The Cannery Boat by Takiji Kobayashi

I was reading that this book has been one of the top sellers in Japan recently. All this despite being far from the sort of subject matter we associate with Japan (the author was a Communist who died in custody, and his book about workers under a sadistic boss)

Has anyone read this work?

Looking on Amazon it looks as if it will be hard to get hold of in the UK..........

Sounds interesting. I haven't heard of it. Let us know if its any good though...

A 5-page excerpt of The Cannery Boat by Takiji Kobayashi was anonymously translated into English in the 1956 anthology Modern Japanese Literature from 1868 to the Present Day compiled and edited by Donald Keene. This excellent anthology is still in print.

It seems the novel titled Kani Kosen (The Crab Ship) has recently found renewed interest among Japanese readers, (David McNeill's article in The Independent (UK) cites a 100-fold increase in sales from 5000 copies most years to 490,000 copies last year). There is also an interesting article in The Guardian, here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/aug/21/japan?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfron...

I have searched in vain for a translation into English of this novel. Does anyone know of one?

Matt of No-sword has started translating it on Néojaponisme.

Paul Stott:

Where did you hear it was a top seller? That seems preposterous to me. It was written in1928 and published the following year. It's an 83-page novella. And in my initial attempt it was dull and dreary as one could imagine.

Takiji Kobayashi's novella's Factory Ship & the Absentee Landord are together in the University of Tokyo Press's 1973 publication. It is a recommended by by J. Thomas Rimer in his A Reader's Guide to Japanese Literature, a book I've been working through for about 10 years.

It took me about 5 years to get the publication (above) into my grubby hands. I read the first 30 pages and found it insufferable. Reading critiques of the writer by Donald Keene and others they underscore some of the idiosyncrasies that are part of his attempts to write a truly proletarian story. One thing that makes it quite difficult is that characters are not given names, in order to remove their specificity and avoid the concept of individualism trumping the group. Or some other such lunacy. It makes for a tough slog though when everybody is "the old guy from Hokkaido" or "the man with the scar".

I had so many great other books laying around at the time, so I threw it back in the pile and will attempt it again someday, as I have such great belief in Rimer's recommendations. Still, it doesn't look easy.

I guess with a number of rare volumes I got in under the wire relative to Amazon's used-book pricing. I have tried to find OOP books at Amazon in recent months and found small inconsequential volumes pricing at $100 or more, and assume it is because they find no other dealers listing it. Preposterous.

-- Gerry

Actually I found two copies in Amazon of the Modern Japanese Literature from 1868 to the Present Day which includes The Cannery Boat as mentioned by one of the commentors here; one which costs $6 and the other $10. I think that's very reasonably priced.

Hi Gerry - The piece on the Cannery Boat was in the Independent:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/japanese-discontent-voiced-in-novel...

Re: Msg 6:

Modern Japanese Literature: From 1868 to the Present Day edited by Donald Keene (Grove Press 1956) is an excellent anthology. I've love it and the companion volume that preceded it, Anthology of Japanese Literature from the Earliest Era to the Mid-Nineteenth Century (1955).

In fact, both my extremely dog-eared volumes were actually falling out of the binding, when I encountered a hard-back volume with both books included in a used book store last year. I was delighted to pick it up for 8 bucks!

Truthfully I hadn't realized that Factory Ship, here indicated as "Cannery Boat", was excerpted. But less one be confused: this is only a five-page excerpt from an 83 page novella. Still-an exceptionally good anthology done quite a while ago and still to be admired as having selected truly critical works and authors.

-- Gerry

Re: Msg 6

Paul:

Thanks so much for the link. This is unbelievable stuff! I couldn't begin to wrap my brain around the sudden explosion in sales (5k editions, mostly academic) to half a million copies since January!

Then I noted their reference to a recent manga/graphic novel edition, and it at least begins to makes sense. In a movie or a graphic novel, having names to identify characters, as one example of a Marxist literary style, isn't so problematic as it is in prose.

Still that doesn't explain why this thing as exploded. I'd like to know the reason why. This is certainly coincidence; word of mouth is driving this, but I can't imagine what "the word" would be!

Every time we go to Japan we go to a certain Shinjuku bar which invariably has the head of the Tokyo communist party hanging out. We always kid around with him in our limited overlap of languages. Once he brought a Russian party member who was in town on business, and we jammed: the Russian on a mandolin, me on guitar and the Japanese guy singing. None of us could speak a word to one another but we managed some limited "solidarity" over a large bottle of saké. It was pretty strange...

-- Gerry

re#9: "Still that doesn't explain why this thing as exploded. I'd like to know the reason why. This is certainly coincidence; word of mouth is driving this, but I can't imagine what "the word" would be!"

One part of the explanation of what "the word" is can be found here:

"Sales rocketed in 2008 after it was praised by Karin Amamiya, a rightwing punk singer-turned-writer, in a newspaper interview in January. Half a million copies have been sold so far this year, according to Kani Kosen's publisher, Shinchosha. ...

..."Young people are sympathising, as they see themselves and today's situation in the novel," said Hirokazu Toeda, a professor at Waseda University in Tokyo." (from the Guardian article I provided a link for in my message #3 above:)

If someone with a large number of devoted followers says the right word, it's fairly easy to get half a million (or more) people to buy almost anything here in Japan, especially if it's manga/anime or pop-culture.

An interesting year-long discussion concerning the phenomenon of the growing plight of the working poor may be found here:
http://www.globalvoicesonline.org/2007/05/05/japan-precariat-may-day-march-spark...

Fascinating...

Thanks for the insight, sushidog!

-- Gerry

Gerry,
Since I am on the precipice of becoming a member of the working poor, I've been reading a lot of "want-ads" for jobs lately. There are lots of so-called part-time jobs that are 8 hours per day, 6 days per week, with lots of (probably unpaid) overtime. The only thing 'part-time' about these jobs is that the employer provides no benefits, insurance, paid vacation, etc. These jobs are typically filled by young workers. It's easy to see how they feel like slaves.
julia

Well jeez, don't go all communist on us or something! If you're not working 24 hours a day, I guess it's really part-time. What--are you some kinda union agitator?!

:-)

-- Gerry

~~not a chance! The only followers I can inspire are my dogs when I'm rattling the kibble box. :)

Thanks for the link Gerry. I just found out there's a bookstore for used books closeby. Although the chances of finding these there is like 1 in a million. Might order it sometime.