My Year of Meats

This chapter is prefaced by an excerpt from Shōnagon about her reverence for women divers.

Jane reads an article about how Japanese housewives do not like going to the butcher’s and want to purchase meat from vending machines instead. The article makes her think of Japan’s shock over a not guilty verdict given to an American who had shot a Japanese exchange student trying to ask for directions. The case verified Japan’s belief that Americans are gun crazy, something Jane is upset by. She thinks about how “deeply violence is embedded” in American culture (89). 

Jane’s focus then turns to her blooming relationship with Sloan. She admits to herself that she has feelings for him that now go beyond the sexual. She feels “safe” with him and encourages him to stop wearing two condoms during sex, a suggestion he takes (93). 

Akiko is working on an article about the dangers of pregnancy. As she writes the copy, she thinks back to her much more interesting job at the manga publishing house. She’d still be there if her boss had not decided to set her up with John as a favor to a business partner. It was during those uncomfortable first dates with John that Akiko started vomiting up her food.  She also thinks back to the night John arrived home inebriated, having just found out Akiko was bulimic. When she suggested they adopt, he swelled with rage, knocking her over, saying he didn’t want “some bastard of a Korean whore” as his child (100). Ever since then he had kept Akiko at home where no one could see the physical evidence of his anger. She feels he is being kinder to her, but ultimately looks forward to his “next business trip” (101).

His next trip turns out to be with Jane and her crew. Despite Kato’s support for Jane and her diverse choices, John thinks she is “incompetent” and unable to select families that will best sell the American meat (107). He arrives prepared to shoot down her selection of an African American family in Mississippi so that he can replace them with a white couple from Tennessee. In an effort to stop this from happening, Jane gets him drunk, hoping he will pass out and sleep through the next day’s work. The plan almost works until he regains consciousness and tries to rape her. She is able to get away, reminding him of his responsibilities to his job before bursting out the door. 

The next morning he shows up for work but is ill and hungover. His presence makes Jane “queasy”, but they set forth for a Baptist church in Mississippi anyway (110). Once there, they both enjoy the service and feel comforted by it. Eventually, John is so overwhelmed with emotion he starts crying and finds himself being comforted by Miss Helen Dawes, the wife Jane wants to do the show about. Back at Miss Helen’s house, where she lives with her husband and nine children, they discuss the family’s preferences for meat. Miss Helen’s husband explains they don’t eat much chicken because the hormones in chicken had changed his body. The Dawes then reveal they don’t like beef either which upsets John. On the way home John says they will go with the white couple instead of the Dawes. When Jane pushes back, insisting the show about the Dawes is much more interesting, John concedes that this is true, but is not the point. He says the point is to sell meat and that if Jane can’t understand that she will lose her job.

This chapter is prefaced by an excerpt from Shōnagon in which she talks about her dislike for carpenters, whom she finds to be bland and submissive. 

Jane and her crew discuss how Americans are “uniformly obese” and wonder what the predominant cause is (123). Jane’s concern with American bodies goes far deeper. Through research, she learns about the history of the growth hormone DES which for decades was fed wantonly to American livestock because of its ability to plump them up. After the revelation that DES causes cancer and other changes in consumers’ physical appearance, there had been a long battle between the government and the livestock industry. Jane had not initially realized how dangerous the products she was pushing were. 

Back in Japan, John grows angry with Akiko for not finding the white couple from Tennessee authentic. He presses her for details about why she found the family “phony”, but when she explains he gets even angrier, saying that he can no longer trust her “subjective” responses (130). Relieved to no longer have to provide feedback, Akiko exits the room, only to find that John has followed her, hysterical that she closed the bathroom door behind her. 

Overall, the couple from Tennessee earns bad ratings, so the ability to find a compelling wife falls to Jane again. She chooses a small-town Polish family with a daughter who was once run over by a Wal-Mart truck. The Bukowskys could not afford medical care, so each person in their town took turns visiting the damaged girl, and eventually she started to regain control of her body. Once the media had gotten wind of Christina’s success story, Wal-Mart gave in and paid a large settlement for running over her.

People with children in similar compromised physical states started showing up at the Bukowskys' door and the Bukowskys kept taking the children in, hoping to help others like they had helped Christina. At the current moment, they ran a successful 200-bed facility and their only worry was Christina’s inability to conceive. Jane was hoping to use this family because the first thing Christina had asked for when she learned to speak again was her mother’s lambchops. She worried John would not let the episode happen, so she just avoided mentioning the lambchops until the episode was shot. Christina turns out to be gorgeous and wins over Jane’s camera crew instantly. There is a synergy between Christina and the camera crew and the episode comes out better than ever.

Akiko watches the episode of Christina rolling confidently around in her wheelchair and then heads out to buy some lambchops so she can test the recipe for John. The butcher only has Australian lambchops, but Akiko purchases them anyway, hoping they will taste the same. She spends a lot time preparing this meal and, in the end, feels proud of how the lambchops have come out. She carries them into a drunken John who knocks them out of her hand and pushes her into the TV. He says Australia is a land of “criminals and traitors” and leaves her lying in the living room (143). She eventually gets up and eats the lambchops and drinks some whiskey. She then heads to the bathroom and discovers that she has gotten her period back again.