Hooked

Eriko’s business trip to Tanzania develops the symbol of the Nile perch, linking the fish’s predatory nature to her dawning self-awareness of her own destructive social tendencies. While visiting processing factories near Lake Victoria, Eriko learns that the carnivorous Nile perch will resort to cannibalism when their food sources become scarce in their invasive environment. This fact connects with her anxieties about friendship, especially during a pleasant, professional meeting with her local coordinator, Naomi Akagi. Though she feels a rare, easy connection with Naomi, Eriko immediately concludes that any attempt at a personal relationship would inevitably fail, as they would eventually “set off down the road of attacking and killing each other” (160). This preemptive fatalism reveals how deeply Eriko has internalized the Japanese cultural stereotype of doro-doro female friendships as a zero-sum game of survival. Her thinking is further illuminated by her earlier reflection on how Nile perch were once mislabeled as Japanese sea bass in markets. This deception mirrors the way Eriko mislabels her own obsessive behaviors—possessiveness, control, and stalking—as friendship or sincere care. The symbol of the Nile perch thus becomes a metaphor for Eriko’s invasive and self-isolating approach to connection, framing her loneliness as the inevitable result of a consumptive, predatory drive.

While Eriko’s social world contracts into a paranoid fantasy, Shōko’s begins to expand, though this expansion is filtered through the increasingly significant motif of the blog. After receiving advice from the successful blogger Nori, Shōko commits to professionalizing her online identity, a shift that transforms her private life into a public performance. This change is illustrated when she cooks an elaborate Italian meal ostensibly for her husband, Kensuke, but actually for her online audience. Kensuke recognizes that he is being used as a prop in his wife’s blog, widening the gap between them. After they fight and he leaves, she stops herself from throwing the food away, realizing that “without photos, none of this would have any meaning at all” (169). Rather than a part of her relationship with Kensuke, her domestic labor is now carried out for her brand, rather than her husband. Its value is determined by its potential as marketable content, rather than any romantic or benevolent desire to be with her romantic partner. This turn alienates her from her husband and allows her to dismiss her family obligations. Her burgeoning flirtation with the young waiter Hashimoto is another facet of this performance, a way of seeking external validation for her desirability. Shōko’s attempts at empowerment speak to the theme of The Impossibility of Self-Actualization Under Patriarchy: Instead of finding an authentic self, she constructs a more appealing public persona whose worth is contingent on male attention and the approval of a digital audience.

The food in this section functions as a barometer for each woman’s psychological state and her relationship to authenticity. In Tanzania, Eriko shows a genuine curiosity about food as a cultural connector. She prefers a local café to an expensive restaurant and eagerly orders tilapia and green banana stew, seeking an authentic experience that connects her to a place and its people. Her professional interest in the provenance of fish reflects a deeper desire for truth and understanding. This contrasts sharply with Shōko’s performative Italian meal, an aesthetic object whose purpose is purely to be photographed for the blog, appealing to people who will never eat it. The meal’s value is divorced from taste, nourishment, or marital connection and is instead located entirely in its meaning as content. At another extreme is Keiko’s parfait, which she allows to melt into a “gloopy liquid” (150) as she talks. This casual neglect of her own pleasure and sustenance is a physical manifestation of her nihilistic philosophy of “doing nothing” (151) and her total abandonment of self-care and societal expectations. Food, a central element in the novel, functions here to delineate the characters’ core conflicts: Eriko’s fraught search for authenticity, Shōko’s embrace of curated performance, and Keiko’s radical withdrawal.

Eriko’s descent into obsession demonstrates the toxic potential of one-sided, digital bonds when they are challenged. Enraged that Shōko has seemingly replaced her with Nori, referring to the new acquaintance as a “best friend” (173), Eriko takes the change in the blog’s content as a direct personal attack. This perceived betrayal fuels her conviction that she has a “divine mission” (173) to rescue Shōko and restore the “old Hallie” (177). She spends an entire night at her office—a professional space now co-opted for her personal fixation—scouring forums for negative feedback and flooding Shōko’s comments section with a contradictory mix of pleas, critiques, and threats. Eriko reframes her stalking as the righteous act of a “devoted fan” (177) with Hallie’s “best interests at heart” (177). Her behavior exemplifies the theme of The Dangers of Parasocial Relationships, whereby the internet fosters a delusional intimacy that allows a so-called fan to feel entitled to control the creator’s life. This digital crusade is a substitute for the genuine connection she craves, revealing how the theme of The Alienating Nature of the Modern World provides echo chambers that reinforce obsession while masking the user’s deep isolation.



Keiko’s backstory provides an important insight into Eriko’s character, framing her pathology as a destructive consequence of patriarchal pressure. In her meeting with Shōko, Keiko reveals that Eriko’s obsessive behavior began in adolescence, explaining that Eriko approaches relationships with a “teacher’s pet attitude” (145), needing to achieve “full marks […] in friendships” (145). This insight recasts Eriko’s actions as a toxic byproduct of the immense societal expectations placed on Japanese women to be perfect in every aspect of their lives. The story of how Eriko retaliated against Keiko by spreading vicious, life-altering rumors is a case study of the doro-doro trope, suggesting such toxicity arises from a patriarchal system that drives women to extremes, instead of from innate female nature. Keiko’s subsequent nihilism and embrace of “doing nothing” (151) shows a total, if self-destructive, withdrawal from this system. For Shōko, Keiko’s story is a warning, illustrating one potential dead end in a world that offers women few paths to genuine fulfillment.