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Asako Yuzuki has said that what interested her was not simply the crimes associated with Kanae Kijima, but the way the media responded to a woman it portrayed as too old, fat or unattractive to seduce men. Her 2017 novel Butter turns that scrutiny into fiction: it asks what gets lost when coverage of a case becomes a judgment on a woman’s body and appetite.
What real murders inspired Butter?
Butter is fiction informed by the 2009 metropolitan-area suspicious-deaths case involving Kanae Kijima. The novel’s central figures are fictional: Manako Kajii, a woman suspected of killing three men after marriage fraud, and Rika Machida, a journalist who repeatedly interviews her. Kajii is not Kijima, and Machida is not a documentary stand-in whose reporting can be treated as a factual record of the case.
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Yuzuki’s Japanese publisher, Shinchosha, describes the case as a central motif for the novel. The publisher says Kijima’s death sentence became final; The Guardian’s 28 February 2026 interview describes her as convicted of poisoning three men. Those accounts establish the broad connection, not a full case chronology. This article does not fill in victim-by-victim or procedural details that those sources do not establish.
Why Yuzuki focused on media treatment
In the Guardian interview, Yuzuki said she was more interested in the media response to the so-called “Konkatsu Killer” case than in the case itself. She singled out misogyny and fat-shaming directed at a woman whom observers regarded as too old, fat or unattractive to seduce men. That is Yuzuki’s account of the framing that drew her attention, and the novel’s critical lens—not a quantified finding about all Japanese journalism.
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The distinction matters. Reporting can cover allegations, convictions and legal proceedings; it can also turn a woman’s appearance into a spectacle, as if her body were evidence that needs explaining. Butter focuses on that second layer: how the image of a woman accused of serious crimes becomes entangled with expectations about what women should look like, desire and do.
How food and cooking carry the critique
Yuzuki has linked her interest in the case to depictions of a cooking school attended by Kijima and other women. In Shinchosha’s interview, she objected to portrayals of the school as a glamorous or frivolous gathering, explaining that it was a serious course for professional cooks. The contrast gives Butter a way to question assumptions that cooking is merely a woman’s domestic duty rather than a skill, profession or source of pleasure.
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Yuzuki also described the contradictory standards women face: women who enjoy cooking can be cast as docile and domestic, while women who cannot cook may be judged as inadequate wives or mothers. In the novel, food is therefore more than atmosphere. Its attention to appetite, rich food and butter connects pleasure to the scrutiny of women’s bodies, while asking who gets to eat, cook and enjoy without being reduced to a stereotype.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What the novel can—and cannot—show about the case
Butter offers a literary critique of gendered media framing, not a substitute for court records or a reconstruction of Kijima’s case. Its fictional interviews and characters should not be read as evidence of what Kijima said, what reporters did in every instance, or why particular legal decisions were made. Shinchosha’s account and the Guardian interview support the broad relationship between the case and the novel, but not a detailed procedural history.
The novel’s reach is evident in its UK reception: The Guardian reported more than 300,000 copies sold in the UK in its 2026 interview, and reported that the book was Waterstones Book of the Year in 2024. Those details establish the scale of its reception, not proof that every part of its critique applies to every outlet or journalist.
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