I advise you to look into Grice’s maxims before composing your spam in future.

It was a very interesting choice of material even though the translation itself is rather clunky.

Re publishing houses and politics, note that lefty publishers Iwanami have had Kanikosen faithfully in print for decades too. (And with some nice supporting material.) They must be pissed that their brand unity prevents them from riding the wave now.

This,I’m bit synical since Shinchosha isn’t exactly known as left leaning.It’s flagship magazine,weekly Shincho is known for a fard rightist political stance.

There’s a book called “The Death Ship” by German Anarchist and pseudonymous author known as B. Traven,which is one of my favourite novel and story has somewhat resembles with “Kanikousen”.
It’s also about slave labor on dangerous and decrepit ship in highseas and it was written about the same time.(Written in 1926,”Kanikousen” in 1929).
Big difference is in “Kanikousen”,the member of the ship accidentally lands on Soviet shores and greeted by hospitable Soviet household and there,one Asian communist show the feeling of solidarity and cheer the Japanese workers to stand up against tyranny back at the ship.Which reflects Kobayashi’s idealistic view towards Soviet Union.

On the other hands,B Traven of “The Death ship” do not even imagine such idealized utopia that exist somewhere abroad.
The antagonist in the novel is rejected by every government and authority since he lost his passport and compleltly cut off from any help from outside.

Ofcourse,this is the reflection of the difference in political attitude of the authors,one is a card carrying member of the communist party and the other is an anarchist,but also reflecting the lack of exile experiences among Japanese intelligentsia,and highly abundant among the German counterpart who do not possess any rosy picture of life in abroad.Kobayashi killed in the Japanese prison during interrogation and Traven died in Mexico as an exile in 1969 tells everything.