I’m not sure why I avoided this book last year. I think because, in my head, I had it confused (or merged with) Butter by Erin Jade Lange, which was on my to-read list for a long time, but I wasn’t sure if I could stomach it — since having kids and knowing my own history, I have a lot of difficulty reading YA about suicide (even as I write it). For the longest time I didn’t realize there were two books called Butter out there that were both about relationships to food and death, but holding vastly different stories. But this was available in the English section of my local bookstore, and so I picked up a copy. It might have been my best decision of this year.

Reading this book was an experience. The themes in it churned, quite literally like butter, slowly solidifying, becoming chunky, and then, in the last few chapters, creating this smooth, satisfying sensation that spread over me. As usual, this post will contain all the spoilers, so only read if you don’t care about spoilers or if you’ve already read the book.

Things to Be Aware Of

1. I’m not Japanese. I’m aware Koji is a Japanese name, but I have no connection to the country or culture. From an outsider’s perspective, I think this book does an amazing job of portraying the complications of a culture in an accessible way. But I also think people who are steeped in Japanese culture are going to get more out of it and have more to say than I do. So take my words with a grain a salt.
2. The book heavily features The Story of Little Babaji, a children’s book by Helen Bannerman. I had never read this book, but I looked it up online and read it about halfway through the book. I recommend giving it a read before reading Butter because it is referenced so often. The story is not complex, and you can get the idea of it just from Butter, but having the full context was more interesting. The history of The Story of Little Babaji itself is complex. Originally published as The Story of Little Black Sambo, it contained plenty of racist ideology, starting with the names of the characters and continuing through the illustrations. It was re-released a century later as The Story of Little Babaji. I was intrigued to find the Japanese history of this book, and it followed a similar trajectory as it did in the US — first beloved, then banned, then re-imagined. But in the US, the original book was pulled in the 1960s and 1970s and re-released in the late 90s. In Japan, the original book was not pulled until 1988, so it is more likely part of Yuzuki’s childhood than it would be part of mine, and a more well-known story to her general readership. However, I am interested to know what the general feeling towards the book is — whether it meant to pull up its complex racial history, the history of it in Japan, or if it is just supposed to be a children’s book that features butter in a complicated way that weaves well into the narrative.
3. The book is is loosely based on a real person. Kanae Kijima, known as the konkatsu (marriage hunting) killer, was convicted for poisoning three men and suspected of poisoning four more. It is worth noting that Kijima expressed a deep dislike for the novel and has also published a memoir of her own.
4. The book does get uncomfortable in its description at times. I wouldn’t go so far as to call it body horror, but there are a few scenes at the end that definitely made me uneasy, and since the book focuses so sharply on the embodiment of the main character, those scenes were enough to make me have to take a break.
5. Japan has the lowest obesity rate in the world at around 3-6%, compared to 42% in the United States. Weirdly, while reading this book, a youtube video comparing the eating habits of the people in Japan vs. America popped up. Weird how the algorithm works, eh? On the surface, it is easy to go “what’s Japan doing right, let’s copy them” and there are a LOT of aspects of Japanese culture that could make American cities more healthy — walkable cities, strong public transportation, healthy food options from school to convenience stores. But it’s always a complicated issue. In the US, the rate of underweight teens and young women is about 3-5% while in Japan, that number jumps to 25%. In other words, everything is always more complicated than we see from the outside. Butter talks a lot about the pressure and expectation to be thin in Japanese culture. Reading it as an American woman living in Bulgaria, (which has its own complex issues with food and weight) a lot of it felt relatable. Women all over the world suffer expectations of thinness and the burden of care. But in some societies it is simply more prevalent and stronger.
6. As far as trigger warnings go:
   • Pedophilia: the theme of pedophilia is baked into the story in a way that lurks beneath the surface, similar to how it exists in society — often there but not spoken about until something tragic happens. The outright mentions of it were just twice, and there was one graphic description that lasted a couple of paragraphs. But because it is so baked into the story, there were often scenes I found myself feeling gross.
   • Fat Shaming/Skinny Shaming/Disordered Eating: this is throughout the whole book. Not a chapter goes by where weight is not discussed, either internally or externally.
   • Animal Cruelty: I’m not so sure it is animal cruelty, but there are scenes where the milking process is described in a heightened way and, towards the end, there is a rather graphic scene of prepping a turkey to roast. I’m not a vegetarian, but I was uncomfortable reading these. (To be fair, I have difficulties prepping meat for cooking as well, so I related to the main character)

With that, let’s get into it. I’ve been doing writeups on cults for so long now, let’s see if I remember how to do one on serial killer fiction.

Welcome Back to Literary Serial Killer Fiction

My friends in my writing group love arguing about “what is literary” and dunking on me for my weird thirst for literary fiction. (To be clear, I mostly love literary horror and weird — so I am solidly in the world of genre, with a literary bent). But I will say this absolutely reads as literary serial killer fiction. The focus is not on the sensationalism of the crimes themselves but on the ripples those crimes create in society, as well as a strong critique of the society that creates the serial killer. Of all of the serial killer novels I’ve read, this one was perhaps the least focused on the serial killer. While it did have one of my least favorite main characters — the journalist researching the serial killer — the story was so far outside of genre conventions that it did not once feel tropey. There was a moment of suspense where Reiko moves in with Kajii’s last victim, with the full understanding that he may actually be her accomplice. While those chapters held plenty of dread and tension to them, the main driver of the story was not the suspense found in American mysteries or crime novels. Instead, the main driver was the cocooning, destruction, and butterflying of Rika as she becomes more and more obsessed with Kajii. It was a slow-burn, intimate story that examined every angle of a collection of social issues as opposed to something fast and flashy.

If you look at the books I read for this series, it would be easy to say that serial killer fiction is trending towards more literary examinations of the serial killer in society, but for each of the more literary works, there are dozens of solidly genre novels. I want to be clear that these are still being read and enjoyed. If anything, I would say serial killer romance and erotica is trending up. But when you’re trying to understand what’s happening with an archetype, you tend to chose the outlying novels — the ones that are pushing the boundaries and doing something new and different, which tends to drift more literary. So I wouldn’t necessarily say serial killer fiction is trending more “literary”. Instead, I would say that it has become so mainstream that it can be picked up and effectively used as a social critique without readers getting hung up on the sensationalism in the story. In other words, we live in a world where we’ve grown from the shock of “what!?! How!?!” to genuine curiosity of “what, how?” and now, to a deep understanding of our societal flaws that we are clearly saying, “what, how” with a confidence that is rooting in something more than the social fear of the other.

Did She/Didn’t She, and Does It Matter?

Throughout the book, Rika is investigating whether Kajii actually committed the crimes she is accused of. While the focus of the book is on the court of public opinion, there is also the mystery of whether or not Kajii physically caused the deaths of her companions. Rika begins by wanting to understand Kajii, but there is also a nugget of her that wants to prove Kajii’s innocence. She sees the way the initial trial focused more on Kajii’s plain appearance and weight rather than any evidence. The initial position is that Kajii was convicted not for murdering her lovers, but for daring to have lovers and be happy when she was overweight and plain. Rika roils against this misogyny and wants to give Kajii space to tell her own story.

But almost immediately, Rika is caught up in another question: so what if Kajii didn’t push, poison, or drown her lovers? Perhaps her abandonment of them is still responsible for their deaths. The majority of the book focuses on whether she sought out men who were unable to care for themselves, gave them just enough hope to make them come alive, and then yanked it away and — more interestingly — whether that is a type of murder.

By the end of the book, we still are unsure whether Kajii physically killed her lovers. Instead, we are given a view of how the withdrawal of her affection nearly results in Rika’s death. Over months, Kajii isolated Rika from her friends by awakening her love of food. Rika works hard to gain Kajii’s trust and, in the end believes she has finally achieved, if not a friendship with Kajii, a shared understanding with the woman. After Rika publishes her article about Kajii, Kajii publicly humiliates her, destroys Rika’s professional reputation and withdraws the intimacy Rika had assumed. This leaves Rika so desolate that she is almost hit by a car and spends several days not eating. In this way, we almost see Kajii as a murderer in the end. But as the book spins around the theme of personal responsibility, it takes one more turn. Rika is able to ask for help. She can resurrect herself. And if she can, why do we let the three men off the hook for not doing the same?

It is a meditation on where personal accountability and social responsibility overlap, and it is 350 pages of fascinating.

The Pressure to Care for Others, the Responsibility to Care for Yourself, and the Meaning of Family

At this point I’ve typed out my headings for this blog, and I’m a bit flabbergasted by how many themes the book explored. While it is a thick book, it never felt particularly expansive. Instead, each theme overlapped, entwining itself in a complexity that mirrors real life. So whether Kajii is a killer overlaps with Rika’s exploration of the pressure for females to care for others while men are given the leeway to allow themselves to rot. Then that overlaps with Rika’s exploration of family. We get the role of the mother, the wife, and the daughter, which weaves this mesh of society. We see each point in a woman’s life how she is expected to care for the men around her.

It would be usual to see the serial killer reject or challenge social roles. But instead, Kajii seems to embody the role of the ideal woman: someone who cares for her lover, makes space for him, allows him to feel important and cared for. She is angry at other women for rejecting what she considers true femininity. This almost echoes the gothic “shadow other”, except it creates an entire shadow society. Kajii, the woman who is a perfect woman, is also responsible for the deaths of three of her lovers. Meanwhile, women who fail to be docile, loving, supportive etc, manage to raise children and run families. But just as it isn’t clear whether or not Kajii is responsible, the serial killer is not a clear mirror of society in this book. Instead… it’s complicated. Murky. Because it isn’t as simple as traditional domestic roles are bad. In fact, the book features Rika learning to enjoy cooking and cleaning and having a domestic space. Instead of Kajii’s murders tearing apart the concept of family, they create enough space for Rika to build her own.

The Concept of “Enough” for the Self

Wrapped up in the idea of taking care of yourself is the responsibility of finding out what is enough for the self. This is mostly showcased in Rika’s relationship with food, but it spreads out into every area of her life — what is enough work, enough family, enough home, enough apartment, enough relationship… Rika begins the story allowing each of these aspects of her life to be dictated by social expectations. It is Kajii’s complete rejection of these social expectations that opens Rika up to the idea that it may be possible to live life on her own terms.

However, she immediately goes too far. Not only does she gain weight, but on multiple occasions she eats so much that she gets sick. Following in Kajii’s footsteps of complete indulgence leads to illness, and she begins to see Kajii not as a liberated, strong woman, but instead we’re given a glimpse into Kajii’s illness — that of isolation and loneliness. Her friends “help” Rika control herself. And, ironically, their actions are fueled by those same harmful social expectations. We begin to see that even social expectations can be helpful or healthy in the right measure. It is when you give into them completely or reject them completely that you risk becoming a murderer or dying yourself.

Embodiment When Your Body Is Not Your Own

While the main thing Kajii seems to be opening Rika to is the appreciation of fine food, what Rika takes from Kajii’s lessons is finding her own sense of embodiment. Beyond finding the measure of “enough”, Rika begins to understand what she enjoys. She learns her tastes. She begins to listen to her cravings. However, everyone seems to dislike this. They want her body to remain thin and boyish. They want her to practice discipline. For the first half of the book, Rika’s body belongs to her boyfriend, her employers, and her best friend. When she begins to meet with Kajii, it is no wonder that she gives her body to Kajii so freely — becoming a vessel for Kajii to continue enjoying the world.

There are a few moments when I wondered if Rika might turn into a disciple of Kajii — following so closely down her path that she turns into a killer herself. And I suppose that’s a risk of discovering embodiment when your body has belonged to society your entire life. I was relieved when Rika went to the cooking school and finally deviated from Kajii’s path — instead of following every recipe, she began to learn her tastes and be willing to define her own desires. Alternatively, Kajii looked as if she was following her own desires but was just following another socially defined path — the perfect hedonist.

I have to say I can’t recall many books I have read that focused so tightly on discovering embodiment. But as a woman who spent her twenties relishing in the body, I assumed it would be a theme I would enjoy. I thought learning embodiment would be something sexy and exhilarating. Instead, I found it intensely uncomfortable. There were sections that, to me, had the feel of body horror. This was especially true after Rika worked so hard to understand her body only to have it battered in a hit and run in the end. (OMG, the scab conversation with the boy was so completely perfect).

But perhaps what was more surprising was finding out that while Kajii was seen as the liberated, indulgent woman, she also had a complicated relationship with her body. Because of her early puberty, she was an outcast. She put on weight and developed curves and, in many ways, it seems like that is what made society hate her — and it was that hate for her that made her want to become the perfect woman while hating the society that rejected her. It wasn’t exactly her body that turned her into a killer, but society’s rejection of her body.

The Ideal Woman as a Ghost

The opposite of an embodied woman is the woman as a ghost, which is what the men in the book seemed to want. We see this in how Kajii speaks of getting her boyfriends. For her, it isn’t about the woman’s body. It is about listening to the man, anticipating and fulfilling his wants and needs, making him feel interesting and special. We see this echoed in the other men in the story. Rika’s boyfriend is flustered when she cooks for him because that simple act is seen as something they both think they are rejecting — society’s expectations of a woman to care for her boyfriend or spouse. He cannot see the dish as Rika’s desire and instead positions it as her fulfilling his desire. Later, when Reiko lives with Kajii’s last boyfriend, we see that he has no desire for love, passion and companionship. He wants someone that will treat him as special.

Throughout the book, women are wasting away physically. Reiko, once married, becomes smaller and smaller until she is almost childlike. Rika is severely underweight. Her mentor’s daughter was also unhealthily skinny. While this on its own is an issue, it is representative of the wasting away of the women’s character — their wants, desires, and passions. Even Kajii, who fills out through food, wastes away spiritually and morally trying to get the attention she craves.

Loneliness and Community

While the book is about food and expectations, its core is about something that almost every serial killer book revolves around: loneliness and community. I don’t think I’ve read a serial killer book where the killer was happily engaged in society. If they are, it is quickly shown they are masking. The archetype of the serial killer is someone at tension with society — someone outside. Because of this it is easy to blame, hate, or fear them. Kajii is no different. She is outside of society in that she is a sugar baby for several men at once. She is overweight. She indulges. And, at the beginning of the book, it is these things that society blames her for. She is found guilty not because she killed three men, but because she rejected society.

However, the twisting of the book shows that it is not Kajii who rejected society. Society rejected her first, for something she couldn’t control: her developing body. In that it becomes a very clear serial killer book: the killer deconstructs society, but it is almost always society that builds the killer.

I have a lot more thoughts on this book. It was such an amazing read, and I am excited to read it again — something I rarely set time aside for these days. But I think the way the story felt like the tigers in Babaji turning into butter made it a satisfying read. It was tugged. Circling. Churning. It was beautiful.