The Cannery Boat

Front matter

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.