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Kanikōsen

Kanikōsen

Kani Kōsen (蟹工船, "The Crab Cannery Ship") is a 1929 novel by Japanese author Takiji Kobayashi.

Overview

Kani Kōsen is a proletarian novel by Takiji Kobayashi[1] that was first serialized in the May and June 1929 issues of the communist literary magazine Senki.[2] In September of the same year, it was released as a standalone book by Senki Company.[3] The book was banned by government censors,[4] but not before selling 15,000 copies.[4] The novel has been released in English as The Cannery Boat (1933), The Factory Ship (1973), and The Crab Cannery Ship (2013).

Background

Kobayashi began writing the work late in 1928 and finished in March of the following year.[5] It was not based on any personal experiences of the author,[5] but was influenced by Yoshiki Hayama's semi-autobiographical novel Umi ni Ikuru Hitobito.[5] The work's immediate inspiration came from Kobayashi's reading of a newspaper's description of floating crab cannery workers who had been treated brutally and sued their captain on their return to shore.[6]

Kobayashi considered his use of a collective protagonist rather than a singular hero was a step forward in the creation of a proletarian literature,[4] a claim he made in a letter to his mentor Korehito Kurahara immediately upon completion of the work.[4] The letter also shows the influence orthodox Marxism had on Kobayashi roughly two years after his reading of Das Kapital.[7]

Plot

The work has no single protagonist, and the only named character, the superintendent Asakawa, is portrayed as an inhuman monster.[4] The other characters are various groups of oppressed people: fishermen who began as impoverished farmers and plan on using their earnings to rehabilitate their farms, but wind up resorting to drinking and whoring in Hakodate and Otaru;[4] factory hands in their early teens who have been abandoned by poverty-stricken parents;[4] and students who have been tricked into believing that ship work is attractive summer employment.[4]

Themes

The book expresses its pessimism from the beginning, not only in the opening remark but in the description of the harbour of Hakodate being filled with rubbish, and the smaller boats being compared to insects.[8]

Reception

Kani Kōsen sold well enough that 15,000 copies were in circulation before it was banned.[4] Abridged versions that removed politically incorrect content continued to be sold after the book was banned,[4] but the uncut version was not reprinted until 1948.[4] In 2008 it became one of the best-selling novels in Japan, selling around five hundred thousand copies.[9]

The book was well-received by Marxist critics on its initial release,[4] and earned Kobayashi a positive reputation.[4] Non-Marxists were less kind:[4] Murao Nakamura attacked the work for its portrayal of individual evil but not organizational evil, attributing all the suffering of the characters to one man in Asakawa.[4] Naoya Shiga was of the opinion that as a work of literature it should move readers directly, not by indirectly conveying ideology.[10] Literary historian and critic Donald Keene wrote that the work "succeeds not because of its message, nor because of its confident appraisal of the future, but because of the vivid, believable details of life aboard the ship."[10] Keene praised the novel's unflinching portrayal of sexual violence by the older fishermen against their younger comrades[11] and refusal to set any one figure up as a "worker-hero".[12]

Adaptations

In 1953 the film Kanikōsen was released, directed by Sō Yamamura and starring himself, Masayuki Mori and Sumiko Hidaka. It was awarded the best cinematography prize at the 1954 Mainichi Film Concours.

A manga version of the book first appeared in 2006, the first of four so far. During 2009, two stage adaptations of the novel were produced in Tokyo, another was produced in 2012.

A remake of the film Kani kōsen, directed by Hiroyuki Tanaka and starring Ryuhei Matsuda and Hidetoshi Nishijima was completed in 2009.

References

[1]
Citation Linkopenlibrary.orgKeene, Donald (1998) [1984]. A History of Japanese Literature, Vol. 3: Dawn to the West – Japanese Literature of the Modern Era (Fiction) (paperback ed.). New York, NY: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-11435-6., p. 617; "Kani Kōsen" 蟹工船. World Encyclopedia (in Japanese). Heibonsha. 1998. Retrieved 2017-11-23.; [[#CITEREF|]].
Sep 26, 2019, 8:19 PM
[2]
Citation Linkopenlibrary.org, p. 618; .
Sep 26, 2019, 8:19 PM
[3]
Citation Linkopenlibrary.org.
Sep 26, 2019, 8:19 PM
[4]
Citation Linkopenlibrary.org, p. 618.
Sep 26, 2019, 8:19 PM
[5]
Citation Linkopenlibrary.org, p. 617.
Sep 26, 2019, 8:19 PM
[6]
Citation Linkopenlibrary.org, pp. 617–618.
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[7]
Citation Linkopenlibrary.org, pp. 616, 618.
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[8]
Citation Linkbooks.google.comValdo H.Viglielmo.The Sea as Metaphor: An Aspect of the Modern Japanese Novel, in A.-T.Tymieniecka (ed.), Analecta Husserliana, Vol.XIX: Poetics of the Elements in the Human Condition (D.Reidel Publishing Company, 1985), 149-169.
Sep 26, 2019, 8:19 PM
[9]
Citation Linkwww.jacobinmag.comGreene, Doug Enaa. "Kobayashi and the Class Struggle". Jacobin. Retrieved 10 April 2019.
Sep 26, 2019, 8:19 PM
[10]
Citation Linkopenlibrary.org, p. 619.
Sep 26, 2019, 8:19 PM
[11]
Citation Linkopenlibrary.org, pp. 619–620.
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[12]
Citation Linkopenlibrary.org, p. 620.
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[13]
Citation Linkwww.aozora.gr.jpKanikōsen
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[14]
Citation Linkmetropolis.co.jpRed Star Rising
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[15]
Citation Linkkotobank.jp"Kani Kōsen" 蟹工船
Sep 26, 2019, 8:19 PM
[16]
Citation Linkbooks.google.comThe Sea as Metaphor: An Aspect of the Modern Japanese Novel
Sep 26, 2019, 8:19 PM
[17]
Citation Linkwww.jacobinmag.com"Kobayashi and the Class Struggle"
Sep 26, 2019, 8:19 PM
[18]
Citation Linkwww.aozora.gr.jpKanikōsen
Sep 26, 2019, 8:19 PM
[19]
Citation Linkmetropolis.co.jpRed Star Rising
Sep 26, 2019, 8:19 PM
[20]
Citation Linken.wikipedia.orgThe original version of this page is from Wikipedia, you can edit the page right here on Everipedia.Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.Additional terms may apply.See everipedia.org/everipedia-termsfor further details.Images/media credited individually (click the icon for details).
Sep 26, 2019, 8:19 PM