I worked in a Japanese office for two years, and this short novel does well to capture the stifling conformity of the culture. It’s kind of a bizarre love triangle, where one corner embraces the roles and routines of office life, another just wants to throw a (metaphorical) brick through them, and the third wavers between the two. It’s quite a downbeat book, with a pretty cynical and jaundiced view of life, but an enjoyable one.

"May You Have Delicious Meals", though based in the Japanese office-environment, seems to revolve around another, more universal principle - that attitudes around food tell quite a story about an individual's approach to self, life and others.

The cast of three characters - Nitani, Ashikawa and Oshio - showcases it quite well. Nitani seems to despise not only food, but the pleasure of it whilst his matrimonial interest, Ashikawa, is immersed in the world of flavours. In this coupling Nitani expresses two contradicting attitudes - one is to go with societal expectations to find himself a proper wife, the other feels like a silent protest and treating Ashikawa's cooking and feeding like an attack on his autonomy. There's also Oshio, who represents more modern attitudes towards life, for whom food doesn't seem to function as either positive or negative obsession, but she surely likes her drink. But she isn't a type of woman that men like Nitani are supposed to marry.

Yet, even though the concept was interesting, "May You Have Delicious Meals" is not a memorable novel.

May You Have Delicious Meals is a novella about office culture and social interactions in Japan. Reading this was as fun and exciting as watching paint dry. The novel is plotless and I’m going to get into it in a moment, but I do want to say if you’ve been unlucky enough to take Japanese sociology classes, this is a good book to reflect on wa/和/social harmony.

The novella mainly follows three co-workers: Nitani, Ashikawa, and Oshio. Nitani is a sexist man who hates the idea of cooking and doesn’t care about food. He starts sort of seeing Ashikawa (secretly), a woman who loves to cook and is just scared and insecure about everything. In their company, there is an unspoken rule to not ask Ashikawa to do much work because she can’t take it, and everyone cuts her slack. This means that Oshio, her colleague, has to do everything else and gets screamed at when the team doesn’t perform. Hence, Oshio keeps getting drinks with Nitani to whine about Ashikawa.

That’s pretty much it. We just follow vignettes in which the characters meet and interact and eat food.

I found the story very uninteresting, Oshio and Nitani were unlikable as fuck, and Ashikawa just put me off. She was just so weird. Nitani’s thoughts on women weren’t fun. Oshio was just so annoying, she kept jokingly (?) proposing to bully Ashiwaka and it was disgusting. Ashikawa needed some personality, she was just boring to read about. And lastly, I just couldn’t keep track of the other characters, there was very little introduction when the book started, it felt like coming into the fourth season of a TV show and being bombarded with “Fuji drinks from a bottle,” “Junko wants to eat noodles,” etc.

I understand this has won the prestigious Akutagawa prize in Japan and that’s why it’s been translated to English, but it really didn’t work for me. Even if I do admit that it was interesting to reflect on wa and all the stuff I’ve learnt about sociology in Japan and so forth, this was not entertaining or fun to read at all. I’m not taking anything from this book.

A most curious book with characters that were wooden and unlikeable. No real story as such just a mood of unhappiness, loneliness and depression. I didn’t enjoy at all.

This is a tricky one to review. A very little book about a group of co-workers in Japan, revolving around the dynamics of food and eating. An interesting comment on eating together, the pleasure of food and consumer culture but maybe a little lost on me because of the cultural difference. I also found the main character who disliked food and purely ate to live difficult to get to grips with because there was no context around why he felt this way, but maybe this was the point - why does everyone have to take pleasure in food, necessarily? Maybe, I dunno. I liked the end, which I felt was unexpected, funny and also tied all the commentary together well. I also liked Oshio, little bit of a bitch but owning it you know. Think maybe I was just hoping for a weirder book because of the comparison to Convenience Store Woman and I didn’t get that - not similar books at all. That’s why it only gets a 3.

This is an unusual book focusing on the culture within an office in Japan. It could also be described as highlighting bullying and eating disorders. The relationship between the three main characters is uncomfortable but written in such a way that the reader can understand the context and motivation for the behaviours of each. A very interesting perspective of Japanese culture and the nuances of manners and expectations. I found it interesting.

I really enjoyed this darkly funny satire on office politics and the pressure to conform at work. I was firmly on Oshio’s side throughout- not sure what that says about me! The switching perspectives were well observed and I would love to read more from this author in the future. I like the eye-catching cover design too!

May You Have Delicious Meals by Junko Takase, out in the Uk Feb 25 - I’ve read a fair few Japanese authors recently (I blame Shogun and a growing publishing trend) & I’ve enjoyed most of them, but not so much this, despite it being the 2022 winner of the Akutagawa Prize.

We have 3 main characters, none of whom I could connect with or really understand: Ashikawa is obliging, a keen baker and office feeder; her colleague Nitani, is addicted to pot noodles and no food-lover (yet he knows Ashikawa’s the kind of woman he will probably marry); & Oshio, Nitani’s drinking buddy, friend, and a bolder woman.

The main themes of office politics, cultural rules and expectations, plus the role of food in society, raise questions, but all in all this book left me perplexed and sad.

May You Have Delicious Meals is a short Japanese novel about food culture and particularly office food culture, centred around the triangle of Ashikawa, Nitani, and Oshio. Nitani lives off instant noodles and he takes no pleasure from food, even though outside of work he is seeing co-worker Ashikawa who cooks for him. But she leaves work early and makes up for it by bringing in baking for everyone to eat, which Oshio hates. Oshio goes out drinking with Nitani and always ready to complain about Ashikawa, who she thinks doesn't work hard enough.

This book takes the lens of food to explore office culture in Japan, but also to explore office food culture more generally, in a way that is likely recognisable to people in many countries: people who make their own lunch, people who buy easy options, people who eat out at lunchtime. And through various meals, snacks, and drinks, we explore the three main characters and their relationships and petty resentments. The plot is mostly a sequence of scenes, building up a picture of these characters, and the use of food makes for a vivid picture of how these little things impact power dynamics and how people feel about each other. The book doesn't say that much explicitly, but there's lots to read into.

One detail about the translation that I didn't like was the fact that Nitani's instant noodles were almost always called 'pot noodles', which being the name of a specifically British brand of instant noodles threw me out of the novel where food was otherwise given Japanese names. Calling them instant noodles or cup noodles (with capitals for the brand name or not) would've made more sense in my opinion.

Being interested in food culture, I enjoyed this short novel about the petty office politics that surrounds food, and the way different people have very different relationships to food that can impact their relationships with each other. Some people might not like the lack of action or the petty characters, but it feels very much in keeping with other books poking fun at modern workplace culture.

I couldn't help but dislike this book. I understood what it was about and what it was "trying to say" about office and food culture but it just felt like a mean, spiteful little book of a man and a woman trying to tear down another woman for trying her best and being true to herself. They were cowardly and mean and it made me roll my eyes at least 3 times.

I like Japanese literature and novels about food.
We have the new employee Nitani, who dislikes food, and a love triangle between him, Ashikawa and Oshio.
The two women are different when it comes to work and food.
This love triangle, the small office dynamics and the characters’ relationship with food serve as commentaries on being human, modern life and societal demands.
This is a minimalistic, subtle book that requires contemplation and attention.
It does not immediately grip you, but reward you if you stay around.
3.5 stars

A Japanese novel, this features on the office romance between Ashikawa and Nitami. She is sweet, wife material and an avid baker. He is looking for sex, rather than love and is powered by instant noodles.

It’s an interesting concept - the idea that we are defined by what we eat, rather than whom we love. But the flavour of it doesn’t really cut through. Too much energy and prose is devoted to this existential, almost Buddhist concept. The sex itself is flatly written and it is hard to discern where the actual narrative arc pans out.

I think that may come down to the translation, but as my Kanji isn’t what it was there seems no flair or weight in the prose. It’s also a very short book (144 pages). And yes, I know Japanese fiction is short for a number of reasons, but Japanophiles may gobble this up. The rest of us may require something more substantial.

It’s punished by Random House on 20th February 2025 and I thank them for a preview copy. #mayyouhavedeliciousmeals.

This is a wry and pointed book about Japanese office work that takes a particular focus on the freighted act of eating and how it plays out at work. Anyone who has worked in an office will be aware of the politics of lunch: who you have it with, what you have, brought in versus bought. But this novel takes especially interest in the office 'feeder': you know, that woman (I guess it could be a man but I've only ever known women take on this role) who bakes treats and insists on feeding everyone cakes, muffins and cookies.

As with so much Japanese literature, this feels a tiny bit elusive, almost as if it's glancing at its topic sideways rather than full on. At heart there's a kind of triangle, though nothing as unsubtle as a love triangle. Nitani works with two women: Ashikawa is the archetypal 'good' girl - she feeds everyone, she gushes, she's too fragile to work overtime, and Nitani 'knows' she would make the ideal wife. Then there's Oshio who won't pander to Ashikawa's niceness, she goes drinking with Nitani and doesn't try to control his eating habits which are basically an over-reliance on Pot Noodles.

It all adds up to a subtle commentary on office politics with food as a lens through which to understand personal dynamics - and, at heart, this is about that perennial topic of social conformity vs. following your own track. What gives it its edge is the ending.

When novels about food tend to focus on women and the problematics of eating (e.g. [book:Piglet|141310697]) it's hugely refreshing to see a book which tackles food as a social ritual that binds and potentially bonds a community - here a group of co-workers - but which can also be wielded as a weapon that masquerades as kindness and generosity but which might have a far more Machiavellian edge.