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.