying, hard-working and ascetic, and in the same breath, to be feminine, soft and caring towards men. Everyone finds that an impossible balance to strike, and they struggle desperately as a result.” But Kajii disabuses Rika of the notion they might become friends: “I don’t want friends. I don’t need friends. I’m only interested in having worshippers.’

Reiko is fascinated with her interactions with Kajii, while continuing to express her concerns over Rika’s mental and physical health, which does give her pause, but Rika is unaware of what her best friend is up to behind the scenes. Will Rika get her exclusive interview? Will the true fate of those men be revealed?

Yuzuki’s tale takes several unexpected turns over the twelve months leading up to, and beyond Kajii’s retrial, and examines the status of women in Japan, and the expectations to which they are subject. Her varied cast of support characters includes a childless housewife, a boyfriend with a girl-band fetish, an industrious mother, opinionated colleagues, a well-known older editor who mentors, and a dairy farmer. Not one of the significant characters has a conventional loving childhood and youth: each is carrying emotional baggage, grief or guilt, creating problems in their relationships, be they romantic or filial.

The only thing missing from this intriguing story is a few detailed recipes: as they consume it, readers will be hungry; those familiar with Japanese cuisine won’t be the only ones salivating. An interesting and entertaining read.
This unbiased review is from an uncorrected proof copy provided by NetGalley and Harper Collins Australia

BUTTER by Asako Yuzuki (translated from Japanese to English by Polly Barton) is apparently a cult bestseller in Japan.

Inspired by the true story of The Konkatsu Killer, we follow journalist Rika, who strikes up an unlikely friendship with fine-dining and food-obsessed alleged serial killer, Manako, while Manako is in jail. Manako is accused of killing businessmen who she seduces with her irresistible home-cooking.

I delved into this expecting it to be a pacey, suspenseful thriller - it isn’t really. Rather, it offers a slow-burn tale brimming with a sense of foreboding, as Rika and Manako’s unusual and unsettling bond develops. Rika learns to appreciate food and cooks some of Manako’s favourite dishes. Though it’s also just as much about Rika’s relationship with her best friend, Reiko, whose seemingly perfect life begins to unravel, as well as Rika's passionless relationship with her boyfriend while she desperately attempts for a promotion in her job. The course of her interactions with Manako start to collide with these other parts of Rika’s world as she questions herself and the impact Manako has on her life.

What I found particularly fascinating was the detailed insight the story gave into Japanese culture, its gender dynamics and politics, and obsession with women’s bodies and body image.

Yuzuki’s writing on food and the act of eating as an experience was as deliciously vivid as her musings and commentary on society’s preoccupation with the female body and thinness were disturbing.

This book is long but covers a lot of ground and serves up (bad pun, sorry) a really engaging examination of societal norms, food culture and feminism in Japan. It was not what I was expecting but I still really enjoyed my time with it!

'What's wrong with coating barren, flavourless reality in oodles of melted butter and seasoning it with condiments and spices'.

'Butter' is a dense, complex, and challenging story that meanders, as its main protagonist, Rika, ponders convicted serial killer, Kajii's psychology, 'To drink in a person in their entirety, to chew them up until there was nothing left of them - that was Kajii's mode of communication'. In trying to comprehend Kajii's murderous motives, Rika is swept up by Kajii's delectable debauchery - so diametrically opposed to the traditional expectations of a Japanese woman - so contrary to what Rika has always strived to be within the man's world she works in, 'Japanese women are required to be self-denying, hard-working and ascetic...'. The more Rika explores how Kajii lived prior to her conviction, the more she transforms herself - both literally and figuratively, 'In principle, all women should give themselves permission to demand good treatment, but the world has made doing so profoundly difficult'.

'Butter' is a marathon, not a sprint, to read. The story takes many twists and turns before revealing its truth. It is as much of a personal journey of discovery as it is a journalistic investigation. This book will appeal to readers who enjoy a considered read and can take the time to savour the words and digest their meaning.

'Your problem is you've decided that butter is bad without even understanding what it tastes like'.

Anyone new to Japanese fiction / mysteries should be aware that these books tend to contain lengthy descriptions ... about everything. Having read a number of Japanese mysteries this was something I was well aware of - and yet, I was thoroughly disengaged with both characters (Rika Machida and Manako Kujii) and the narrative to the point that I would consider myself utterly bored. After 100 or so pages of a story that was three parts too long in the telling and one part mystery, I literally gave up - and this being despite the fact that this story was "inspired" upon real events (a theme I tend to find engaging).

If you are interested in cooking and butter then by all means, read on. If you are interested in the "real events" that inspired this particular work, then head over to good old wikipedia and read about Kinae Kijima.

What a delightfully, slightly weird yet totally captivating story. Butter is the type of story you get hooked on and just can’t put down.

‘There are two things I can simply not tolerate: feminists and margarine’

Manako Kajii is a self confessed foodie who has been convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen. She seemingly seduced this affluent men with her delicious home cooking. With the case gaining a large following the public want to know more, but Kajii refuses to see or speak to anyone.
That is until Rika Machida writes a letter asking for her recipe for beef stew, Kajii can’t resist writing back.

Rika is a 30 something journalist working in a male dominated workplace. Excited to be allowed into Kajii’s world Rika throws herself all in. Although the visits closer resemble a foodie critique than journalistic research.
The more Rika learns about food and cooking the more she finds something lighting up within her.
Maybe Rika isn’t that dissimilar to Kajii…

Inspired by the true story of the "The Konkatsu Killer". Asako Yuzuki’s Butter is a deliciously enjoyable story that at times will leave you almost salivating over the foodie descriptions. I’m sure at times I could almost taste the butter or many other Japanese dishes.

Butter is truly brilliant and vivid and compelling story that Asako has bought to life. The story also touches on subjects such as loneliness, obsession and compulsion, misogyny and ‘a women’s place in the world’. and keeps you guessing throughout the book. I found it to be a fascinating and thought provoking story that kept my interest from start to finish.

(I will be posting this review on the 24th February to my blog, Instagram and Goodreads accounts, links below)

It took me nearly a week to read Butter. This was partly due to the fact I was suffering from eye strain and tiredness at the time and couldn't read as much as usual and partly due because the prose was quite densely packed on the page, making it hard to skim/speed read. It is not, however, a reflection on the book itself which was well written, interesting and enjoyable. The story explored many interesting themes, and it did so in a way that kept you guessing as you tried to unravel truth from lies. It held my interest from start to finish and was thought-provoking throughout. I would definitely be keen to read other works by this author and I am giving this book 4.5 stars.

(My review will go live on my blog, Goodreads and Instagram on 26 Feb 2024 at the links provided below.)