February 17, 2025
TOKYO – Japanese writer Asako Yuzuki is getting attention abroad for her novel “Butter,” which touches on everything from family relationships to social problems, such as fatphobia and misogyny. Plus, there is a twist of mystery woven in.
Yuzuki traveled to the United Kingdom in October to speak about the book, which was translated by Polly Barton and published in the country last year. “I got the best response from an audience in my life,” Yuzuki said during a recent interview with The Japan News in Tokyo.
Giving talks at six venues, including the Cheltenham Literature Festival and the University of Oxford, she felt firsthand the craze for Japanese literature. She saw members of the audience holding her book in their hands, excited to hear her speak at the events, which were cohosted by the Japan Foundation. “It was my first experience [of seeing that],” she said.
Yuzuki, 43, who practiced her English speaking for about three months before the lectures, was asked specific questions such as about what she studied at university, what books she read as a child, and how the plot of her novels developed. She said she was able to answer the questions easily.
It helped that she was familiar with British culture. “I have also read a lot of British novels and followed the [U.K.’s literary] trends. I’ve watched the BBC drama ‘Fleabag’ and ‘The Great British Bake Off.’ I also get Monty Python jokes,” she said.
Japanese women writers such as Sayaka Murata and Mieko Kawakami are also popular in Britain. “I think the reason why my lectures were satisfying for the audience was not only because of my work. There is a booming interest in Japan, and the audience had watched many Japanese movies and read many Japanese novels and understood Japan well,” Yuzuki said.
Based on serial killings
“Butter,” shortlisted for Japan’s prestigious Naoki Prize in 2017, the year the book was published, is based on the actual serial murders committed by Kanae Kijima in Tokyo and elsewhere in Japan in 2009. She met three men via matchmaking sites and cheated them out of large sums of money. In the end she killed them, for which she received a death sentence that was finalized in 2017.
In the novel, Rika Machida, a journalist working for a weekly magazine, meets a woman named Manako Kajii, who is charged with killing three men and is detained at the Tokyo Detention House. Rika hopes to interview Manako, who has gained notoriety as a plump and not-so-young femme fatale.
Manako, an epicure and butter lover, tells Rika to make “rice with butter and soy sauce” and to eat butter ramen, a luxury meal at a gorgeous restaurant, and more. Rika, who had been slim, weighing in under 50 kilograms, gradually gains weight and her behavior changes under the influence of Manako.
British people Yuzuki met often found parts of “Butter” to be humorous. Manako at one point in the novel says, “there are two things that I simply cannot tolerate: feminists and margarine,” and the line was used by Yuzuki’s British publisher to promote the book. British people would tell Yuzuki through their laughter that they couldn’t imagine anyone saying such a thing.
On the other hand, she heard at her lectures about British people having trouble with eating disorders and women struggling to balance work and household chores.
“I thought the U.K. was a country that had achieved gender equality, and I was surprised when a woman in London said she had to quit her job after she got married,” Yuzuki recalled. “She also said that she understood what I had written in the novel.”
As of Feb. 17, Yuzuki had publishing contracts that spanned 27 foreign languages, according to Shinchosha, the book’s Japanese publisher.
In the United Kingdom, the novel’s reputation grew through word of mouth, and it was chosen as Book of the Year 2024 by Waterstones, a large bookstore chain in the country.
Media with a male slant
“Butter” presents vivid depictions of a variety of meals, from ramen to luxurious French cuisine, more than enough to whet readers’ appetites. Before becoming a novelist, Yuzuki worked in the food industry, including at a sushi restaurant and a confectionery company like the one where Ryosuke, another character in “Butter,” works. She also loves to cook herself and writes a regular column for a food and lifestyle website.
She says she was driven to write her novel by two phenomena. Namely, how the media covered the real killer, Kijima, and how men seek stereotypical “dream women” when they look for a wife.
During her visit to the United Kingdom, she first realized that the media coverage was one of her creative triggers.
In the novel, Rika takes lessons at a French cooking school that Manako had attended. The real killer, Kijima, attended a cooking school in Tokyo that is a branch of a French school founded over 100 years ago. This was widely reported on by media outlets.
“I saw how the weekly magazines reported on the cooking school, as if it was ‘a school for women who want to get married, who want to win men’s hearts through their stomachs,’” Yuzuki said. “I already knew about the school, so I thought, ‘Do they know how much it costs? This is a place for people who want to become chefs and seriously change their lives.’”
She thought the media coverage was male-centric.
“I feel that what the media has missed is being picked up on in other countries,” she said.
She is also critical of men who are seeking the traditional ideal of a wife.
Yuzuki took French cooking classes for a year to write the novel.
“Some men want a skinny woman who stays at home and is a skilled cook, and they think these women won’t be stronger than them,” she said. “But it seemed to me that these men are doing themselves a disservice.
“I don’t think women with cooking skills are obedient to men. Some good cooks are knowledgeable about world affairs because of the spice trade. They are knowledgeable about foreign food culture, and so on.”
Bringing together writers, readers
The Japan Foundation has hosted or co-hosted events for overseas readers to interact with Japanese writers, such as Yuzuki. The events have been held both on and offline.
The decision to cohost events featuring Yuzuki was made after a request from the Cheltenham Literature Festival. Writers Murata and Genki Kawamura have previously participated in the festival.
In 2024, the Japan Foundation was a sponsor or co-sponsor of more than 10 events with Japanese writers around the world, not including those with Yuzuki. Kanae Minato participated in an event in Indonesia, Hiroko Oyamada gave a lecture in Germany, and Keiichiro Hirano spoke in the United States and Canada.
The foundation has been holding these events for decades.
It has also provided subsidies to foreign publishers for the translation and publishing of Japanese literature, covering about 1,800 works over about 50 years. In recent years, as contemporary female writers have grown in popularity abroad, the foundation has received many grant applications related to the literary works of such authors. The foundation provided financial help for publishing “Butter” in Spanish.
The foundation also invited editors from Central and Eastern Europe and translators from Turkey to Japan last year. “We hope to deepen our relationships with foreign countries through various projects,” Momoko Ouchi, official of the foundation, said.