The High-Calorie Crime of Having an Appetite
Examining Female Agency, Body Politics, and Societal Expectations Through Asako Yuzuki’s Butter
PAPER AND PERCEPTION
Anannya
10/30/20263 min read
If you walk into any bookstore or scroll through literary internet circles today, you will notice a fascinating trend: we are completely obsessed with stories about women behaving badly.
We love an unhinged female protagonist. We adore a fictional woman who refuses to apologize, ignores societal decorum, and makes reckless decisions in broad daylight. But Asako Yuzuki’s cult-favorite novel, Butter, asks a far more terrifying question than what if a woman committed a crime?
It asks: What if a woman simply ate exactly what she wanted, thoroughly enjoyed every bite, and refused to feel guilty about taking up space?
On the surface, Butter wears the trench coat of a dark psychological thriller inspired by real events.
Rika, an ambitious young journalist in Tokyo, manages to score a series of exclusive prison interviews with Manako Kajii. Kajii is a notorious woman currently on trial, accused of seducing lonely, wealthy men, taking their money, and poisoning them.
The media is in an absolute frenzy. But they aren't just horrified by the alleged murders; they are deeply offended by Kajii’s physical appearance.
In a culture obsessed with thinness, delicate femininity, and subtle self-effacement, Kajii is unapologetically soft, voluptuous, and fiercely proud of her culinary indulgences. She doesn't fit the archetype of the sleek, mysterious femme fatale. Instead, she spends her prison visits lecturing Rika on the precise temperature needed to melt Échiré butter over freshly steamed rice, waxing poetic about soy sauce quality, and publicly scorning women who subsist on sad, low-calorie convenience store salads.
From a psychological perspective, Yuzuki is executing a brilliant, razor-sharp critique of Social Conditioning and Internalized Misogyny.
Notice how modern culture teaches women to talk about food. Food is rarely presented as simple nourishment or sensory joy; it is framed as a moral battlefield.
We eat a salad and say we were "good" today.
We eat a slice of cake and confess we were "bad" or "cheated."
We apologize for ordering dessert, promise to hit the gym tomorrow, and constantly audit our physical footprint in every room we enter.
So, we have Kajii. She operates as a chaotic mirror to Rika’s deeply repressed life. Rika lives on quick, tasteless meals eaten over her laptop keyboard, working grueling hours in a male-dominated newsroom, desperately trying to prove she belongs.
When Rika begins following Kajii’s luxurious cooking instructions, melting block after block of real butter into her meals, the transformation is not just physical; it is psychological.
As Rika begins gaining weight, her workplace colleagues react with subtle horror and passive-aggressive concern. The novel exposes a glaring societal truth: a woman gaining weight, enjoying fat-dense food, and relaxing her posture is viewed as a systemic failure of self-control. Society would literally prefer a woman to be chronically exhausted, anxious, and starving than to see her well-fed, calm, and taking up physical space.
If we look at Rika’s journey through my favorite lens of Internal Family Systems (IFS), her initial relationship with food is governed entirely by a harsh internal Manager part.
This internal critic keeps her working until her eyes bleed, restricts her diet to maintain a socially acceptable body, and suppresses her natural desires for rest and intimacy. The Manager’s logic is simple: If I keep Rika small, productive, and compliant, no one can criticize her.
Kajii acts as a radical and deeply unsettling disruptor to Rika’s internal system. By inviting Rika to experience true sensory pleasure through rich, unadulterated food, Kajii awakens Rika’s suppressed capacity for joy and self-advocacy.
The genius of Yuzuki’s writing is that Kajii is not a neat, heroic feminist role model. She may very well be a sociopathic manipulator. Yet, her fundamental critique of societal expectations hits Rika like a ton of bricks: Why are women so eager to starve themselves of pleasure just to win the approval of a world that doesn't respect them anyway?
Butter is ultimately a novel about appetite in its broadest, most radical sense.
It is about our appetite for rich food, yes, but also our appetite for career recognition, genuine friendship, sexual agency, and physical comfort. It shows how easily women are conditioned to trade away their vital energy for the quiet safety of being considered "neat" and "unobtrusive."
Reading Butter feels like a slow, delicious antidote to the endless noise of modern wellness trends, restrictive lifestyle rules, and subtle body-shaming. It reminds us that your body is not a project to be constantly optimized, shrunk, or sanitized for public viewing.
The next time you find yourself apologizing for eating what you actually want, shrinking yourself in a crowded room, or letting work override your basic human need for rest, take a quiet lesson from Asako Yuzuki.
Step away from the screen, put down the low-fat substitute, melt the real butter over something warm, and remember: your appetite is not a flaw to be corrected.
Utterly Butterly,
Anannya