Tortured & Killed-Takiji Kobayashi

The Crab Cannery Ship -- Kani Kōsen -- 蟹工船,

Cover of the 2006 manga edition of Kani kōsen.

Takiji Kobayashi was a standard-bearer of Marxist proletarian literature.¹ He was a member of the outlawed Japan Communist Party.²

Takiji was arrested for having written the line in which a factory worker says “he hopes the Emperor chokes on the crabmeat they are canning.” 

Takiji was tortured and killed by the Tokko in 1933. The Tokko was primarily concerned with suppressing anarchism, communism, and socialism.³

The Crab Cannery Ship -- Kani Kōsen -- 蟹工船 by Takiji Kobayashi (1929) is a fictionalized account of an actual case of brutal treatment of fishermen and factory workers on board a floating cannery operating in the Sea of Okhotsk that occurred in 1926.

Takiji Kobayashi was secretary general of the Proletarian Writer's Guild of Japan. The Crab Cannery Ship aligned itself with the common theme of gradual coalescence of awareness of social class-consciousness to show how capitalism inevitably causes workers to spontaneously organize.⁴

The Crab Cannery Ship was banned by government censors.⁵

The full text of the novel did not become available in Japan until 1948.

In 1953, the film Kanikōsen was released. It was awarded the best cinematography prize at the 1954 Mainichi Film Concours.

A manga version of the book appeared in 2006.

In 2008 there was a revival of the novel in Japan responding to the deepening impoverishment of the ranks of the irregularly employed.⁶

A remake of the film Kani kōsen was released in in 2009.

1. Bowen-Struyk, Heather; Field, Norma, eds. (2016). For Dignity, Justice, and Revolution: An Anthology of Japanese Proletarian Literature. University of Chicago Press.

2. —Thanks KM for the reference.

3. The Tokkō was charged with suppressing "dangerous thoughts" that could endanger the state. It was primarily concerned with anarchism, communism, socialism. Tipton, Elise (2001). The Japanese Police State: The Tokkō in Interwar Japan. Allen and Unwin.

4. Karlsson, Mats. “Kobayashi Takiji, The Crab Cannery Ship and Other Novels of Struggle.” Japanese Studies. Routledge, 2014.

5. Keene, 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.

6. Field, Norma (February 17, 2009). Commercial Appetite and Human Need: The Accidental and Fated Revival of Kobayashi Takiji's Cannery Ship. Asian-Pacific Journal.