Introduction

Kanikōsen 蟹工船, (The Crab Cannery Ship) has recently received much attention in the Japanese and foreign press for being one of the least expected publishing successes of 2008. Written in 1929 by Kobayashi Takiji 小林多喜二 at the height of Japan’s proletarian literature movement, the book tells the story of the eponymous cannery ship and its workers of northern Japan: their desperation, their wretched prospects, their exploitation at the hands of the bosses and the ruling class … and, eventually, what they do about it. Kobayashi later joined the Communist party and was tortured to death by the police in 1933, but the unpolished urgency and populism of his work has kept it in the canon — a cult classic subject to periodic revivals.

The first revival, of sorts, was in 1953 — the year after the Occupation ended — with the release of the film adaptation. Technically, the postwar boom had begun by this time; in practice, very little of it had trickled down to the general populace. The Red Purge of recent years had made it clear that Japan and U.S. leaders would not tolerate anybody trying to rewire the system. There was frustration and dissatisfaction in the air, and the release of Kanikōsen capitalized (!) on that.

But we know how things eventually worked out: Japanese industry and government working together managed to get enough citizens employed on agreeable terms that most of the previous dissatisfaction evaporated. Postwar Japan’s economic success was so great that the country came to be seen as a serious threat to the U.S. itself.

Then the bubble popped. Corporations restructured, cutting costs by relying more on contract employees (契約社員) or dispatch workers (派遣社員) and less on the seishain (正社員) — “true company members” — who had come to expect lifetime employment and other inconvenient things. Young people entering the workforce are faced with the choice of either taking these less desirable temporary jobs, sacrificing much of their personal life to compete for the few coveted seishain spots — or just not working at all. And so today you have an under-30 underclass which feels exploited and locked out of “real” adult society.

Working the register at 7-11 or answering phones in a Shinjuku high-rise may not be back-breaking labor, but the problems of “freeter” life are real: few opportunities to build a real career, patronizing and insulting treatment from people on the traditional career path, working the exact same job as the seishain but only receiving 40% pay and no chance to bounce to the management track, and growing uncertainty about whether they’ll be able to receive social security if and when they retire — despite the contributions deducted from their paycheck every month. This is the background against which the Japanese Communist Party is enjoying increasing interest from under-30s and the background against which Kanikōsen is enjoying its latest revival as a metaphor for modern Japan. People are responding once again to its vivid worldview: an undeserving but firmly entrenched ruling class who live luxuriously and hypocritically, an exploited working class kept hidden below decks, and tales of ill-specified external threats, used by the former to keep the latter in line.

Chapter 1

“Oi! We’re off t’Hell!”

The two fishermen leaned over the deck’s guardrail, craning like snails stretching out of their shells to view the ocean-hugging town of Hakodate. One of them spat out a cigarette he had smoked down close to his fingers. The cigarette tumbled and whirled as though clowning as it scraped its way down the tall side of the ship. The fisherman’s entire body stank of booze.

Broad-floating steamboats with bellies like fat red drums; boats still being loaded up, tilted precariously to one side as though someone were pulling at their sleeve; buoys like thick yellow chimneys and great bells; launches weaving between one boat and the next nimble as fleas; the chill murmur of the waves, bobbing with soot and chunks of bread and rotten fruit, like some unique fabric… Above the waves, smoke streamed before the wind, bringing the thick smell of coal. Every so often a winch’s rattle would carry across the water to echo nearby.

This was the Hakkōmaru, a crab cannery ship, and directly before it a sailboat with peeling paint was letting out an anchor chain from the a hole in the bow like a bull’s nostril. Two foreigners smoking wide-bowled matelot pipes could be seen running back and forth between the same two places like clockwork dolls. A Russian boat, no doubt. A surveillance craft assigned to Japan’s crab cannery fleet.

“I ain’t got a mon to my name,” said the fisherman. “Shit. Here.”

So saying, he moved his body closer to the other man’s. Then he grabbed the second man’s hand and brought it to his hips. He touched it to the pockets of the corduroy pants he wore under his hanten jacket. There seemed to be a small box in there.

The second man looked wordlessly at the first man’s face.

The first man giggled. “Cards,” he said.

On the boat deck, the captain was looking like a shogun, smoking a cigarette as he wandered about. When he exhaled, the smoke bent at an acute angle just past his nose before breaking up and drifting away. Sailors dragging their wood-soled straw sandals on the deck carried food buckets busily in and out of the forward cabins. Preparations were complete, and the ship was ready to leave.
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