53 pages • 1 hour read
Asako YuzukiButter: A Novel of Food and Murder
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 5-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, sexual violence, and disordered eating.
At the office one day, Rika studies her hands in the dim light. She’s been eating plain food since gaining weight and can’t stop thinking about how others have responded to her changed appearance. She digs out old issues of the magazine, returning her thoughts to Kajii’s case. She finds Yamamura’s sister Hatoko Yamumura’s accounts compelling and is reminded of her father’s inability to care for himself before his untimely death.
Ten days after her last visit, Rika sees Kajii again and asks about her relationships with her victims. Kajii doesn’t answer directly and instead tasks Rika with eating butter ramen at a Shinjuku restaurant. To have the right experience, she must have sex beforehand and order the soup between three and four in the morning.
Rika asks Reiko about her sexual experiences, worried about initiating sex with Makoto. Reiko becomes uncomfortable, although she used to be more open. Reiko apologizes for her demeanor, complimenting Rika for facing injustices instead of fleeing them like she’s done. She then admits that she’s been visiting the fertility clinic alone and that she and Ryōsuke haven’t been having sex. She then changes the subject, suggesting Rika take cooking classes so she can cook for Makoto.
Rika rents a hotel room and invites Makoto to spend the night. He’s tired and stressed when he arrives. Rika almost backs out of her plan but starts massaging Makoto instead. Then they have sex. Lying near him and talking afterward, Rika feels reluctant to leave for the ramen. However, she sneaks out after Makoto falls asleep. The ramen is delicious and gives Rika a free feeling. Amazed, she drinks all of the broth.
Chapter 6 Summary
Rika meets up with her former colleague Mizushima who now works in the company’s books department. They discuss cooking, domesticity, Kajii’s case, and Rika’s weight gain. Mizushima reassures Rika, insisting she looks healthy.
Rika tells Kajii about her ramen experience. Kajii then tasks her with baking Makoto a quatre quarts, or French pound cake, for Valentine’s Day.
Rika meets with Shinoi and updates him on the Kajii case. She tells him about Kajii’s cake assignment. Because Rika doesn’t have an oven, Shinoi invites her to use his old apartment by the office. While buying groceries at the shop below, Shinoi explains that he used to live in the apartment with his ex-wife and daughter, and it’s been empty since their divorce.
Rika feels lonely while starting the cake as Shinoi is finishing some work. She’s surprised to discover old food crusted inside the oven and baking equipment under the sink. Shinoi notices she’s having trouble with the recipe and offers to help aerate the butter. He used to help his wife and daughter and knows the technique. Rika admires his work while wondering about his family. They chat for a while before Rika takes a nap and the cake bakes. When the timer rings, the rise in the cake delights her. She leaves two pieces for Shinoi and heads out to find Makoto.
At the office, Rika gives Makoto the cake, insisting she’s not trying to serve him and simply wants him to try the recipe. They chat about women and men before kissing.
Rika travels through the snow to see Kajii. They chat about the cake, and Kajii describes her mother’s childhood cooking. Rika silently wonders how Kajii’s perspective applies to the way men see women who enjoy “cooking and eating” (179). She decides food must be Kajii’s expression of love. At the visit’s end, Kajii tasks Rika with visiting Niigata, where her mother—Masako—and sister, Anna, live.
Chapter 7 Summary
At the station, Rika waits for the train to leave for Niigata. Outside the window, she watches a woman with slender ankles. She’s shocked to discover the woman is Reiko, and she’s accompanying her. Rika feels annoyed by Reiko’s unannounced appearance, but she softens while listening to her friend talk. Reiko wants to help Rika and brings a camera to pose as a photographer.
Rika and Reiko are struck by the cold when they arrive in Niigata. They go to a nearby restaurant Kajii recommended, and the food delights them. Reiko apologizes for not being more supportive of Rika’s weight gain, and Rika admits she’s been worried about Reiko’s weight loss.
The friends settle in at the hotel. Reiko gets emotional, apologizing for intruding on Rika’s trip and admitting she needed to get away from Ryōsuke. Unsure what to say, Rika hugs Reiko and reminds her how special she is.
The next morning, Rika and Reiko travel to Kajii’s family’s house. They sit in the dusty space listening to Anna recollect her and Kajii’s childhood. Afterward, they visit Taiichi Akiyama, the neighboring dairy farmer. While he tells them about the cows, Rika studies Reiko and wonders if her friend has a better sense of Kajii than she does. Then, when Akiyama reveals that milk starts as blood, Rika has a flashback to finding her father dead in his apartment. Reiko notices Rika’s anxiety and interrupts her thoughts. Collecting herself, Rika gives Akiyama her card and asks to meet him later about Kajii.
Chapter 8 Summary
Anna takes Rika and Reiko to her late father’s tombstone per Kajii’s request. On their walk home, she describes Kajii’s close relationship with him. Back at the house, Masako emerges and cooks for the women. Rika realizes Anna relies on Masako more than Masako does on Anna. Her mind shifts to childhood memories. Rika was in middle school when her father died. Afterward, she felt relieved because she and Misaki didn’t have to worry about him anymore.
After the meal, Anna shows the friends Kajii’s old bedroom. Masako invites them to spend the night but Reiko declines.
Over dinner, Reiko exclaims at how creepy Kajii’s house was. She shows Rika bites on her wrists, convinced the house is flea-infested. She then monologues about the family’s strangeness and her conviction that Kajii is guilty. Reiko’s assessment surprises Rika.
In the morning, Rika goes to see Akiyama alone. He insists he didn’t know Kajii well and saw her as a strange, reclusive girl. She didn’t have many friends and no one liked her.
After the meeting, Reiko calls Rika, saying she’s returning to Anna’s house. Upset and worried, Rika races back to the house where she discovers Reiko and Anna in conversation. Reiko is asking Anna about an older man with whom Kajii allegedly had her first sexual experience. Anna admits the man was a sex offender who tried hurting her. When he made advances, she hit him in the head, nearly killing him. Kajii interceded, brought the man to the hospital, and began spending all her time caring for him. Rika realizes this man was the first person to see Kajii favorably and that she’s built her worldview around their relationship. She wonders if, like Kajii, she believes that women are “to blame for everything” (233).
Masako interrupts the conversation, scolding Anna for talking about the past. Rika pulls up her sleeve and discovers bumps on her arm.
Chapters 5-8 Analysis
The more time and energy that Rika invests in Kajii’s case, the more her work affects how she sees herself. In particular, researching Kajii’s life and crimes inspires Rika to cook and eat more lavish foods. In turn, she begins to gain weight—a physical phenomenon for which she receives criticism and ridicule. This new conflict in Rika’s storyline introduces the novel’s exploration of the Societal Pressures of Body Image. Because of the negative reaction multiple people in her life have had to her weight gain, Rika feels self-conscious and insecure. She not only starts asking her friends and colleagues about her weight but also starts only allowing herself to eat plain food. Her constant internal debate about what she’s eating and whether it is the correct amount captures the psychological effects of societal beauty and fitness standards. A Japanese woman living in Tokyo, Rika is shaped by Japanese culture. Thus, she feels like a product of her surroundings, including beauty standards. Because of her cultural context, she has subjected herself to a lifestyle that prioritizes self-control for women over pleasure and enjoyment. Rika has indeed been taught that restricting herself will afford her respect, authority, love, and success. However, when she starts gaining weight, she begins to question her femininity and power. In these ways, her work on Kajii’s case has begun to complicate her Quest for Self-Realization and Liberation and challenge her definitions of self-love and self-care.
Rika attempts to claim autonomy over her body and her life by adopting Cooking as Love and Care, which supports social connection and personal freedom. The novel uses repeated images of Rika enjoying food both alone and in the company of others to reify these internal aspects of Rika’s experience. The scene where she eats butter ramen after initiating sex with Makoto is a prime example of how eating and cooking food is transforming Rika’s outlook:
She slurped her noodles noisily. Ramen that she’d waltzed out to eat after having sex—the experience wasn’t, as she’d been imagining, an extension of the sensuality of the physical contact. No, the taste was one of freedom—the kind of freedom that could only be savored alone. Kajii could pursue her desires so wholeheartedly precisely because she wasn’t tied to anybody. For the first time, Rika understood what Tokyo meant to a woman like her, who’d abandoned her hometown, and who had no fixed employment or friends (150).
Until this scene, Rika has regarded Kajii in the way the media has taught her to regard her: as an antisocial, sexually deviant woman who doesn’t take care of her body and disregards others’ feelings. However, eating the ramen at three in the morning after sleeping with Makoto makes her understand otherwise. The culinary experience liberates Rika because it reminds her that she can make choices about what she does with her body, who she’s intimate with, what she consumes, and how she looks. The ramen scene captures the transformative and liberating possibilities of breaking societal rules and making decisions based on one’s desires.
The ramen experience catalyzes another series of transformative moments for Rika’s character. Indeed, after she realizes that she has the right to express, love, and eat the way she chooses, she starts to open up her life. The scenes of her eating food with Mizushima, baking the cake with Shinoi’s help, sharing the cake with Makoto, and going out to eat with Reiko in Niigata illustrate Rika’s desire to embrace life more wholeheartedly. When she and Shinoi bake the cake, for example, the narrator says that as they work “the cold tension [Rika has] been carrying melt[s] away” and she realizes that from now on she’ll “find it easier to be around Shinoi” (170). The shared activity offers them a new and organic way to connect and thus dismantles the professional power dynamic Rika perceived between them. Just as the “eggs, butter and sugar [combine] gently to create a soft mountain” (170), Rika and Shinoi are coming together to build a stronger and more balanced relationship.
Rika and Reiko’s trip to Niigata augments the narrative tension and complicates the narrative stakes. The trip offers Rika and Reiko new opportunities to connect. In the same way the cake deepens Rika and Shinoi’s relationship, sharing rice and sake strengthens Rika and Reiko’s friendship. They are in a new setting, experiencing new things together, and thus taking pleasure in all that life has to offer. At the same time, Niigata introduces them to new conflicts as they probe deeper into Kajii’s mysterious past. The narrative particularly uses Rika and Rekio’s trip to Kajii’s family’s house to complicate Rika’s Quest for Self-Realization and Liberation. Indeed, while there, Rika begins to question her journalistic approach and to compare herself to her friend. Furthermore, Anna’s, Masako’s, and Akiyama’s stories trigger memories of Rika’s past, which challenges her to face her trauma to realize her true self.
