“Butter” by Asako Yuzuki: To Conform is To Self-Murder (BOOK REVIEW)

6 Jan

To Conform Is To Self-Murder

Hey, Alex! What have you been reading lately?
I finally worked my way through "Butter" by Asako Yuzuki: a book I was honestly a little scared to pick up. The reviews I read were all collectively agreeing that this is a slow, boring read where the second half of the novel could have been scrapped altogether. But a story about a middle-aged journalist becoming obsessed with an alleged female serial killer through food and recipes sounded so goo. So yes, of course I had to read it.
And in response to these same reviews that tried to dissuade me from reading it I will say: "Butter" is not supposed to turn you head over heels. It melts into you. Slowly. Quietly. Almost unnoticeably. Until you look down and realise you’re drenched in it.
Tell me more. What is the book about?
Rika, a Japanese journalist, becomes fixated on Manako Kajii, a woman convicted of killing three men she was romantically linked to. There’s no concrete evidence of her guilt, but the public has already decided that she is a monster. She’s “unattractive”, she’s overweight, she refuses to speak to the press. In short: she fails at being the type of woman society is willing to sympathise with.
To get close enough to write her story, Rika begins visiting Kajii in prison. The conversations that follow build not around crime… but around cooking. Kajii teaches her recipes. But more than that, she teaches her how to eat. How to savour, to take up space and to exist within a body without having to apologise.
As Rika cooks and eats with a new kind of devotion, she gains weight, and with it, a dangerous sense of freedom. Her perceptions of womanhood, desire, beauty, control, and even guilt begin to shift. Food becomes revelation and in butter she finds purpose.
Soon, the question is no longer is Kajii a murderer? but rather is the life society expects women to lead not another form of murder?
What are some strong and weak points of the book?
The social and gender commentary is, for me, the absolute heart of this novel. Women are expected to serve, nurture, cook, care, without ever enjoying any of it. They must be thin, quiet, and useful for the rest of their families. If they take pleasure in food, in their appetites, they’re punished for it. Too thin. Too fat. Too loud. Too much. Never “just right”.
Kajii rejects that entire system. She despises the idea of living for men, but her dislike for feminist is expressed even more strongly. She sees feminism as another cage that feeds into co-comparison and hatred among women. Kajii didn’t “murder” these three men in a traditional sense. She simply stopped sacrificing herself for them. And in a world where women are raised to die quietly for others’ comfort, is that criminal or is it revolutionary?
I loved the parallel between Kajii and Rika. Both have lost their fathers and lack a male authority to anchor to. One is explosive, honest, unapologetic. The other is passive, guilt-ridden, obedient. It’s only through their strange, intimate bond that Rika begins to soften, to question, and to grow.
The characters feel like expensive, full-fat butter – they are rich, layered, and impossible to fully understand at first glance.
But, undeniably, the pacing is extremely slow. Painfully slow for some. It took me four months to finish this novel, not because it constantly got boring but because every chapter was written in so much detail that barely anything happens at all.
The main problem with "Butter" for me is that it is falsely marketed as a thriller. If you are expecting a high-stakes read with a jaw-dropping plot twist in the end, you will be disappointed. "Butter" has no urgency or dramatic reveal. Its ending, although piecing everything together and creating a nice sense of closure, is so quiet it almost feels anticlimactic. After four hundred pages of searching for answers, Rika simply gives up. And somehow, that feels like the point. She needs to stop caring for others in order to focus on herself and truly appreciate her own life.
Any final thoughts? Should I read it too?
"Butter" is a philosophical meditation on womanhood, hunger, pleasure, and the violence of expectation. It asks you to stop rushing around and look at things from new perspective. My best advice would be to slow down and allow yourself a taste of it. Let it dissolve on your tongue, like a block of butter, instead of burning it.
If you’re patient, reflective, and a little broken in the way Japanese literature often understands, you may grow to love it. But if you’re here because the cover is pretty, the synopsis sounds intriguing, and you expect speed and certainty, I can tell you for certain that it will drive you crazy.
I liked "Butter". Not in a life-changing, five-stars kind of way. I liked it for its slowness because it forced me to sit with my feelings, to change and to grow. And I think that’s much rarer.
Thank you so much!! Are there any similar books that you can recommend?
Yes! You should definitely check these two out:
🍙 Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata – a quiet, unsettling look at conformity, womanhood, and society’s obsession with “normal”.
🐖 Pig Tales by Marie Darrieussecq – a body transformation tale where identity is distorted through surreal, uncomfortable, feminist storytelling.

📲 limaistyping…

rating: ☀️☀️☀️☀️
tropes: 🍳 crime x cooking | 🔥 slow burn | ✊ quiet feminism | 🫂 preach for self-love | 📌 women who take up space
read if you like: french cuisine, murder mysteries, cooking blogs, cozy reads, not margarine
look out for: ❤️‍🩹 a situationship | 🗞️ media backstabbing | 🍜 a steamy bowl of ramen | 🐄 cow trivia | 🍗 Thanksgiving feast
"Reading this is like melting butter: put the heat on high and it will burn; you want to take your time with it and allow it to release its full flavour."

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