# The Cannery Boat/The Cannery Boat

The Cannery Boat by Takiji Kobayashi
The Cannery Boat
I
“Hallo, we’re going off to hell.”
Two fishermen were leaning against the tailings of the deck. Their gaze was fixed on the town of Hakodate as it lay enfolding the sea. One of them spat out the cigarette which he had smoked up to the butt. It rolled over and over comically and then fell over the edge, grazing the high side as it went. The man’s whole body smelled of sake.
Steamers floating on their red bellies; vessels loading cargo inclined to one side as if something from out of the deep was pulling at their sleeves; squat yellow funnels; big bell-shaped buoys; launches, looking like vermin, plying from ship to ship; soot, bits of bread, rotten fruit all swishing together on the water like some strange-patterned fabric; a choking coaly smell brought by the smoke which was swept along the waves by the wind. Now and again a rattling sound of winches came clear over the waves.
Next to this crabcanning steamer, the Hakko Maru, lay a sailing vessel, her paint peeling off and the chains of her anchor hanging down from holes in the bow that looked like the nostrils of an ox. Two foreigners could be seen with pipes in their ​mouths walking backwards and forwards all the time, like mechanical dolls, over the same strip of deck. It seemed to be a Russian ship—evidently told off to keep the Japanese crab steamers under surveillance.
On the deck the captain, looking like an admiral at least, smoked a cigarette as he sauntered up and down. At a short distance from his nose the exhaled smoke bent at an acute angle and blew away in separate puffs. One of the crew, swinging a bucket of food, passed hurriedly into the front cabin and then came out again. They were all ready to sail.
The two fishermen peered down into the dark hold where factory hands could be seen like birds popping their heads out of the nest. They were mere boys of fourteen or fifteen.
“Where are you from?”
“Street,” those in the bunk answered. They were all children of the Hakodate slums, and formed a group by themselves.
“That bunkload?”
“Nambu.”
“That one!”
“Akita.”
Each bunkfull was different.
“What part of Akita?”
“The north,” they answered. They were an unhealthy-looking lot. Their noses seemed to be running pus and their lower eyelids, also discharging, were red as if pulled back.
“From farms?”
“Yes.”
​The stuffy air had a sour smell like from rotting fruit. In the next compartment were dozens of barrels of pickles which added their pungent odour.
In a dark corner some mother, wearing a working coat and tight trousers, and with a three-cornered cloth folded over her head, peeled an apple and handed it to her child who lay on his stomach in the berth. She watched him eating it and herself munched at the spiral of peel. Other women talked among themselves and fumbled with little bundles near their children. Altogether there were about seven or eight such mothers. Other children who were without guardians stole an occasional glance in their direction.
One woman, her hair and clothes powdered with cement dust, divided up a packet of caramels and gave them round to the children near her.
“Mind you work well along with my Kenkichi, won’t you?” she said, putting out her huge unshapely hands, knotted like the roots of a tree.
Other mothers wiped their children’s noses or rubbed their faces with a towel, while some mumbled something among themselves.
“Your boy’s healthy.”
“Fairly.”
“Mine’s awful weak. I wonder what’s best to do with him, but in any case…”
“Yes, it’s the same all over, ain’t it?”
The two fishermen hurried back to their own “nest” further aft. There, every time the anchor was raised or lowered, they were shaken up and knocked together.
​In the dim light fishermen were lying round like pigs. The stench was that of a pigsty and made the newcomers’ stomachs turn.
“What a stink.”
“What d’ye expect. It’s us. Of course we smell pretty high.”
A fisherman with a big red face poured sake from a gallon bottle into a cracked cup and gulped it down, chewing some dried cuttlefish at the same time. By his side was another lying on his back who was eating an apple and reading some old magazine.
“I’ve made up me mind to give up the sea, but you know how it is,” said one young fisherman loudly. His hair was in a tuft in front and his face was bloated and puffy from drink.
A pair of bow legs appeared in the hatchway and a man came down the stairs with a big old-fashioned bag strung over his shoulders. He glanced round and, discovering an empty place in a bunk, in he climbed. His complexion was dark and oily as if stained with something.
“I’ve come to join you, mates.”
Before coming to this ship he had worked in the Yubari coal mine for seven years. After being almost fatally injured in an explosion he left the mines. The explosion occurred as he was pushing a truck he had loaded along to the next man. It was if hundreds of sticks of magnesium had been suddenly thrust in his face. In less than 1/5000 of a second after he felt his body float up like a sheet of paper. Truck after truck flew around like empty match-boxes. That was all he knew. How long ​after he didn’t know, but he awoke to hear his own groans. In order to stop the explosion spreading the management and the workers were building a wall in the gallery. From behind the wall he heard the voice of a miner, who, if anyone had tried, could have been saved, calling for help. Those cries once heard could never be forgotten. He jumped up and flung himself like a madman into the midst of the men building the wall and cried: “You can’t do that, you can’t!”
But couldn’t they understand that the voice was getting fainter and fainter? He rushed wildly along the passage waving his arms and shouting. He fell forward several times and banged his forehead on the props. His whole body was soaked with mud and blood. Then he tripped over one of the sleepers and, turning a somersault, struck the rail and again lost consciousness.
The young fisherman who had been listening to the story said, “Cripes, it’s not so much different here.”
The other, without answering, rested his eyes—the typical dazzled yellowish lustreless eyes of the miner—on the fisherman.
Several of the “farmer-fishermen” were sitting glumly with their legs crossed flat, while others, leaning against the posts and hugging their knees, listened to the rest who were drinking and telling yarns. All had left home because they could not make a living there, where they started work in the fields before sunrise. They had left their eldest sons in charge and the womenfolk had to work in factories while the other sons had also to seek work elsewhere. ​They all hoped to save money and go home. But, once they set foot in Hakodate or Otaru, they were stuck there like birds caught in quicklime. And then, simply “in their birthday suits,” they were turned out. They could no longer return home. So in snowy Hokkaido they were forced to sell their bodies for next to nothing.
A girl pedlar with a box of cakes strapped on her back, a medicine dealer and other petty traders came on board. In a separate place like a little island in the centre of the compartment they set out their goods. The men from the bunks on all four sides leaned out and rallied and joked at them.
Among the fishermen were some who had been sold as “octopuses” to the navvies’ shacks, on tracts of land just being opened up, or to railway construction camps in the interior of Hokkaido; others were wanderers who had sought and failed to get a living anywhere, and some only thought of getting enough sake to drink. There were also farmers from around Aomori, soft-hearted greenhorns, chosen by the heads of their villages. To draw them all like this from different parts was found, from the point of view of getting work out of them, to be the very best policy.
The Hakodate Labour Unions were struggling desperately to get organizers in on the crab canneries and among the fishermen going to Kamchatka. The Aomori and Akita Unions were joining in too. This was the great fear of the exploiters.
A steward in a short white starched coat kept coming and going busily, bringing beer and fruit and wine-glasses into the saloon aft.
​In the saloon the captain was entertaining the head of the Marine Police and the big bugs of the Seamen’s Unions.
“Blast them, they’re just guzzling it down,” said the steward sulkily.
The fishermen’s “den” was lit by a tiny electric light about as big as a berry. The air was foul and stinking with tobacco smoke and crowded humanity. Sprawling in their bunks the men looked like wriggling maggots.
The boss, followed by the captain, the company’s factory representative and the foreman came down the hatch into the men’s quarters. In the passageway apple peel, banana skins, sodden cardboard, a straw sandal and wrapping paper with bits of rice sticking to it were all piled up in a heap. A drain had been blocked. The boss glanced down at it, and then without ceremony spat. All of them had been drinking and their faces were red.
“I want to say a few words.” The boss, whose body was strong as iron, put one foot on the partition between the bunks and, picking at his teeth and spitting, spoke to the men.
“This crab cannery is not a mere profit-making concern for the company,” he said, “it is, above all, a concern of great international significance. Are we, citizens of the Japanese Empire, greater—or are the Russians? It’s a kind of man-to-man fight. So if—but of course there’s no possibility of it happening—but if it ever came to us being beaten, you Japanese men, if you’ve got any guts, would commit hara-kiri and drop into the Sea of Kamchatka. Just because you’re small, would you ​go and let yourselves be licked by those bloody fools of Russians?
“Then, not only our crab canneries but also our salmon and trout fisheries in Kamchatka give us a great advantage over the other nations. And they are of special importance in such a densely populated country as ours, besides helping to supply the community with food supplies. I want you all to realize we are serving our Empire when we risk our lives braving the stormy seas of Hokkaido. So if any one of you start imitating the Russian tactics that are popular nowadays and stir up trouble, I tell you, that man would be doing nothing short of selling his country. I don’t think such a thing is likely, but I give you fair warning.” The boss sneezed as if recovering from intoxication.
One important guest, who was a little drunk, went down the gangway with jerky, uncertain steps to get into the waiting launch. Sailors lifted him like a big sack of pebbles, but he was almost too much for them. He waved his arms and kicked out with his legs, and screamed out all sorts of things, and the sailors kept getting a shower of spit right in their faces.
“In public they say all sorts of fine things, but this is about all it amounts to,” the sailor remarked.
Having got him aboard, one of them, undoing the rope from the bottom of the gang way and glancing over at the launch, said in a low voice:
“Shall we do for him?”
They held their breath for a moment and then burst out laughing.
II
The Shukutsu lighthouse could be seen far to the right through a curtain of mist, grey as the sea itself. It shot its long silver-white ray over countless miles of sea.
A fine drizzling rain started to fall. The fishermen’s hands became as stiff as crabs’ claws with the cold and they had to keep slipping them in under their coats or blowing on them. Like greyish threads the rain fell on the opaque, slate-coloured sea. As the ship approached Wakkanai, however, the drizzle changed to pelting drops and the sea took on the appearance of a vast waving flag. Further on it broke up into small choppy waves. The wind howled against the masts ominously. A steady creaking as of rivets being loosened became audible. This ship of nearly three thousand tons shook as if seized with hiccoughs. She seemed to be lifted up by some gigantic force. Now she was floating in space, and now was sinking with a thud to her former position. The boys on board felt a sick, tickling sensation like that when a lift goes down too fast. Their faces were yellow, they retched over the side.
At times, through the round portholes dimmed with spray, they could glimpse the firm line of the snow-clad Sagahlien ranges. But soon this was hidden by the waves which rose like great frozen alps. These came nearer and nearer, dashing against the porthole, and spattering their spray. Then, washing down the glass, they receded and the ship shook herself like a peevish child. The thumping ​of the engines throughout the ship boomed as an accompaniment to the quick vibrating. Sometimes when riding on the crest of a wave, the screw would come out of the water and beat the surface with its blade.
The wind became stronger and stronger. It screeched in the masts, bending them like fishing-rods. The waves surged violently from one side of the ship to the other, and then ebbed away. At such times the sluices were like rushing cataracts. Up the fearful slopes of these mountains this little toy ship climbed alone. Then with a stagger, as if about to fall head first, she descended into the trough. Now they were sinking!—but soon another wave was smashing at the side of the ship.
When they entered Ohotsk Sea the colour of the water was a more distinct grey. The cold stabbed at the workers through their clothes. Their lips were blue. A fine snow, dry as salt, started to fail. Like specks of glass it stunned the hands and faces of the men as they crawled and crouched at their work on deck. After each wave washed over the ship the deck became a skating rink. A rope was fastened across the deck to which the crew hung. They looked like clothes on a line. The boss kept shouting at everybody.
A second crabcanning ship which had left Hakodate at the same time was now out of sight. From the summit of the waves, in the distance could be seen its two masts as they rocked up and down like a drowning man waving his arms. A trail of smoke, thin as if from a cigarette, was blown in puffs along the waves. At intervals, ​above the waves, shouting was heatd and a whistle from the second ship. It was no longer heard as the Itaki Marru rolled down again.
On the crab ship were eight small boats, which had to be lashed as the waves, attacking like thousands of sharks with white teeth bared, threatened to wrench them away. The sailors and fishermen were thus forced to risk their fives.
“What do one or two of your lives count?” shouted the boss. “Do you think we are going to stand by and watch the boats being lost?”
Roaring like famished lions, the waves came rushing and the ship was powerless as a rabbit. The snowstorm came sheeting down like a white waving flag. Evening approached but the storm showed no signs of abating.
When work was finished the fishermen filed down into their quarters. Their frozen limbs were stuck numbly on to their bodies. Like worms, they crawled into their separate bunks, with never a word. They grasped the iron rails because the ship shook herself desperately, like a horse trying to drive off gadflie. Some cast an aimless glances at the ceiling whose white paint had become yellowed with smoke, or at the black porthole almost buried in the depths of the ocean; others lay with their mouths half open, a blank expression on their faces. Not one was capable of thinking. A vague consciousness of danger kept them all in eerie silence.
One may lay on his back, taking swigs from a whisky bottle. The edge of the bottle gleamed in the dull yellowish light of an electric lamp. Then ​with a crash the empty bottle was flung away, striking several objects and glancing off in a zig-zag. All turned their heads and followed the bottle with their eyes. From a corner someone cried out in an angry voice. Distorted by the storm, the words sounded like mere gibberish.
“We’re leaving Japan,” said one, wiping the porthole with his elbow.
The stove did nothing but smoke, as if mistaking for salmon these humans who were shivering away. Over the hatches, covered with canvas, the waves passed with great swishing strides. Against the wall of the bunks the men heard a banging as though some hefty shoulder were breaking it down.
Now the steamer heaved like a whale in its death throes.
“Dinner,” shouted the cook, poking his head in the door and putting his hand up to his mouth. “No soup, because of the storm.”
“What is there?”
“Stinking fish,” he answered, withdrawing his head. One after another they got up. They were as crazy for their food as convicts. They were ravenous.
Placing their plates between their legs and blowing the steam, they crammed the hot lumpy rice into their mouths and loading it on their tongues moved it around from side to side. It was the first time anything hot had come in contact with their noses, which ran in a continuous trickle which threatened to fall into the food.
While they were eating the boss came in. ​“You’re like bloody starving beggars the way you’re stuffing it down. What do you mean by filling up your belfies when you’ve done no proper work!”
Then, glancing from the upper to the lower berths, he sidled out again.
“Has that fellow got the right to speak to us like that?” muttered one student, worn to a shadow with sea-sickness and overwork.
“Ah, he’s Asakawa, and he just about owns the ship.”
“The Emperor’s above the clouds, so whatever he does doesn’t hurt us, but Asakawa’s here with us all the time.”
From a different direction another man spoke, sticking out his lips: “He’s as mean as hell!” he said. “What’s a plate or two of rice anyhow! Let’s set on to him!”
“That’s the stuff. It’d be better still if you said it to his face.”
They were all angry but they could do nothing, so they laughed.
Late at night the boss came down once more while they were asleep. Catching hold of the rails to support himself, he walked along, shining a lantern on to each fisherman. He turned round heads, which looked like scattered pumpkins, and examined them by the light of the lantern. No one would have awoken even had they been kicked. When the boss came to the end, he stood still for a moment, wondering what to do next, but he soon walked off toward the cook’s galley next door.
​Next morning they learned that one of the hands was missing.
Everyone remembered the cruel work the day before and thought, “He’s been washed overboard by the waves.” It was a nasty feeling, but as they were set to all kinds of jobs at dawn they had no opportunity to discuss it among themselves.
“Who’d go and throw themselves into freezing water like this! He’s hiding. If I find him, the bastard. I’ll half murder him!”
The height of the storm had passed, but when the ship struck the waves which rose up in front of her they washed over the deck as easily as you cross your own threshold. As if its whole body was wounded after this long day and night struggle, the ship made a kind of limping sound. Light smoke-like clouds, so low that you could almost reach them, struck the masts and were curved downwards. The cold rain continued. As the waves rose, it could be seen piercing right into them. It was more eerie than the rain a lost traveller meets in a forest.
The rope was frozen hard as an iron bar. One student met the cabin-boy rushing up the companionway two steps at a time.
“Listen a minute,” said the boy, pulling him into a corner away from the wind, “I’ve got something interesting to tell you.”
It had happened at about two o’clock that morning. The waves were dancing up as high as the deck, at times breaking over it in great cascades. Their bared teeth showed up blue-white through the darkness. Because of the storm no one could sleep.
​Just at that time the wireless operator had rushed excitedly into the captain’s cabin.
“There’s something up, sir. Just had an S.O.S.!”
“S.O.S.! What ship?”
“The Chichibu Maru, sir. The ship that’s been going along with us.”
“She’s an old rattletrap anyhow, that ship,” put in Asakawa who, still wearing his oilskins, was sitting in the corner with his legs stretched out. He was smiling and tapping scornfully on the floor with one foot. “If it comes to that, though, they’re all rattletraps.”
“They seem desperate!”
“Huh! That’s bad.”
The captain in haste, without putting on any coat or hat, had started to open the door in order to go to the steering-room. Before he could get it open, Asakawa, without warning, seized him by the right shoulder.
“Who’s ordered you to go out of your course unnecessarily?”
Who had ordered him? Wasn’t he the captain? Taken aback for the moment, he became as stiff as a poker but then he soon reasserted his position.
“As captain, I do it.”
“Captain is it?” The boss, with his arms stretched out sideways in front of the captain, raised his voice insultingly at the last word. “Look here, whose ship d’ye reckon this is? The company’s chartered and paid for it. The only ones who’ve got any say are Mr. Sugi and me. You, you’re called the captain and you think yourself bloody ​important, but as a matter of fact you don’t count any more than a scrap of stinking fish. D’ye understand? If we go getting mixed up in these kind of things we’ll lose a week. It’s no joke even to get a day behind. And then it’s just cruel the amount of insurance she carries. The old blub, we’d make more out of her if she sank.”
The cabin-boy thought to himself, “Now for a devil of a row!” It couldn’t end just with that. But wasn’t the captain standing there paralysed, as if cotton wool had been stuffed down his throat? This was the first time the boy had seen him in such a position. Didn’t the captain’s words carry any weight? That was nonsense! The boy couldn’t make it out at all.
“I didn’t expect pity from a man of your type, and if you begin showing it now do you think we can get the better of other countries?” the boss spat out.
In the wireless room the receiving apparatus was ticking continuously and at times giving out bluish sparks. Everyone went into the room to know how things were going.
“Listen! It’s getting quicker all the time!”
The operator translated for the captain and the boss. They all stood dead still with their chins set involuntarily and their shoulders braced. Their eyes were glued on the operator’s fingers and followed them as they glided deftly over the different switches and buttons.
Every time the ship pitched the electric light, set like a pimple in the wall, brightened and dimmed. The sound of the waves breaking side on mingled ​with the ceaseless sinister whistling of the distress signal. The wind was blowing; the whistle sounded first far away and then just above their heads, and then again as if shut off from them by a great iron door.
“Jii—jii—i!” A spark, trailing a long tail, flashed out, and then all sound stopped completely. At that instant everyone’s heart gave a leap. The operator fingered the switch and adjusted the apparatus but with no result. Not another tap. He twisted around in his chair.
“Sunk!”
Taking off the head-piece, he continued in a low voice, “A crew of 425. The end has come. No hope of being saved. S.O.S.! S.O.S.! It was repeated two or three times and then nothing more.”
When he heard this, the captain had stretched his neck and shook his head as if he had difficulty in breathing. He cast a vacant glance around him and then turned towards the door. He began fingering the knot of his tie. He was a pitiful sight.
The cabin-boy finished his story.
A gloominess came over the student and he gazed at the sea, which was still heaving with a heavy swell. One instant the horizon would appear right beneath them, while a minute later they were looking up at the narrow strip of the sky from a deep valley.
“I suppose it’s really sunk,” the student murmured to himself. It troubled him sorely. The thought came to him that they too were in a similar old tub.
​All the crabcanning boats were old tubs. That workers should perish in the sea was no concern of the directors in the Marunonchi Building.
These ships were like factories rather than merchantmen. The mercantile law did not apply to them. Doddering dyspeptic old hulks which for twenty years had been left moored away, waiting to be scrapped, were now brazenly given a thin coat of paint and then came crawling into Hakodate. Government ships and transports damaged while on service in the Russo-Japanese war, and cast aside as worthless as fish guts, now once more showed their ghostly hulks. The slightest speeding up would burst the pipes. And if when chased by a Russian patrol (and such occasions were many) they made a dash the whole ship would creak and threaten to fall to pieces any minute. They would shake all over like a palsied man.
But such things did not count; everything had to be utilized for the sake of the Empire. The ships were factories but they did not come under the Factory Law. The managing director, an intelligent man, tacked on to this venture the phrase, “for the sake of the Empire,” and soon a secret stream of ill-gotten gold started to flow into his pockets.
Thus meditated the student as he went down the companionway.
At the bottom of the stairs a notice had been pasted. There were many mistakes in spelling and the surface was all lumpy because rice had been used for paste.
A Reward of 2 Packets of Bat and 1 Towel will be given to the one who finds the hand Miyaguchi.
Asakawa, Superintendent.
III
The rain and fog continued for several days more. The blurred coastline of Kamchatka stretched out like a twisting eel. The Hakko Mara dropped anchor four miles out at sea—up to three miles were Russian waters, and so it was forbidden to go within those limits.
When the nets had been untangled, all necessary preparations were made for fishing for crabs. In Kamchatka the sun rose about two o’clock and so the fishermen, all ready dressed, even to long gumboots, reaching up to their thighs, sat themselves in the cases for the crabs and dropped off to sleep.
Deluded by the agent and brought here all the way from Tokyo, the party of students grumbled among themselves that they hadn’t expected it would be like this.
“A nice tale he spun us, that we’d all sleep separately.”
There were seventeen or eighteen students. It had been settled that they receive sixty yen each in advance, but out of that came train fare, lodging on the way, blankets and bedding and the agent’s commission, so that finally when they arrived at ​the ship each one found himself seven or eight yen in debt! When they first realized this they became very dispirited. At the start they huddled together in one group, surrounded by the fishermen, like lost souls.
About the fourth day after leaving Hakodate they began to feel ill from the effects of eating the hard rice and the same soup every day. When they got into bed they would draw up their knees and prod their fingers into one another’s calves. Their spirits alternately clouded or brightened as they fancied the finger left a dent or did not leave a dent. To make matters worse their bowels did not work for several days. One of them went to the doctor to get some medicine. When he came back his face was pale with excitement.
“He said he didn’t have any luxuries like that.”
“What did you expect? All ship’s doctors are the same,” said one young fisherman who had overheard.
“All doctors anywhere are like it, I tell you. The one at the company I was working at was just the same,” said the fisherman who had been a miner.
When they had all lain down that night the boss came along.
“Are you all asleep? Listen a minute. There’s been a wireless to say that the Chichibu Maru has sunk. It said that the fate of the crew was not known for certain.” With a twist of his lips he spat on the floor. Such was his habit.
What they had heard from the cabin boy flashed into the students’ minds. Drowning would be ​too good for a fellow who could speak so calmly about the death of the 400 or 500 workers whom he had not attempted to save. They raised their heads and began talking together noisily. Asakawa slouched off with his left shoulder forward.
The missing worker had been caught two days ago as he came out from the side of the boilers. He had remained in hiding for two days, but his stomach had been gnawing and at last he had been forced to come out. He was caught by an old fisherman. One of the younger fishermen was furious over this and threatened to strike the old man.
“You blasted scut! Kidding yourself you’re enjoying that tobacco when you’re not even a smoker!” he said to the old fisherman, who, having received the two packets of Bats, was puffing away at one as if he relished it.
The boss stripped the worker and pushed him into one of two W.C.’s, fastening the lock on the outside. At first no one wanted to go to the W.C. They could not bear to hear that crying voice in the next compartment. On the second day the voice was fainter and came in sobs. Then there were intervals between the crying. As soon as they finished work the fishermen hurried to the W.C. Even when they made signals from their side no answer came. Late that night Miyaguchi was dragged out. They found him with one arm leaning on the urinal, having fallen forward with his head in the box for toilet paper. His lips were an inky blue, just like a dead man’s.
The morning was cold. It was already light ​although it was only three o’clock. With their numbed hands tucked in under their coats and their backs arched they got up. The boss began hunting through the workers’ cabins, the fishermen’s, the sailors’, even the firemen’s. He dragged everyone out regardless of whether they had colds or were ill. There was no wind, but as they worked on the deck their fingers and toes lost all power of feeling. The foreman, cursing in a loud voice, drove fourteen or fifteen of them into the factory. There was a leather thong on the end of his bamboo whip.
“Just now he was kicking that Miyaguchi fellow he dragged out last night, and telling him he’s got to start work again from this morning, even though he can’t speak,” said one weak-looking fisherman who had become friendly with the students, eyeing the foreman as he spoke. “But he seems to have given him up at last because he couldn’t get a move out of him.”
The boss appeared pushing along with vigorous prods from behind another worker, whose body was trembling all over. Through being made to work in the cold rain he had caught a cold, which turned to pleurisy. Even when it was not cold he shivered all the time. With his thin, bloodless lips strangely contorted, his eyes had an expression of intense timidity in spite of the furrows between the brows. He had been discovered wandering about in the boiler-room, tired of enduring the cold.
The fishermen at the winches, lowering the boats to put out fishing, followed with their eyes the two ​figures without saying anything. One of them about forty turned away as if he could not bear the sight and shook his head with disgust.
“We didn’t pay a nice sum of money and bring you here just to have you catching cold and skulking round, thank you. And you, you bastards, mind your own business.” The boss hammered on the deck with his bludgeon.
“If hell is any worse than this. I’d like to see it.”
“When we get back home no one’ll believe these things, no matter how much we tell them.”
“You’re right. I’m bloody sure there’s nothing worse than this.”
The steam winches rattled round and round. A boat, hanging out in mid-air, all at once began to drop down. The sailors and firemen hurried about the deck, watching their step at the same time. Like an old cock with his comb standing up, the boss watched them.
During a lull in the work the students sat down behind some cargo to avoid the wind. The fisherman who came from the coal-mine suddenly turned the corner.
“It’s risking our lives!” This sentence, fraught with real feeling, that had slipped out was like a direct stab into the students’ breasts. “And in the mine it was just the same. You don’t seem able to live without being haunted by death. I was scared of the gas there; I’m scared of these waves here too.”
In the afternoon the sky changed. There was a mist so light as to seem almost unreal. Myriads or three-cornered waves sprang up across the great ​cloth of sea. Suddenly the wind began to howl through the masts. The bottoms of the tarpaulins covering the cargo flapped against the deck.
“The rabbits are scampering! Look, the rabbits!” cried somebody in a loud voice as he ran along the starboard deck. The words were carried away on the strong wind and his voice was heard just as a meaningless shouting.
By now the crests of the triangular waves were flinging their white spray over the whole surface of the sea, for all the world like thousands of rabbits scampering over a vast plain. This was the herald of one of Kamchatka’s sudden storms. All at once the tide began to ebb quickly.
The ship started to swing round on herself. Kamchatka, which until now had been visible on the starboard side, suddenly appeared on the port side. There was great excitement among fishermen and sailors. Above their heads sounded an alarm whistle. They all stood looking up at the sky. The funnel shook and rattled. Maybe because they were standing directly under it, it seemed incredibly wide, like a great bath-tub, sloping away out backwards. The piercing note from the alarm whistle had something tragic in it. Warned by its prolonged blowing, the boats out fishing far from the main ship returned home through the storm.
The fishermen and sailors grouped together noisily near the trapdoor leading down to the dark engine-room. With every roll of the ship a beam of faint light filtered down slantingly from ​above, and the men’s excited faces were lit up and lost again in the gloom.
“What’s up?” The miner had made his way among them. “That bloody Asakawa; I’ll pound him to death,” he blurted out.
Early that morning the boss had received warning of the storm from the Maru, which was anchored about ten miles away. The message also said that if the boats were out they should be recalled immediately, Asakawa had said: “If we’re going to take notice of every little thing that comes along, do you think we’ll ever get finished with the job we came all the way to Kamchatka to do?” This information had leaked out through the wireless operator.
The first sailor to hear this had started to roar at the operator as if he had been Asakawa. “What does he think human lives are, anyway?”
“Human lives?”
“Yes.”
“But Asakawa never thinks of us fellows as human beings.”
The fisherman wanted to answer, but he was dumbfounded and just became red in the face. Then he had gone along to join his companions.
They stood there scowling but docile in spite of the excitement welling in them. One hand, whose father was out in the boats, hung round full of suspense on the outside of the ring.
Towards evening there was a great shouting from the bridge. The men below rushed up the companionway two steps at a time. Two boats had been sighted, drawing near. They had been ​lashed together with ropes. They came very close, but, just as if they were at one end of a see-saw with the ship at the other, the big waves lifted them up and down in turns. One after another great roaring waves rose up between them. Although so near, they made no progress. Everyone felt the tension. A rope was thrown from the deck, but it did not reach. It only fell on the water with a vain splashing. Then, twisting like a water-snake, it was hauled back. This was repeated several times. From the ship all shouted in one voice, but no answer came. Their faces were like masks. Their eyes were immobile. The whole scene, with its unbearable grimness, seared their hearts.
By dusk all the boats except two had got safely back. As soon as the fishermen came on deck they lost consciousness. One of the boats, having become full of water, had been anchored and its crew transferred into another boat. The other one together with its crew was missing.
The boss was fuming with rage. He kept on going down into the fishermen’s cabin and then up again. The men cast sullen glances at him throughout this performance.
The next day, partly to search for the missing boat, partly to follow up the crabs, it was decided that the ship should move on. The loss of the carcasses of five or six men was nothing, but it would be a pity to lose the boat.
From early morning the engineers were busy. The vibrations caused by raising the anchor sent the fishermen who were in the compartment next ​the chain-box spinning. The steel plates on the side were worn out and with each shake fell loose. The Hakko Maru searched as far north as 51.5° for the first boat, which had lost its anchor. Fragments of ice showed themselves, floating like living creatures between the slow-moving waves. Then a great mass of these broken pieces appeared, stretching out as far as the eye could reach. The next moment the fragments encircled the whole giving off a kind of foam and a vapour like steam. Suddenly cracking sounds came from all over the ship, and the decks and railings, which were wet with water, became covered with ice. The ship’s sides shone brightly with frost crystals, like a coating of face powder. Pressing hands to faces the sailors and fishermen ran along the deck.
The Kawasaki boat was not to be found.
Just before nine a boat was made out floating ahead. The boss rushed jubilantly along the deck, “Damn her, we’ve found her at last, damn her!” Soon a motor-launch was lowered, but it turned out that the boat was not the one they were looking for, but a much newer boat with number “36” on it.
Asakawa drummed on the side of the boat with his fingers.
“She’s in fine condition,” he grinned. “We’ll take her along with us.”
The boat No. 36 was hoisted on to the bridge of the Hakko Maru. As she hung in mid-air drops of water fell from her on to the deck. With an air of pride which seemed to say, “That’s a nice bit of work,” the boss surveyed the boat as she was ​being raised up and murmured to himself, “She’s a beauty, a real beauty.”
The fishermen watched him as they untangled the nets. “He’s nothing but a blasted robber! I’d like to see the chains snap and let it fall on the blighter’s head.”
He passed close by them as they worked, looking down at them. Then he shouted to the carpenter in an impatient, gruff voice.
The carpenter poked his head out of a hatchway.
“What is it?”
The boss answered angrily. “What is it? You fool. I want you to scrape off the number.”
The carpenter looked blank.
“Come on, you slacker!”
Behind the broad-shouldered boss the little carpenter, a saw in his belt and a chisel in his hand, trailed over the deck with cautious steps like a lame man. Boat No. 36 became boat No. 6.
“That’ll do fine. Ah, ha, we’ve got one on them!” Twisting his mouth up into a three-cornered shape, the boss laughed expansively.
Even had they sailed farther north they could not have found the missing boat. The ship, which had been standing still during all these proceedings, now began to describe a wide curve to get back again to her original position. The sky had cleared and was as fresh-looking as if it had just been washed. The Kamchatka ranges showed up distinctly like the Swiss mountains you see in picture post cards.
Still the lost boat did not return. The fishermen gathered together the belongings of the missing ​men, looking for the addresses of their families and getting everything ready in case the worst came to the worst. It wasn’t the pleasantest of jobs. As they worked they had the feeling that they were examining their own remains. Various parcels and letters addressed to women relatives were discovered in the missing men’s baggage. Among one man’s things there was a letter written in a mixture of the two scripts, Katakana and Hiragana, obviously with a frequently licked pencil. This was passed from one rough sailor’s hand to another’s. Each one spelled the words out to himself laboriously, but with intense interest, and shaking his head passed it on to his neighbour. It was a letter from the man’s child.
One man raised his head from the page and whispered, “It’s all through Asakawa. If we know for sure he’s dead we’ll revenge him.” The speaker was a big, hefty fellow who had left a past behind him in the interior of Hokkaido. In a still lower voice one young, round-shouldered fisherman said, “I reckon we could beat-up one like him.”
“Ah, that letter was no good; it’s made me homesick.”
“Look here,” said the first speaker, “if we don’t look out the swine will get us. We’ve got to look out for ourselves.”
One man who had been sitting in the corner with his knees up, biting his thumb-nails and listening to every word, remarked, “Leave it to me; when the time comes. I’ll lay into the swine!”
They were all silent, but they felt relieved.
​Three days after the Hakko Maru returned to her original position and the missing boat came back. Everyone on board was safe and sound.
Because of the storm they had lost control of their boat. They were more helpless than babes strung up by the neck. They were all prepared for death. Fishermen must always be ready for death.
Their boat had been washed up on the coast of Kamchatka, and they were rescued by some Russians living near. The Russians were a family of four. Thirsty as they were for a “home” with women and children in it, this place held an indescribable attraction for the sailors. Added to that everyone was kind, offering all kinds of help. Still, at first the fact that their rescuers were foreigners, with different coloured hair and eyes, using incomprehensible words, made the sailors feel rather strange. The thought soon occurred to them, however, that after all these were just human beings like themselves.
Hearing of the wreck, many people from the village gathered. The place was a long way off from the Japanese fishing waters.
They stayed there two days recovering and then started back. “We didn’t want to come back; who would, to a hell like this?”
Their story didn’t end there. There was another interesting thing which they were hiding.
It happened just on the day they were to leave. As they were standing round the stove, putting on their clothes and talking, four or five Russians entered, and with them was one Chinese. One ​Russian, with a large face and a short, thick brown beard, rather round-shouldered, burst into a flood of loud talking and gesticulating. In order to let him know that they could not understand Russian the sailors waved their hands in front of their faces. Then the Russian said a single sentence and the Chinese, who was watching his lips, started to speak in Japanese. It was strange Japanese, with the order of the words all mixed up, more likely to confuse the listeners than do anything else. Word after word came reeling out drunkenly.
“You, for sure, have no money?”
“Too true, we haven’t.”
“You are poor men.”
“Too true, we are.”
“So you’re proletarians. Understand?”
“Yes.”
The Russian, smiling, started to walk around. Sometimes he would stop and look over at them.
“Rich man, he do this to you” (gripping his throat). “Rich man become fatter and fatter” (swelling out his stomach). “You no good at all, you become poor. Understand? Japan no good. Workers like this” (pulling a long face and making himself look like a sick man). “Men that don’t work like this” (walking about haughtily).
The young fishermen were very amused at him. “That’s it, that’s it,” they said and laughed.
“Workers like this. Men that don’t work like this” (repeating the same gestures). “Like that no good. Workers like this!” (this time just the opposite, swelling out his chest and walking haughtily). “Men that don’t work like this!” ​(looking like a decrepit beggar). “That very good. Understand? That country, Russia. Only workers like this!” (haughty). “Russia. We have no men who don’t work. No cunning men. No men who seize your throat. Understand? Russia not at all terrible country. What everyone say only lies.”
They were all vaguely wondering whether this wasn’t what was called “terrible” and “Red.” But if it was “Red” one part of them couldn’t help feeling that it sounded very “right.”
“Understand? Really understand?”
Two or three of the Russians started to jabber something among themselves. The Chinese listened to them. Then in a stuttering kind of way he began again to speak Japanese:
“Among men who don’t work, many make profits. Proletariat always like this” (a gesture of being gripped by the throat). “This no good! You proletarians, one, two, three, a hundred, a thousand, fifty thousand, a hundred thousand, all of you, all like this” (swinging his hands like children do when walking along together). “Then become strong. It’s quite safe” (tapping the muscles of his arm). “You won’t lose. Understand?”
“Yes.”
“The men who don’t work, they run away” (running for his life). “It’s safe, really. The workers, proletariat, become proud” (walking solemnly). “Proletariat is greatest. If no proletariat, no bread, all die. Understand?”
“Yes.”
​“Japan no good yet. Workers like this” (bending and cringing). “Men who don’t work like this” (haughty and pretending to punch and knock over his neighbour). “That no good! … Workers like this” (straightening up his body in a threatening way and advancing; then pretending to knock his neighbour down and kick him). “Men who don’t work like this” (running away). “Japan only workers. Fine country. Proletarians’ country! Understand?”
“Yes, yes, we understand.”
The Russian raised a strange voice and began a kind of dance.
“Japan workers, act!” (straightening himself and making to attack). “Very glad. Russia all glad. Banzai! … You go back to ship. In your ship men who don’t work like this” (haughty). “You, proletariat, do this!” (pretending to box—then swinging hands as before—then advancing). “Quite safe. You win! Understand?”
“We understand.” The young fishermen, who before they knew it had become very much excited, suddenly squeezed the Chinese man’s hand.
“We’ll do it … for sure we’ll do it!”
The head sailor thought all this was “Red,” that they were being egged on to do very terrible things. Like this, by such tricks, Russia was making a complete fool of Japan, he thought.
When the Russian had finished he shouted something and then pressed their hands with all his might. He embraced them and pressed his bristly face to theirs. The flustered Japanese, with their heads pushed back, did not know what to do.
​They all pressed to hear more in spite of occasional glances towards the door. The fishermen went on telling them many other things about the Russians. There minds lapped it all up as if they were blotting paper.
“Hey, there, that’s about enough!” The head sailor, seeing how impressed they all were by these tales, tapped the shoulder of one young fisherman, who was talking for all he was worth.
IV
The wireless operator listened-in to messages between other ships and told every piece of information he got to the boss. Their ship was clearly behind the others. The boss was beside himself with impatience, which he vented on the fishermen and sailors. He held them responsible for everything. The boss and the foreman began to plan so that they could make the work a kind of competition between the seamen and the fishermen.
They were all set to the same work of breaking open the crabs; then, if the fishermen were beaten by the seamen (though they got none of the profits whichever way it went), they were heartily cursed. An unbroken succession of gruelling, killing days. At first the output increased from 50 to 60 per cent., but after five or six days both sides became stale and their work much less productive. Their heads would fall forward on their chests as they worked, and then the boss, without wasting any words, would strike them. Taken unawares, they would ​let out a yell of pain that surprised even themselves. With this enmity between them, they worked in complete silence, like men who have forgotten how to speak. They had no surplus energy to expend on the luxury of talking.
Next the boss started to give “prizes” to the winning side. The smouldering fire was once more fanned into flame.
“They soon fall for it,” he said as he sat drinking beer with the captain in the latter’s cabin. The captain had dimpled hands like a plump woman. Tapping a gold-tipped cigarette on the table, he answered with an amiable uncomprehending smile. He was in a continuous state of frustrated annoyance because the boss was always intruding on his rights. He wondered whether the men might not suddenly seize an opportunity to beat-up the fellow and dump him into the Sea of Kamchatka!
The boss made a practice of branding the man who did least work each day. He did this with a red-hot rod applied to the man’s body. The men worked on—all the time in dread of that brand, which would cling to them for ever like their own shadow. An upward curve was again noticeable in the work.
What are the limits of physical endurance? At any rate the boss knew them better than the men. When the day’s work was over they rolled like logs into their bunks, unable to repress their groans.
One student remembered how, as a small boy, he had seen pictures of hell on the gloomy walls of a temple where he had been taken by his grandmother, and how he had wondered whether there ​really were such a place. To his child’s mind they had brought the image of some horrible monster crawling stealthily over a marsh.
No one could sleep because of over-work. Even after midnight, suddenly, from somewhere in the darkness, the sound would arise of someone grinding his teeth—a creepy sound like glass being scratched—or of someone talking in his sleep, or a startled cry as if someone were being beaten.
While they were lying sleepless they would whisper to their own throbbing bodies, “I’m lucky to be still alive!”
“Lucky—to be still alive”—such words to their own bodies!
The students felt it the worst.
“Take Dostoievsky’s ‘The House of the Dead.’ When you think of it now it doesn’t seem much.” The speaker had been constipated for days and could not sleep unless he tied a towel tightly round his head.
“I dare say you’re right,” answered his friend, lapping with the tip of his tongue at the whisky he had brought from Hakodate as if it were medicine. “But then you must remember, after all, it’s a great undertaking. I tell you, it’s a big thing, this developing the natural resources of virgin territories. Take these crab boats, anyhow; they say they’re better than they used to be. They say that in the pioneering days, when there were no reports about weather, or tides, and the topography was not properly mastered, countless wrecks occurred. Sunk by Russian ships, captured, killed—but even then those men did not give in, but battled on. ​And it was because we did stand up again and came through this desperate struggle that this great wealth has become ours. … I guess we’ve got to grin and bear it.”
That was how it was always written in the history books, and so he supposed it was true. But it did not help to ease in the least the deep-rooted grudge he felt. He did not say anything, however, but only rubbed his stomach, which was as hard as a board. And in his thumb he felt a tingling like a weak electric shock. It was a nasty feeling. Bringing the thumb up to the level of his face, he rubbed it with his other hand.
They had all finished dinner and had drawn round the one cracked, rickety old stove set in the middle of the room. When their bodies became a little warm they started to steam. The strong fishy smell from the crabs almost choked them.
“I bloody well don’t understand anything about the reasons, but I only know I’m not anxious to be killed!”
“Nor me either!”
A feeling of gloom descended on the company. They were on the road to being killed! They all began to feel irritable without their irritation having any definite focus.
“A–a–are we b–b–bloody well going to let ourselves b–b–be killed?” blurted out one fisherman in a loud voice, impatient at his own slowness of speech. His face was scarlet and the veins stood out on his forehead.
For a moment no one spoke. It was as if something had given a sudden pull at their vitals.
​“I don’t want to die in Kamchatka——”
“The transport has left Hakodate. The wireless man said so.”
“It’d be fine to go home, wouldn’t it?”
“There’s no chance of that.”
“But they say there’s lots get away on the transport.”
“Do they? … That’d be good, wouldn’t it?”
“They say that some make out they’re going fishing and then escape to the mainland of Kamchatka, and once there start on Red propaganda with the Bolshies.”
“For the sake of our Empire—they’ve thought of a good name for it!” The student undid his front buttons, showing his hollow chest and, with a yawn, started to scratch it. The dirt was caked on, and as he scratched it fell off in fine flakes.
“Yes, and when the bloody plutocrats of the company are pocketing everything!”
From under his eyelids, puckered up into loose folds like oyster shells, one old fisherman gazed with dull, listless eyes at the stove and then spat on it. When it fell on the top of the stove the spit became a little round ball and sizzled and danced, becoming smaller and smaller until it vanished, leaving behind a little case about as big as a pea. They all watched it indifferently.
“What you say may be right.”
But just then the chief sailor said, “Hi there, you, don’t be starting any insubordination!”
“You go to hell, you swine,” said the stutterer, sticking out his lips like an octopus.
​There was a nasty smell of burning rubber.
“Look out, uncle—the rubber!”
“Ah, yes, I’ve burnt them!”
Waves seemed to have sprung up and were beating faintly against the side of the ship, which was rocking in lullaby time. The shadows of the circle of men fell in a tangled fringe on the floor behind them. It was a calm night. From out of the door of the stove a red glow was reflected on the lower parts of their legs. The strange calmness of the night gave them a respite—a momentary respite only—to look back over their miserable lives.
“Haven’t you got a cigarette?”
“No.”
“Not one?”
“No.”
“Hell!”
“Hey, pass the whisky over this way.”
The owner held the square bottle upside down and shook it.
“Look out, don’t go wasting it.”
“Ha! ha! ha!”
“It’s a hell of a place, but we’re here, me too….” The fisherman who spoke had formerly worked in a Shibaura factory, and now he went on to tell of his experiences there. To these Hokkaido workers this factory sounded a wonderful place, beyond all imagination. “If they had even a hundredth of what we put up with here there’d be a strike,” he said.
This story led on to others, until they had all related their life experience. Opening up new ​roads, irrigation works, laying railroads, harbour construction and reclamation, sinking new mines, clearing new lands, wharf lumping, herring fishing—almost all of them had been engaged in one or another of these.
When in Japan itself a deadlock had been reached because the workers had refused to be imposed upon, and because all the markets had been flooded, the capitalists made a grab at Hokkaido and Saghalien. There they were able to exploit as ruthlessly as in the colonies of Korea and Formosa. But these same capitalists knew many things which no one dared to mention. In their quarters at these road construction and railroad construction works navvies were killed with less ceremony than lice. Exploited beyond endurance, some ran away. If they were caught they were tied to a stake. Horses could kick them with their hind legs. Sometimes they were handed over to dogs, who chewed them to death. All this, moreover, was done in public. If the victim lost consciousness water was thrown over him to revive him, and this would be repeated many times. Finally, held in the animal’s powerful jaws and shaken round like a bundle, he died. Even after he had been thrown away limp and left in a corner of the open space there were still some convulsive movements from the body. To have red-hot tongs applied to their backs and to be beaten with a six-sided bludgeon until they couldn’t stand up was a daily occurrence. When they were eating their dinner, suddenly from the back a piercing cry arose, and then a pungent smell of human flesh burning was wafted to them.
​“Give it up; it’s no good trying to eat or anything with that going on.”
They threw down their chopsticks and eyed each other blackly.
Many died of beri-beri through having been made to work when unfit. As there was no time to spare even in case of death, they were left lying for days on end.
In the darkness outside, sticking out beyond the end of the matting which had been roughly thrown over, two legs, a dull yellowish-black colour and strangely shrunken to the size of a child’s, could be seen.
“The face is all swarming with flies. It might spring up and yell at you when you pass,” said one man as he came in, rubbing his forehead with his hand.
They were sent off to work before it was light and continued at it until they could not see around them and only the heads of their picks gleamed a pale bluish gleam. The convicts who were building a jail nearby were envied by everyone. The Koreans were treated the worst; they were kicked and trampled on by their own Korean foremen and bosses as well as by their Japanese fellow-workers.
The policeman stationed at the village five or six ri away occasionally paid a visit, trudging along, notebook in hand, to make inquiries. If it got late he would stay over-night, but he never once showed himself in the navvies’ quarters. He would go home with a scarlet face….
Every sleeper on every track in Hokkaido ​represents the corpse of some worker. And the piles sunk in the harbour reclamation are all the bodies of workers who died of beri-beri.
Profits were just scooped up. Then very skilfully such catch phrases as “the development of national wealth” were tacked on to these enterprises, which were thus completely justified. The capitalists were very shrewd. “For the sake of their country” the workers were starved and beaten to death.
“It’s only by the mercy of God that I ever got back alive, I can tell you. I feel grateful to Him. But if I go and get killed in this ship it’ll amount to about the same thing, anyway, won’t it?” said one fisherman, breaking into toneless laughter. But when he’d finished laughing he began to scowl fiercely and looked away.
It was the same in the mines. In learning what kind of gases might come out, or what untoward changes take place, and thus finding the best plan of procedure, the capitalists calmly sacrificed worker after worker—anyhow, they were cheaper to buy for the purpose than guinea-pigs. They used them up more casually than toilet paper. In these places too, far from cities, appalling things occurred—terrible accidents.
All the miners, like men who have been in prison a long time, had sallow complexions and listless faces. What with lack of sunlight, and coal dust and air full of obnoxious gases, and abnormal temperatures and pressures, they could notice their own bodies deteriorate. “If you were a miner for seven or eight years, then for roughly four or ​five years out of it you were in a pit of darkness, without one chance of ever worshipping the sun—for four or five years!” But, no matter what happened, the capitalists didn’t mind very much, as they could always buy up plenty of new workers as substitutes. When winter came the workers continued to pour into those mines.
There were also “pioneer farmers”—that is to say, farmers who had immigrated to Hokkaido. Through cinema propaganda these poor peasants had been induced to leave their own holding and settle on land which four or five inches below the surface was nothing but clay. All the fertile land was already claimed. There were many actual cases where whole families, buried in the snow without even potatoes to eat, had died of starvation before the spring came. Not until the snows melted and the neighbours—who lived at least a ri away—came to see how they were was this discovered.
When they did manage to escape starvation it was only to face long years of toil. The capitalists—the bankers and millionaires—merely lent out what was really false money, and in course of time the peasants’ barren land, now transformed into sleek, fat acres, passed automatically into these gentlemen’s hands. Imitating them, many sharp-eyed speculators flooded Hokkaido, and the farmers had their property snatched from them, so that in the end they became tenant-farmers just like at home.
Hoping to make even a little money and then go back to their native villages, they had crossed ​Tsukaru Strait and come to snowy Hokkaido. In the crab ships were many such ones who had been driven off their own lands by other people.
In the mainland the workers united into one huge mass and resisted the capitalists. But workers in the colonies were cut off completely from any such things.
Before bed the fishermen stripped off their shirts, which had become hard like dried fish with grime, and spread them before the stove. Standing round in a circle, they each held an edge of the clothes and, when they became hot, waved them up and down. Fleas and bugs fell on top of the stove and crackled, smelling disgustingly. When the shirts got so hot that the fleas could not bear it they came out from the seams, scurrying along in a frenzy.
“Here, take hold of the end.”
Getting someone to hold one end of his loincloth, one man unrolled it and started catching fleas.
But in spite of such precaution the men were not able to sleep. All night long they were attacked by lice and fleas and bugs. No matter how they tried they could not exterminate them all. As soon as they got up into their bunks dozens of fleas would start crawling stealthily up their legs.
At first they had been allowed a bath every other day, and even then their bodies were always smelly and dirty. After a week it became every third day, and after about a month once a week. Finally they were reduced to twice a month. This was to save water. But the captain and the boss had a bath every day. The men became filthy with the ​juice from the crabs and stayed like that for days on end, so that it was no wonder lice and bugs began to swarm.
“These fleas will be the death of us, I tell you.”
“Oh, well, it’ll be a nice end.”
And as there was nothing else to do they laughed.
V
Two or three excited fishermen rushed along the deck. When they reached the end they reeled and grasped hold of the railing. The carpenter, who was doing some repairing on the saloon deck, looked over in the direction the men had gone. The cutting wind brought tears to his eyes, so that at first he could not see clearly. He turned his head aside and blew his nose vigorously.
The port-quarter winch was rattling. As all were out fishing now there was no reason to be working it. Something was dangling from it, and that something was shaking. The wire, which hung down vertically, was swinging round, describing circles. “What is it?”—his heart gave a leap.
“He’s at it again.” Wiping his tears on his sleeve again and again, he assured himself that it was so. From where he stood he could see, against a background of livery-grey sea, the jutting-out derrick of the winch, and hanging from it one of the workers, completely bound, defined in clear black. The winch was raised up as far as it would go and he was left hanging there like that for a long while—twenty minutes at least. After that it ​started to move downwards. He seemed to be straining and twisting his body, and was waving both his legs like a fly caught in a spider’s web.
At last he was lost from sight behind the saloon, and only the wire stretching down vertically could be seen, swaying now and then like a swing.
Tears seemed to have got into the carpenter’s nose, for it was trickling all the time. Again he blew it. Then, taking out the hammer which had been moving round in his side pocket, he started to work.
Suddenly, pricking up his ears, he looked round. The wire rope was shaking as if someone below was pulling at it and a dull, uncanny splashing sound was heard.
The strung-up man’s face had changed colour. From between his lifeless, tightly-closed lips foam was coming. When the carpenter went down below he passed the foreman with a lump of wood under his arm. “That’s what he hit him with,” thought the carpenter, glancing at the wood.
The fishermen, through long-continued overwork, gradually found themselves unable to get up in the mornings. The boss found an empty petrol can and walked round hammering on it close to the ears of the sleepers. He hammered on it desperately until they opened their eyes and got up. Those with beri-beri half raised their heads and said something, but the boss, pretending not to have noticed them, went on hammering. After he had hammered what he considered a reasonable amount he shouted at them: “What’s ​wrong; are you not going to get up? If this work is for the sake of your country, then you’ve got to count it like war. You’ve got to risk your lives for it, you bastards.”
The sick men had all their coverings pulled off them and were then pushed up on to the deck. Those with beri-beri banged their toes against the stairs. They climbed up, clutching the rail with one hand, grasping their feet with the other to help them up. At every step each heart would give a horrible kick.
The boss and the foreman tormented the sick men very slyly. When they were working at canning the meat they would be driven out and set to breaking claws on deck. When they had been at that for a little while they would be sent off to paste labels. They were made to stand in the bitter cold until their legs had less feeling than artificial limbs. If they just relaxed their knee-joints would crack like a hinge coming apart and they would almost double up in a heap.
One student started to tap his brow lightly with the back of a hand all dirtied with breaking the crabs. Then just in that position he fell backwards. A pile of empty cans beside him clattered over noisily and nearly buried him. Because of the ship’s slope some of them rolled among the machinery and the cargo. The student’s mates carried him towards the hatchway and ran into the boss. He glanced at them and said, “Who’s stopped their work?”
“Who?” echoed one student, looking as if he would like to strike him.
​“Who … you bastard?” Then, suddenly twisting up his mouth and stretching himself up, he burst out into a loud laugh.
“Fetch some water.”
He took the pail of water and dashed it on the face of the student, who had been left lying prone on the floor like a railroad sleeper.
“He’ll be all right—there’s no need for you to be looking at what’s not your business. Get on with your work.”
Next morning the hands saw the student of the day before tied up to one of the pillars. His head was sunk down on his chest like a chicken whose neck has been wrung, and just at the nape one big round bone of his back showed, sticking out clearly. Then in front of him, like a child’s pinafore, a piece of cardboard was hanging with something written on it, obviously in the boss’s handwriting:
“As this is a disloyal malingerer it is forbidden to undo the rope.”
When they felt his forehead it was like touching cold steel. Up to the time they entered he had been jabbering to himself, with no one to answer him. When they heard the voice of the foreman coming down after them, they moved on from the machine to which the student was bound, dividing into two streams until they had all reached their proper places.
When the crab-fishing got busier things became worse. They had their teeth smashed in and spent all night spitting blood; they fainted from overwork. Their extreme tiredness made them more ​helpless than if they had been drunk. At stopping time they breathed sighs of relief, as much as to say, “That’s the end,” and then for a moment everything went blank.
Just as they were clearing up the boss came along and thundered at them, “Work until nine o’clock to-night.”
Once again they all dragged themselves up like figures in a slow-motion picture. They had no energy left to do anything else.
Sometimes the boss would lecture them. “D’you understand? We can’t come back here a second time or a third time. And we can’t get the crabs just at any time we please. Just because you’ve worked ten hours or thirteen hours in a day, if you go stopping exactly at that, it’d be a hell of a mess. This work is different. D’ye get me? But to make up for it, when there are no crabs, it’s almost a cruel waste the easy time you have.
“The Bolshies, no matter how many shoals of fish come right in front of their eyes, if time is up they’ll throw up the work. That’s what they’re like and that’s why Russia’s like she is. You Japanese men must never go copying them.”
“What’s he talking about, the damn fool?” thought some and did not listen. On hearing the boss’s words the majority felt that Japan was indeed a great country. The hardships they suffered every day seemed somehow heroic, and that was at least some consolation for them.
While working on deck they saw a cruiser moving across the horizon towards the south. They could see the Japanese flag waving at the stern. Their ​eyes filled with tears and they waved their hats. “That’s our only protection,” they thought.
“Damn it all, when I see her it makes me blub!”
They watched it as it got smaller and smaller, until it disappeared wrapped up in smoke.
Returning to their quarters they all shouted, “Blast!” In the darkness their voices, full of hatred, sounded like the bellowing of bulls. Although they did not know against whom they were aimed, the thoughts, the words and actions of these 200 men, talking freely together day after day, came imperceptibly to move in one direction. ····· It was morning. Climbing slowly up the companionway the miner said, “I can’t keep it up.”
The day before he had worked almost till ten, and his body was like a half-broken machine. As he was climbing up he dozed off. Shouted at from behind, he began to move his feet and legs mechanically. He slipped but continued crawling up on his belly.
Before beginning work they gathered together in a corner. Their faces were the colour of clay.
“I’m going to try sabotage. I can’t work,” said the miner.
They all looked expressively silent for a while, and then someone said, “It means a big branding——”
“I’m not shirking. It’s because I can’t work, I tell you.” The miner rolled his sleeve right up and then held his arm out level with his eyes and examined it.
​“It won’t be long. I’m not shirking, I tell you.”
“If you’re not, then it’s all right.”
That day the boss stamped round again like a fighting cock. “What’s the matter? What’s the matter?” he shouted. As it was not just one or two men, however, who were taking their time, but almost everyone, he could do nothing but fume inwardly as he went round. It was the first time that the fishermen and sailors saw the boss like this. On the deck hundreds of crabs let out of the nets made a grating sound as they crawled about. The work accumulated like a blocked drain. ····· “The transport! The transport!” This cry from the upper deck was heard below. Everyone jumped out of his bunk just as he was, in his sleeping rags. The transport aroused the men more than a woman would. It alone did not smell of the salt sea, but had a breath of Hakkodate clinging to it. It smelled of the land, the land which did not move and which they had not trodden for many months. And this boat delivered letters, shirts, underwear, magazines and many other things.
Seizing their parcels in their knotted, crab-greasy hands, the men rushed back excitedly to their quarters. Then, sitting up in their bunks with their legs crossed, they undid their parcels. All sorts of things came out: letters in their children’s unsteady handwriting, written with the mother standing near telling them what to say; ​towels, tooth paste, tooth-brushes, toilet paper, kimonos, and underneath all these, unexpectedly, letters from their wives. All the men tried to get from these things a sniff of their homes. They sought for the milky smell of children or the strong fleshy smell of their wives.
Those sailors and fishermen who had received nothing mooned around with their hands stuck in their trouser pockets. Everyone teased them, saying, “I wouldn’t be surprised if she hasn’t called in some other fellow to keep her company while you’re away.”
With his face buried in a dark corner, heedless of the others’ noisy clatter, one man stood counting over and over again on his fingers. He had received news of his child’s death. The child had died two months ago, but he had received no word till now. The letter said that there had been no money for a wireless.
On the other hand there was just an opposite case. In another letter was a photograph of a baby, podgy like a young octopus.
“This, mine!” laughed the father in a funny voice. Then, with a grin on his face, he paraded it round, saying, “What d’ye think of it? They say this has arrived.”
In their parcels were trivial little things, but things which only the careful forethought of a wife remembers. At the sight of them their hearts began to beat strangely, and they felt a strange longing to be home.
On the transport had come a party of movie men sent by the company. It was arranged to have a ​movie show on the ship the night the cans were loaded on the transport.
Two or three young men, all very much alike in appearance, with flattened caps a little on one side and bow-ties and wide trousers, came aboard carrying a heavy-looking trunk.
“What a smell!” they said as they took off their coats, and then, whistling a tune, began putting up a screen, measuring off the distance and fixing up the stand. The fishermen got from these men the feeling that they were not of the sea, and therefore were different from themselves, and this attracted them very strongly. Both sailors and fishermen, in a light airy mood, helped the newcomers with their work.
The oldest and flashiest of them, who wore gold-rimmed glasses, stood a little apart and wiped the sweat from his neck.
“Look out; if you stand there you’ll have lice crawling up your legs.” He gave a shriek and jumped up as if he had trodden on a sheet of red-hot steel. The fishermen burst out laughing.
“But I say, this is a dreadful place to be in, isn’t it?” His voice was husky. Then he continued, “I don’t expect you know, but how much profit do you think this company makes by coming here and doing this. Something tremendous, I tell you! Five million yen in six months! Ten million a year. If you say it quickly it doesn’t sound much, but actually it’s tremendous. Not many companies in Japan can pay the huge dividend of 221/2 per cent. to shareholders. The head director is going to become an M.P., they say, and ​then everything will be rosy. But I suppose with all that they wouldn’t make the profits they do unless they treated the men as badly as this.”
Night came.
Partly to celebrate the “ten thousandth can,” sake, raw spirits, dried cuttlefish, boiled vegetables, cigarettes and caramels were distributed among them.
Four or five in the front row began clapping and all the others followed suit. The boss appeared before the white screen. He straightened himself and, folding his arms behind him, started to speak, making use of such polite words as “gentlemen” which rarely came from his lips, mixed in with his usual stuff about “you men of Japan” and “national wealth.” Most of them did not listen to him. They chewed away at cuttlefish.
“Shut up, shut up!” someone in the rear yelled.
“Sit down, you!”
They began to whistle and clap madly.
In such circumstances the boss could not very well get angry. His face went red and he said something (which no one heard because of the uproar) and then sat down. The movies began.
The first was “educational.” Scenes of the Imperial Palace, Matsushima, Enoshima, Kyoto flickered across the screen. After that followed some Western and Japanese dramas. Then men were all absolutely enthralled. When a fine-limbed Western girl appeared they whistled and snorted like pigs.
The Western picture was an American one, ​built round the opening up of the West. It told of men attacked by savages, overwhelmed by the ravages of Nature, but rising up again and laying the railroad foot by foot. The towns which sprang up overnight seemed just like joints of the railway. As the railroad was pushed forward new towns appeared further and futher westward.
All these various trials and hardships were interwoven with the love story of a navvy and the director’s daughter; sometimes the one and sometimes the other was in the foreground. In the last scene the man who showed the picture raised his voice:
“Helped on by the countless sacrifices of these young men, the hundreds of miles of railroad were at last completed and linked together mountain and valley, transforming lands which until yesterday were a wilderness into National Wealth.”
The end showed the director’s daughter and the navvy, now changed miraculously into a gentleman, in the act of embracing.
Between this and the next film was a short Western comic, pure nonsense which made them all laugh.
The Japanese one was a film showing a poor young man who started by peddling beans, then sold newspapers and step by step came to shoe shining; next he entered a factory, became a Model Worker, was made much of and finally became a millionaire.
The lecturer added, though it was not in the titles, “Verily if industry is not the mother of success, what is?” The young hands applauded earnestly. ​From among the fishermen and sailors came a loud voice, “Bloody lies! If that was true I’d have been director before now!” and again everyone laughed.
Afterwards the lecturer said that he had been ordered by the company to lay special stress on places like that to bring the moral home to the men.
The last picture showed the company’s different factories and offices. Many workers were depicted working “industriously.”
When the movies had finished they drank the sake given to celebrate the ten thousandth can.
Not having tested sake for ages and being worn out, the men soon became drunk. Dense clouds of tobacco smoke hung round the dim electric light. The air was thick and stuffy. Stripping off their clothes, twisting towels round their heads, sprawling about crosslegged or tucking the bottoms of their kimono up to their waists, they shouted out all sorts of things in chorus. Sometimes fish fights developed.
This did not stop till after midnight.
One fisherman came rolling like a great sack down the stairs. His clothes and right hand were smothered in blood.
“A knife! A knife! Get me a knife!” he cried, crawling along the floor. “Where’s that devil Asakawa gone. He’s not there. I’m going to kill him!”
He was one of the fishermen whom the boss had ordered to be beaten. He seized a poker and, blind with rage, rushed out again. No one stopped him.
​Next morning they discovered that every thing on the boss’s table had been smashed to pieces. The boss, however, was unhurt, as he had been elsewhere. ····· [For various reasons it is impossible to give this story in full. The translator summarizes the conclusion in the following note. It is hoped that later circumstances may permit a full version.]
SUMMARY OF REMAINING CHAPTERS
In the concluding chapters conditions become worse. One man dies of beri-beri and at the all-night vigil held beside the body one man gets up and makes a fiery speech, telling them to revolt before they themselves are killed. A committee is formed and the men are organized. One morning they are ordered to set out fishing in the boats, although a storm is clearly approaching. One boat refuses and the revolt spreads all over the ship. A student goes down below to tell the firemen and a mass meeting is held. A deputation goes to the boss with demands, which he refuses. The deputation attacks the boss. He is afraid to use his revolver. Everyone is jubilant but later the cruiser is seen approaching and the men realize they have been fooled and that the boss has sent a wireless. Still the cruiser is their protection and will understand their point of view, think the simple ones. Sailors come aboard and the nine ringleaders are seized and carried off. Everyone ​is at first dazed by this failure but gradually they realize that cruisers are owned by capitalists and plan to organize a new revolt more carefully.
A short appendix is added with the following notes:
(a) The second revolt succeeded perfectly. The boss found they had taken possession of the wireless room and could do nothing.
(b) The Hakko Maru was not the only ship that had strikes and sabotage at the end of the season. Red propaganda was found at work on two or three ships.
(c) The boss and the foreman, faithful dogs of the company, were not awarded for their services, but dismissed. The boss is said to have said. “Ah, I’ve been deceived by the company.”
This work is one page of the History of the Penetration of Capitalism into the Colonies.
30th March, 1929.
* ↑ The business quarter of Tokyo.
* ↑ A well-known brand of cigarettes.