When Yayoi dismembers Kenji’s body, this dismemberment serves a secondary function for the four women, namely, to train them for their new moonlighting gig hacking off the body parts of Yakuza victims (which becomes moral shorthand for characters readers are not supposed to care about). According to the rules in Out, murder becomes its own infinite regress. This freedom, however, become illusory and short-lived. Suddenly, Yayoi is free of her oppressive and derelict husband and their estranged and dysfunctional marriage, which naturally makes her feel empowered by her newly acquired freedom. Afterwards, she and three of her bento factory co-workers (Masako, Kuniko, and Yoshie) cut up Kenji’s body into tiny pieces before disseminating them throughout Tokyo, a literal deconstruction of the patriarchal body politic that is both gruesome and implicitly nationalistic (as if his death were the natural consequence of both infidelity and xenophilia for spending his money on a Chinese prostitute). In Natsuo Kirino’s feminist thriller, Out, Yayoi strangles Kenji (her abusive and profligate husband) to death after he gambles away their savings, a crime that accelerates her criminal professionalization.
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