Pathway to Japanese Literature

I At the deeply indented bay entrance of Muroran Port leading to the Pacific, Daikoku Island stood like a stopper.

Snow blanketed all of Hokkaido with a thickness stretching from the ground to the clouds, driving sideways in its descent. The steamship Manshūmaru, loaded with three thousand tons of coal in its belly, plowed through the storm toward Yokohama. The ship was now maneuvering around Daikoku Island. Beyond that island, large waves were crashing. The Manshūmaru timidly peered its hull, submerged up to the deck, into the raging waves of the Pacific. And resolutely, she plunged forward. The maximum speed she could muster with her full-term pregnant body was commanded from the bridge to the engine.

The weather along the Northern Sea Route during winter was always perilous. Safe and pleasant voyages were impossible along the northern coast during winter. The deck sailors of the Manshūmaru battled spray from waves crashing onto the deck with dynamite-like force while scrubbing it down. From the hose tip gushed near-boiling water that froze within flowing five feet across the deck. The five sailors mustered every ounce of their strength before the hot water could freeze and swept away the coal chunks.

The Manshūmaru steamed ahead, gazing at the mountains and plateaus of Hokkaido to the right. Snow veiled both ship and shore. The desperate blizzard of Hokkaido wrenched a mournful cry from the mast. Stripped bare before all life’s perils, the coal mined thousands of feet underground had risen to the surface by using tens of thousands of coal miners as stepping stones. And now, at sea, it was being transported through the labor of sailors who, alongside the ship’s hull, were exposing their entire bodies to the same raw dangers threatening life itself.

Fujiwara Rokuo entered the lamp room and was cleaning the lamps. He was a twenty-eight-year-old extreme introvert—a difficult man. And to such an extent that one might doubt whether he was actually doing any work at all, he appeared to possess a nature that detested labor. His duty was that of a storekeeper. The lamp room had been shabbily constructed—small and wretched—facing the bridge between the sailors' quarters and the stokers' quarters. Fujiwara was there wiping the lamp chimneys while watching the sailors clean the deck. He had recently come to know that things looked bleak even with the Bosun and the Chief Mate. “Even Stoki (the storekeeper) has to help out when it’s our deck’s turn.” “This isn’t some 10,000-ton or 8,000-ton ship we’re talking about here,” the Bosun had once said to him when all the sailors were gathered for a meal.

“Hmph. ‘Stoki’ just means storekeeper. “A storekeeper’s job is just guarding the storeroom. That should be more than enough,” he retorted. Ever since then… it seems even my fellow sailors don’t think much of me anymore— Stoki thought gloomily.

II The ship’s engine was running at full speed, but against the wind and waves, she made no headway. Despite departing at dawn, by evening she still hadn’t cleared the offshore waters of Tsugaru Strait. That night, the senior officers discussed whether to turn back to Muroran, but it never came to action. As the blizzard grew increasingly fierce, the sailors’ work began to take on a different character from ordinary tasks. The hull, submerged beyond its insurance mark, offered sufficient resistance, and every last storm wave crashed onto the deck. And the deck became a sea. The scooped-up water refused to drain quickly through the small drainage ports. Lifelines (safety ropes) were rigged across the hatches on the deck. Whenever they tried to cross the deck, there was no difference whatsoever from the open sea.

The waves wedged the ship between their mountainous peaks. As the trough advanced from the ship's bow to its hull, the next crest struck the bow. Our iron-clad Manshūmaru, unable to endure this torment, released a deathly scream. The hull groaned with a thunderous creak. As the trough reached the stern, the propeller spun uselessly in air. The propeller whirled like an aircraft's blades. She roared like a beast matching her own bulk in ferocity. From every unsecured shelf, objects cascaded down. The lamp leapt from its socket; the steering gear lost nearly all effectiveness. Speed had been reduced to three knots against propeller cavitation, every effort bent on keeping the bow aligned against wind.

Both the engine room and boiler room faced tremendous difficulties. The oiler paid extraordinary attention to working his way into narrow gaps between machinery amid violent rocking. Before the boiler, the fireman shovel in hand strained to keep his footing. In the galley directly above the boiler room, cooks had to divide into five batches what they normally cooked at once, and even applying this method to side dishes still made preparing soups impossible.

The Coal Passers could not avoid battering their heads bloody with lumps inside the coal bunker. The sailors had to secure the hatch covers—the ship’s hatch lids—along with their metal fittings by tightly binding them with ropes passed over the top to protect the dumble inside from flooding by waves washing over the deck. It was a dangerous task. And without this dangerous work, there was no way for the entire ship to escape peril. Like a malicious horse bucking off an unskilled rider, the ship’s hull violently shook its back. Each time this happened, like a ladle scooping water, the deck took in storm waves. The ropes became soaked and stiffened, causing tremendous difficulty and delays in handling them. But it was a task that had to be accomplished. For hatches taking in water meant nothing less than—simply and clearly—the hull’s sinking. Five sailors, along with the Bosun, Stoki, and the carpenter—eight men in total—mobilized to complete this work.

Their bodies exposed to the freezing wind, they were pierced by waves that gleamed like blades—painful, relentless. And that froze their less mobile parts solid. The triple threat of the ship’s peril, their shared fate with the vessel, and the imminent danger to their freezing flesh bestowed upon the sailors an astonishing, superhuman vigor—as if a house fire could drive a paralyzed old woman to drag a millstone outdoors. And the two bow hatches were fully secured.

Two hatches still remained near the stern. And now, dinnertime approached. The sailors felt hungry. Yet the sea, too, felt hunger—it sought to devour our Manshūmaru. The ship writhed ceaselessly, the mast shrieked without pause, and the rigging howled in terror. The bow’s hull clashed with the storm waves as though locked in a duel. At the stern, the propeller threw up its hands to the sky. Nature and human strength battled with their utmost power and every shred of wisdom.

III

Never had the sailors felt more irritated by their identity as the ship’s crew, more anxious, or more despondently disheartened than in this moment when—with the ship as their fortress—humans and machinery united perfectly to battle nature. And yet, despite every instant of extreme tension and unrelenting vigilance, they pitied their own fate. During this grueling labor, their status became as starkly illuminated as a lightning bolt blazing through pitch darkness—they stood exposed, unequivocally, as wage laborers. But it was precisely like a lightning flash. They had to immediately turn all attention back to their work.

The sailors, having finished with the bow section, were climbing up to the salon deck to head to the stern hatches when— Quartermaster Ogura, who had been on the bridge, bellowed something incomprehensible with his whole being as he leaped down from the bridge with ferocious speed, raced across the salon deck toward the stern, and vaulted over the companionway. The sailors flinched. Not only the cooks in the galley, the apprentices, the chief engineer resting during his shift, and the captain on the bridge—all watched Ogura’s fleeing figure.

Ogura rushed to the stern. There, between the chain of the steam steering gear controlled from the bridge and its cover, the apprentice sailor had deliberately crawled face-down with his right side wedged in. Ogura had thought to let the apprentice escape easily, but the steering gear couldn’t be left unattended for even a moment to keep the bow aligned.

There, all the sailors rushed over. Some tried to shift the cover's metal plate with a bar. Even during this time, though not as severely as the bow deck, storm waves washed over there three or four times. The combined strength of all the sailors and Ogura managed to pull the apprentice sailor out from between the chain and cover. However, the apprentice hung limp like a dragged-up drowned corpse, his eyes fixed vacantly in midair. He was immediately carried by two sailors and taken into his bedbug-infested nest in the bow, where the vibration and roar were most intense.

Removing the work clothes from him was the most urgent task. But it was simultaneously the greatest difficulty as well. It was frozen solid, as stiff as a sailmaker’s work garment. Fujiwara, who had followed, pulled out the knife at his waist and skillfully sliced open the apprentice’s work clothes. And his nightclothes were laid over him.

Purplish-black bruises had formed on the apprentice sailor’s right hand and right lung area. His left foot’s big toe had been shattered. With no stove available, the sailors suffered bitter cold. Everyone knew leaving him untreated—between his wounds and hypothermia—would bring a swift end. Stoki and two sailors who’d followed gathered every blanket from each crewman’s nest and draped them over him.

And then, just like that, all of them rushed off to secure the stern hatch covers. The stern hatches were secured with the same peril and hardship as those at the bow. Snow clouds flew sideways across the low sky, nearly within reach. Within them, the thick snow clouds—as if snagged on the mast and determined to tear it free—violently shook the mast. The horizon would soar high above their heads one moment, then plunge deep beneath their feet. (The ship’s pitching moved the horizon in tandem.) The apprentice sailor’s fate loomed like a shark just behind all deck laborers at that very moment.

The stern section’s hatches were sealed with utmost strictness. And the next set of hatches, being sheltered by the engine room along with the officers’ quarters and salon deck above it, proved easier work compared to the previous three. There, Fujiwara returned to the bow—the front section of the ship—once more to prepare the lamps. Before entering the lamp room, he first went into the sailors’ quarters. The seventeen-year-old apprentice sailor, unable to bear the pain, cried out for his parents—“Mother! Father!”—and wept. And then he held his breath for a moment before sinking into deathly silence. Fujiwara leaned against the edge of the apprentice’s bunk and peered into his face. But he couldn’t see. The sailors’ quarters—with not a single window opened—could barely admit even a starlit-night glimmer from the entrance. Moreover, the apprentice’s bunk sat in the lower tier of a double-decker bed with its back to this faint light, making it the darkest spot. Fujiwara took a candle from his own bunk and stood it by the apprentice’s pillow. The boy was as pale as whitewash and had withered like a stranded jellyfish.

Still, the Chief Mate had not come to provide any treatment.

He comforted the apprentice sailor. And soon the Chief Mate would come lumbering over with his “ointment”—to them, those blocks mattered incomparably more than any of the laborers—but “Don’t worry,” he muttered, “everyone’s watching out for you,” as he made his way to the lamp room.

The *Manshūmaru* came within sight of the Shiriyazaki Lighthouse. The storm’s ferocity showed no sign of relenting. The sailors lashed ropes across the deck and even up to the smokestack—securing the boats and sampans so thoroughly, so sturdily it seemed they might burst from the strain, so sturdily that it proved such measures would never suffice if the ship were to sink—all to keep them from being blown away. And though this task held no threat from storm waves, it carried the danger of falling into the sea due to the pitching, the wind, and—to make matters worse—the lack of handrails.

The boat deck was the highest part of the ship and served as both roof and ceiling for the officers’ quarters. The sailors, carrying a single rope, crawled on their backs beneath the boats or leaned out over their outer edges—where only one plank’s width of deck stretched straight down to the sea—clutching at now-secured vessels to fasten ropes, bracing their feet against the side as they tilted their bodies toward the waves.

Because the captain was watching the work from the bridge directly ahead, the Bosun’s bald head turned octopus-red as he panicked, bellowed, and sweated with anxiety.

IV

As gloomy dimness crept over the sea, the Shiriyazaki Lighthouse on the starboard side began twinkling with sentimental persistence. Nothing rends the human heart more sentimentally than gazing at a lighthouse’s glow above storm-lashed waters. This sea roared and howled as though intent on stealing our lives at any instant. Our home pitched violently from celestial heights to subterranean depths. Here existed neither fire nor even lamplight. Yet there shone that lighthouse. Rooted firm on land stood that beacon, housing a family within. There would be domestic warmth. A beloved child. A cherished wife. A brazier likely glowed there. An iron kettle probably hung above it. New Year’s rice cakes must have been freshly pounded. The child would surely be pleading for treats. “It’s bedtime now.” “Now now—eating at night makes tummies go ouch-ouch.” “There there, time for sleep,” Mother likely murmured while lifting her three-year-old onto her lap. Then—overcome by irresistible fondness—she’d plant kisses on those cheeks. Exchanging glances with her husband, she’d smile softly. “My, tomorrow will bring another harvest of fallen birds.”

“It’s storming so terribly, you see.” “Even birds and ships can’t withstand it, can they?” she would say, taking the iron kettle from the brazier to make tea. And then, hiding it from the child, she would get a rice cracker from her husband and say, “You’re such a good boy. Here’s a treat,” abruptly giving it to him.

Yet here we were, laboring under freezing winds that cut like scalpels, capitalists cold as snow, and a captain cruel as ice. Why on earth had I become a sailor?

This was especially true for the lower-ranking sailors with families. They were already unbearably drawn to their families even under normal circumstances, but during the storm’s fury, their hearts were no different from those of prisoners sentenced to long terms—wasting away body and soul in yearning and worry for their families. Truly, by now they were even pouring whale oil from both sides—a measure taken only when the storm’s violence had grown extreme.

The Shiriyazaki Lighthouse twinkled sentimentally. The day was growing dark, and the darkness, emerging like smoke from the troughs between waves, was scattered by the white spray of storm waves.

Helmsman Ogura poured all his efforts into keeping the bow aligned with the wind direction. His eyes remained mechanically locked on the compass and the ship’s course.

Just then, a steamship came into view far off the port bow of their ship. “Ah, a steamship!” Ogura cried out involuntarily.

The Captain, the Chief Mate, and everyone else gathered at the port side of the bridge and trained their telescope lenses. From a little before this, on the boat deck, the sailor named Hata Yoshio—who had been working under the sampan—now noticed what Ogura had spotted and was gazing out alone from beneath the sampan.

On the bridge, because they had a telescope, they realized that the steamship was hoisting a distress signal and drifting as a wreck. From the bridge, they immediately ordered full speed ahead to the engine room. They were going to attempt a rescue.

As soon as the entire crew saw the derelict ship, they immediately knew they would head to its rescue. And the entire crew took their stations at the boat deck. Our brave *Manshūmaru*—like a half-drowned man who had swallowed half a bellyful of seawater—with its full-term pregnant bulk, turned its bow ever so slightly toward the target derelict ship. It was an exceedingly slight degree. But the ship lurched heavily. And before their eyes, despite the rudder not being turned, its bow began to shake vigorously. And simultaneously, terrifying waves came crashing up as if trying to swallow the entire bow and stern.

Despite having just given the order, the captain returned the bearing to its original position. In an astonishingly brief span of less than five minutes, our ship had nearly swung halfway around its course. We had managed to draw somewhat closer to the derelict ship, but through tremendous effort, our vessel returned its bow to its original position. To rescue the derelict would have amounted to planning to sink ourselves along with it, so the bow no longer changed direction. Yet the sister derelict carrying our pitiful brothers gradually swelled large and clear in our view. If we proceeded on our current course, we would pass within four miles of it.

Hata crawled out from under the sampan but kept straining, leaning against the funnel as he gazed intently—enduring both the cold and something elusive. That ship would be swallowed by waves as terrifying as the frothing maw of a rabid dog and by this evening gloom. He recalled the two shipwrecks he had survived and fixed his eyes on the derelict ship as if to pierce through it.

The small steamship—about five hundred tons—appeared to be a vessel that plied the Hokkaido coastal routes. By now, not even a wisp of smoke—no more than what remained of a cigarette butt—was rising from its funnel. The flooding of the boiler must have occurred much earlier. Beneath its mast, sailcloth clung like tattered rags washed against a pier. After the boiler flooded, they had probably removed some cover from somewhere and lashed it to the mast. On the deck, the torn remnants flapped noisily like a washed diaper.

Even so, not a single sailor was visible—not on the bridge, not on the mast, not on the deck, nowhere. Perhaps they had abandoned their own ship in lifeboats while crossing the Tsugaru Strait, risking their lives—or perhaps in each compartment their frozen bodies were now tossed about by the ship’s violent pitching—colliding with each other, chasing one another—cursing and mourning the joyless fate they’d endured as laborers in life. However, this violence had not lasted all that long. Since the day before our ship’s departure had been its peak, only two days and nights had passed. The sailors might have been gathered in a single room, sharing their final meager meal before parting.

“Ah, I’d been on sinking ships twice before.” Once our hull had been overwhelmed by waves; once it was a collision. But both were in the Seto Inland Sea—once at spring’s end, once in midsummer. And both times I was saved. But in Hokkaido’s winter seas, there’s no surviving. I can still remember screaming “Help me!” as I jumped into the sea when we were sunk in the Seto Inland Sea. The instant I shouted that cry—every memory and sensation flooded my mind like some final accounting. And I thought: “Eighteen’s still too young to die—two years too early.” I don’t know why two years too early. But I clearly felt two years too early. Oh! If those shipmates died, they must’ve felt just as I did. Lately I’ve come to think humans always die two years early—no matter their age—truly how many perish two years ahead each time? Still—what a cold-hearted brute this captain is. Four or five miles away at most—yet he won’t even witness their end. For his own pleasure he’d toss our lives to sharks anytime. “The day will come when I fight that captain—for that derelict ship’s sake and these crewmen’s,” Hata brooded.

The derelict ship drew increasingly closer. The day ended, but it was still twilight. The ship could have approached much closer to the derelict now. But our brave *Manshūmaru*, despite the entire crew’s hopes, coldly abandoned its sister ship to its fate and departed on the captain’s orders. And on our ship, a distress signal indicating rescue was impossible was hoisted. Not to inform the other party, but to deceive the crew members and falsify the ship’s log.

In reality, the storm gradually began to calm down at this time. The sailors found the captain’s brave actions from an hour earlier suspicious. That cute, compact ship was tilted at forty-five degrees or more—nearly fifty—and looked as though it would sink at any moment. And not a single person was visible anywhere. The deck had been splendidly scrubbed clean, with only the frozen remnants of that furious scrubbing clinging to its corners. The mast’s canvas (sailcloth) was the upper hatch cover. It was an utterly desolate sight. It was a fireless ship. It was a ship devoid of people. It was a lifeless, abandoned world. We all lined up on the saloon deck and bade farewell to that ship that would share its fate with the waves. A black, cold desolation gnawed at every heart.

This, before long, was also the fate of our Manshūmaru. When we collapsed from hunger and cold in the ship’s hold and drifted adrift, a slightly larger ship would pass by our side again. We would know that we must hoist a signal. Moreover, we would know that there were people freezing in their cabins and that it was necessary to signal this. Nevertheless, no one would go out onto the deck. We couldn’t get out. We would collapse midway in the attempt.

And by the time the last man finally crawled out onto the deck, the ship that had just sounded its horn would have already sailed three miles past, displaying the magnificent spectacle of a floating metropolis ablaze with light.

In this way, our *Manshūmaru* sounded its horn and passed by. Could there not be brothers in that ship—in that pitiful, abandoned ship shaped like a helpless stray puppy—who, faintly hearing that horn, were now trying to rise, their frozen bodies making one final effort to struggle?

The bell rang. It was dinner.

It was dinner. The sailors went into the sailors’ quarters, the stokers into the stokers’ quarters, each to their own.

The derelict ship was left behind in the gathering dusk, amidst the raging storm waves, like a vessel of tragic fate recounted in adventure novels.

Fujiwara hung a lamp at the stern and watched the abandoned ship recede, his heart burning with unbearable loneliness and indignation.

“There must have been at least twenty crew members on that ship.” “And just as many families they supported.” “Either those twenty froze to death there or drowned in a lifeboat—either way, there’s no chance that ship’s crew survived.” “In the end, those twenty men abandoned their families—left their wives and children behind to perish.” “Meanwhile, the ship owner—the one who stood to gain or lose the most from that vessel—was likely sipping sake while snow-viewing in his mansion.” “Using the unpaid labor of those twenty men, he’d start fretting over company stock prices the moment any telegram arrived.” “The bereaved families would receive what—a measly twenty yen each as condolence money?” “And that ship owner—he’d be fuming over that rotting hulk’s fate with a usurer’s tenacity, that derelict so decayed it deserved to sink—far more than he’d ever care about twenty human lives.”

“To sustain human existence—must we inevitably forfeit human lives? Human pillars!” “We’re all human pillars!”

V

In the sailors’ quarters, the sailors were noisily eating their evening meal, just as stray dogs snarl at each other while devouring food.

Beside the injured apprentice were Fujiwara and Hata. Since Hata’s bed was adjacent to the apprentice’s in an L-shape, he ate his evening meal on his own bed while bending forward. It truly reached the point where one could literally say “a hand would reach out from their throat” in craving. The food that reached his stomach was immediately digested and felt as though racing through his blood vessels with a young girl’s vigor and vivacity. While stuffing his mouth full of rice, he spoke to Fujiwara—who sat next to Hata at the apprentice’s feet, also stuffing his mouth.

“Has the Chief Mate come by?”

“Not yet.” Fujiwara answered with a sullen face, as though it were somehow Hata’s fault. “Isn’t that incredibly irresponsible? Leaving him unattended for three hours like that—it’s unconscionable!” “It’s the distance.” “It’s the distance—their distance.” Fujiwara said enigmatically.

“Ha ha ha ha! Of course—from the salon to the bow, three hours ain’t enough for ’em to get here!” Hata laughed, thinking it was a joke. “The distance between the five senses and the nerve center, you see. It’s just the same as the distance between your nose and mouth.”

Stoki appeared to be seething with indignation. “And growing accustomed to such things—becoming numb to them—is all the more deplorable when it concerns our own comrades.”

Fujiwara was renowned for his difficult speech. He had a habit—ingrained in his very bones—of using what his comrades called "Chinese-derived terms."

The meal had only just begun when the Chief Mate rushed in, making a boy carry a “first aid kit” “in a great hurry.” The sailors stopped their meal. And, together with the Chief Mate, they surrounded the apprentice sailor’s bed.

“Bosun! It’s too damn dark to see anything! Bring candles—five or six!” the Chief Mate barked.

And so, the candles were lit. Three hours after the apprentice had begun lying there, his room was illuminated by lamplight for the first time. All he had brought aboard the ship were his body, his discarded work clothes, and his incipient baldness. He suffered terribly on land. His family was terribly poor, and he had eleven siblings. He had been made to feel, from a young age, that he must support himself.

With pleading eyes, and despite such injuries, he timidly moaned “It hurts…,” too afraid to address the Chief Mate directly. The Chief Mate slathered Ichthammol indiscriminately across the apprentice’s entire left side. He wanted his duty over even a minute sooner. That doctor-like tasks fell to him rankled bitterly, but since this was how he earned his bread, it remained an unavoidable ordeal. He knew he too held this loathsome job for bread’s sake—and should have recognized others sought bread under worse conditions: those called “deck vermin.” Yet he drew lines between himself and sailors exactly as the bourgeoisie did between themselves and him. “I’m a gentleman—they’re laborers,” or more precisely, “I’m human—they’re sailors.”

The Chief Mate, imbued with boundless disgust, wanted to demonstrate to the sailors that his haphazard slathering of Ichthammol over the apprentice wasn’t due to mere irritation. He performed only the bare formalities required, all while scheming to pilfer any shred of gratitude from the sailors.

Kurokawa Tetsuo—this was the Chief Mate. Kurokawa considered that talking while slathering on Ichthammol wouldn’t hinder his work efficiency or make the task any dirtier or more difficult. And showing them just how humane he could be even toward this “vermin” of an apprentice would serve him well. So he thought.

“It’s bitterly cold out there on deck, and pitch black besides,” Kurokawa began. He said while applying Ichthammol to the apprentice’s chest. “When the ship is full, there’s truly no helping it,” the Bosun answered, bowing deferentially.

As though, as though the cold, the dark, the filth, and the cramped space were somehow the Bosun’s own fault.

“Even you lot can’t keep enduring this forever.” “Now now, Chief Mate—she’s a new ship. Could be worse,” the Bosun answered. “The dark and cold didn’t start today—and there’s not even a bath! So tell me—are we meant to be treated as humans? Do we even count as human?” Fujiwara thrust from behind with venomous sarcasm.

The Chief Mate keenly felt the urgent need to shift tactics. "The apprentice's injury wasn't as bad as expected after all." "I'd truly thought I was done for—seems I've been given a second lease on life."

“Yeah, if he’d just croaked right away, the injuries’d be even lighter—no need to bother with ’em then.” Fujiwara interjected again.

The sailors waited with bated breath, inwardly driven by curiosity about whether "something" might erupt. "Shut up! Keep your damn mouth shut!" The Chief Mate finally detonated. "Shut up?" "I'll shut up alright. But you lot—precious as your own skins might be to you—you'll never grasp how dearly a human life weighs." "Hmph."

Fujiwara climbed up to his bunk and lit a cigarette. He had clearly challenged the Chief Mate.

Whether the war would break out immediately, later, or in what form—this drove all the sailors to the height of excitement. Chief Engineer Kurokawa Tetsuo acknowledged that his stratagem had failed. And he came to understand this matter likely wouldn’t be settled here. He worried—hoping it wouldn’t become a protracted incident. Particularly in this case, that was absolutely disadvantageous to him. Thinking silence and hastening through the treatment was paramount, he hurried through it.

And so, the Ichthammol was slathered indiscriminately—whether over areas requiring treatment, wounds exposing raw red flesh, or bleeding gashes. Moreover, blackening the apprentice’s entire left side had been the culmination of three hours of calculated planning, regardless of consequence. Chief Mate Kurokawa Tetsuo then mechanically executed this protocol. Devoid of familial compassion or human decency, Yasui—the apprentice sailor—received this half-body coating of Ichthammol as a token gesture. It served solely as an object for discharging obligation.

Yasui moaned. "Mom! Mom!" he cried out, pleading for help. Each time he opened his eyes, he sank into the pitch-black depths of despair. He was assailed by unbearable thirst and hunger alongside the pain in his body.

VI

When Yasui’s treatment was finished, the sailors returned to the table. And ordinarily, Yasui, as part of his duties as apprentice, would handle meal preparation and cleanup tasks, but today Hata took it upon himself.

“Yasui, don’t you want something to eat?” Hata asked the apprentice. “My throat’s parched, my stomach’s empty—it’s unbearable,” he managed to reply. “Well then, I’ll go get it now—so wait here.” Hata asked the cook to give him some eggs. “You think we can waste luxuries like eggs on the deck crew? You damn fool!” Under this rebuke, Hata was made to realize that luxuries like eggs could never reach the mouths of the deck crew. However, without eggs, they faced difficulty in providing liquid nourishment.

He wondered: The apprentice probably couldn't eat solid food—was there anything he could have while lying down? Maybe they could spare just one can of the milk officers used in their coffee. Hata considered that matters of nourishment were something the Chief Mate should handle as part of his medical duties. But also—what needs to be done lies solely with us—he reflected. "Then go talk to the steward!" "If you cough up a ryō or two, maybe they'll share something—that's how things work in this damn place." This cook was an extraordinary 'villain' who had switched allegiances from his fellow cooks—even taking a pay cut—to embezzle provisions meant for deckhands.

“This bastard—this insufferable bastard,” Hata thought as he negotiated with the steward for a can of milk and ten eggs. “So it’s for the apprentice? Ah, sure thing—take it. Right, then grab a loaf of bread too. You should soak it with milk and eggs—here’s some sugar…… That enough? And how’s the apprentice doing?” The steward kindly took those items out from the storeroom into a basket.

“Thank you very much. I’ll have the deck crew pay you back later—I can’t settle it right now, but could you lend it to us for now?” Hata was truly delighted. “It’s fine—don’t mention it. Just take care of him, youngster.” “He’s got his whole life ahead of him.”

“Ah, well then, thank you.”

Hata brought those items regardless and gave them to the apprentice. He drank it down ravenously like a famished wolf. That the apprentice hadn't lost his appetite struck Hata as tremendously heartening.

While he was preparing a meal for Yasui, everyone else had finished eating. The bowls and soy sauce bottles had been stored in their proper places to prevent tipping over. He then had to resume his own portion. The ship’s rolling was violent, but due to being fully loaded, the waves crashing over the deck proved even more severe than the rolling itself—so much so that overhead in the sailors’ quarters, whenever the anchor collided with a wave and even slightly slackened, it creaked as if about to split the hull open.

Hata had grown as accustomed to these conditions as everyone else, so he managed to eat his second dinner without trouble. While cramming food into his belly, he listened with his ears to the sailors' talk of 'tobacco.' Once the storm passed, their conversations would inevitably turn somber. Even Mikami—who always defaulted to joking—tried tossing out an extreme topic about brothels once or twice, but when it drew no reaction and he had nothing else to say, he clammed up and appeared resolved to crawl into his bunk for thirty minutes of deep sleep.

Though not shaped to accommodate tatami flooring, the deck crew’s quarters—whose area could be roughly converted to a six-tatami-mat space—had two-tiered beds built into them for five sailors, one deck cook, and the storekeeper to sleep in, excluding the bosun, carpenter, and helmsman. At its center stood a fixed table and bench. On deck, everything was packed to the absolute brim. Even when the dining table was hoisted up against the central pillar in the room after use, it remained packed to capacity. And the tool storage area passing beneath that dining table occupied the pointed section of the bow.

Even though our *Manshūmaru* had a well-established reputation for being remarkably similar to a round fan, one could still see from this that the ship’s bow was somewhat pointed. And since all the windows had been tightly sealed in double layers and even the iron door to the deck securely shut, the air had stopped circulating entirely. And this ship’s cabin, like the inside of a drum, had its side iron plates—which should have been as tough as leather—roaring thunderously as storm waves battered them.

In the meantime, the apprentice appealed to his parents on land about the pain from his injury. Even the sailors—those who possessed nerves as round as prayer beads—could not help but grow somber under such conditions. And they never liked becoming somber. That was because it dragged them into the most meaningless role in this world. This was because, while they were always assigned the most trivial roles, it truly forced them to confront this harsh reality. No one enjoys being trampled upon and ridiculed. Our sailors too, whenever they grew somber, would naturally come to realize that this was indeed the case. And yet, by sailors’ very nature, they ought never to tolerate bastards who *komiyaru* them—a sailor’s term for those who extract surplus labor—but in their inability to do so lay the reason why, each time they grew somber, they sank into despondency and then desperation.

They knew they were human beings. And they knew they were being driven into an inhuman existence. And they were constantly thinking about how to rise from these unlivable conditions into a humane existence, all while watching for their chance. And unable to consolidate these thoughts or seize opportunities, the initial idea of “earning money through this dangerous work for just a brief period to save up small capital” ended up aging them upon raging waves and turning them into worn-out spindles.

That evening, Fujiwara, Hata, and Ogura—the three who had gathered around the apprentice’s bed—were all terribly somber.

7 “Why the hell are we treated like thieving strays and tormented like this?” Fujiwara blurted out with a sigh. From a momentary agitation—having recalled his earlier encounter with the Chief Mate over the apprentice’s condition that evening—he was surely struck by an ominous premonition. “Well, you’re thieving strays, that’s why,” Ogura answered cheekily. He was a good-natured, honest man who always went out of his way to avoid discouraging others.

“Why is that?” Fujiwara asked meekly. “Even if two out of ten cats are thieving strays, the whole lot gets seen as thieves.” “Moreover, if eight out of ten were like that, of course they’d be a gang of thieving strays!”

Ogura answered. “Then, were we born as thieving strays from the start?”

“Most are, yeah.” “Even if we were thieving strays, that’s none of our business to begin with.”

“Meaning?” Fujiwara asked Ogura back. “Well, you see,” he said. “From their owners’ perspective, we’re nothing but useless thieving strays. You see, they’re watching us like we’re just waiting to steal from them at any moment—never letting their guard down for a second. That’s why the owners treat us like thieving strays. It’s not just how they treat us—they see us as actual thieving strays, or more appropriately, as gelded workhorses. So, from the masters—that is, the capitalists’ perspective—the fact that we’re handled as they please is the only way. So, if the shipowners think, ‘The sailors will work more efficiently if they skip lunch,’ they take our lunches away. And since the voyage between Muroran and Yokohama should take three days, provisions are strictly limited to exactly three days’ worth. If there’s a shipwreck or delay, they’ll claim it’s due to our usual laziness. Since their losses would be greater, they’ll refuse to load any more cargo—and if that’s how it goes, then that’s just ‘right,’ isn’t it?” Ogura said quietly, with utmost seriousness, as if delivering a sermon.

“Hmm, so does that mean we too have to adapt to that way of thinking?” Fujiwara asked Ogura.

“There’s no need to adapt, of course.” “However, the fact remains that there are those who do simply adapt.” “I think capitalists probably believe that their own physical constitutions and those of laborers are entirely different.” “So, what does that mean for us then?” Fujiwara asked. “So, we must develop our own ‘consciousness’ as ourselves.” “We’ve got to stop thinking that only these ready-made official ideologies—churned out by capitalists and their puppets like they mass-produce goods—count as real thought. We need to clearly recognize that *we* have our own ways of thinking and acting.” Ogura went on as though flipping through dictionary pages in his mind.

“Why must we consider that? How are we supposed to know that?” Fujiwara persisted with his questions.

“That is too difficult a problem.” “I’ve been agonizing over that,” Ogura answered. “Mr. Ogura, there’s that human-made phrase: ‘Man is the paragon of animals.’” “So you see.” “I’ve often wondered—even among the most suffering, poor, and unfortunate class since ancient times, especially those cursed with poverty and misfortune—could they ever have been the *paragon of animals*?” “I’ve often thought about that.” “Didn’t the slave look at his master’s dog and think, ‘I want to become that dog’?” “Wouldn’t someone clinging to the window of a brutal prison have thought, ‘I want to become a swallow’?” “Wouldn’t a samurai ordered to commit seppuku over trivial conventions and systems have thought, ‘I want to become a monkey’?” “Hasn’t the beggar’s child thought, ‘I want to become a pig’?” “Mr. Ogura.” “I believe that eventually it will become so, but as of now, I think humans are not the paragon of animals or anything of the sort.”

Fujiwara lit a cigarette. “Yeah, I think so too. I’ve even thought about wanting to become a shark before,” Hata blurted out for the first time, his words absurd yet earnest. “Regardless of whether humans are the paragon of animals or not, I believe we’re still human. But as for humans being the paragon of animals—well, I too, though I’d never really questioned it in that way before—I did think humans were, at any rate, clever animals. Though clever, they strain their muscles over trivialities and take pride in doing pointless things that even the lowliest animals wouldn’t—humans are such creatures. Ha ha ha ha ha ha!” This was Ogura’s view of humanity.

“Let’s stop clinging to this notion of humans as the paragon of animals. But really, humans too are just scurrying about on the ground to eat and reproduce, no different from other animals.” Fujiwara said this as if lamenting the fact of being human.

“So you’re saying we’re just scurrying around solely to eat and reproduce?” This time, Ogura became the sarcastic interlocutor.

“Well, I guess so,” Fujiwara said with a slight bitter smile. “But you see, isn’t the bourgeoisie scurrying about for something beyond that—for usurious sensuality or perverse desires? Starving us and stifling reproduction?” Ogura laughed loudly, but then, as if suddenly realizing something, he glanced toward the apprentice and fell silent. “Yasui, does it hurt?” Hata asked the apprentice.

“Yes… It hurts so much—so much—and I can’t understand why others aren’t in pain…” he replied. “This is tough.” “Since we’re at sea… well, there’s probably nothing we can do, so you’ll just have to endure it for now.” “When we reach Yokohama, we’ll get you into a hospital,” Hata reassured him.

“But it can’t be done. The apprentice hasn’t been officially hired yet. This is undoubtedly the captain’s failure. If we press this point, I believe we can certainly secure severance pay, injury compensation, and the like,” Fujiwara said. “Even if he hasn’t been officially hired, he can still be hospitalized. There’s no reason they can’t hospitalize him with injuries this severe. Moreover, what possible connection could there be between employment and injury?” Hata snapped at Fujiwara as though he were refusing hospitalization.

Sailors Mikami and Nishizawa, the bosun, the carpenter, the cook, and others were already in their bunks, snoring loudly. Truly, when there was nothing particularly exciting happening, they became extremely sleepy after meals. They were so utterly sleepy they couldn’t keep their eyes open. Just as a young child nods off while eating dinner, just as soldiers sleepwalk through marches after days-long forced marches, they were equally sleepy. Yet, these three were not in a position to enjoy even ten or twenty minutes of deep sleep after their meal now. Now, they found it necessary to exchange their opinions regarding the fact that the apprentice had been put to work without being formally hired.

“Such things are all clearly written in the Seaman’s Handbook—there’s no room for debate,” said Storekeeper Fujiwara. (In fact, that was a matter recorded in the Seaman’s Handbook.) And in any case, it was imperative that the captain not neglect this duty. Legally and in practice, it had to be so—indeed, should have been so—but when that wasn’t done, matters would generally not proceed as they ought to. In short, both in theory and in practice, humans must be equally happy—but for some people, equality is an inconvenience. Our own luxury is all we need. (For they claimed that the very thrill of exploitation was life’s purpose—so much so that even what should have been obvious became incomprehensible—and thus, in the apprentice’s case too, though he ostensibly occupied an advantageous position, he was reduced to nothing more than a “worker,” a single element that nullified all collective benefits and rights.) Therefore, it would be difficult to observe such straightforward, mathematical results in this case. Instead, they would see results of a legal or Chamber of Commerce nature)—so the three had settled on that conclusion after their discussion.

“Therefore, we’ve got to fight this,” Fujiwara declared.

At that moment, the quartermaster descended from the bridge. And he shouted from the entrance to the bosun’s room. “From now, deploy the Deep Sea Let (deep-sea measuring device)!” he barked, then came to the sailors’ quarters and roared “Standby!” at the center of the room.

VIII

They had assumed that after the intense labor during the day, they would be allowed to rest at night. The storm’s violence had somewhat abated, yet with each wave, raging seas continued to crash onto the bow deck. Moreover, each time waves crashed against it, the entrance to the stokehold transformed into a torrential waterfall cascading down from the upper deck—so violently that they had no choice but to repeatedly slam shut its heavy iron door. Moreover, from having to secure the wash deck and hatches since morning, the sailors had soaked most of their clothes. (Hata and Mikami, for instance, had soaked their entire set twice—that is, drenched one outfit two times over.) As a result, all work clothes were now scrubbed clean and hung to dry on the engine room handrails.

The sailors had to go—as soon as they awoke, wearing nothing but a loincloth, completely naked, or in their sleepwear—to retrieve their work clothes from the engine room. But being naked, they could not endure the cold during the journey.

Hata knew that his work clothes, having just been dried, were still damp even up in the engine room. Therefore, he resolved to work wearing a raincoat over a single loincloth. However, Ogura offered to provide him with one work garment. Therefore, he was able to obtain one overall like an oil-painting canvas. It had a Futurist painting-like pattern thickly daubed across its entire surface in paint, stiff and coarse.

“Even so, I bought it in London,” Ogura said.

“It must’ve been some foreign beggar who wore this. This thing’s just perfect,” he said.

The sailors all stood by at their respective stations. And then, they headed to the stern.

Darkness enveloped the sea both horizontally and vertically. The darkness seemed to bind, constrict, drag down, and topple all things with its unseen force. It gathered everything together and squeezed even their innermost parts. The wind collided with waves, slammed against the mast, tore through rigging, and howled. The sea growled long, deep and low from its unknowable depths. Our Manshūmaru, with its single hand, continued grasping at emptiness as it labored onward. The stern speedometer showed three miles.

The sailors took grease from the warehouse, applied it to rags, and gripped them in their hands. Then, the Bosun took a lamp and illuminated the lett machine.

From the stern came the second mate (second engineer) whom Hata had long wished to blast a hole about an inch in diameter and two inches deep into the back-left part of his head.

The glass tube was housed inside the sinker. And the spring was released. Pulling the kite string-like wire, the Lett clattered from the stern and plunged into the churning pitch-black sea, spewing white foam as if biting through wave debris. The highest part of the deck was extremely narrow. Therefore, when waves engulfed the aft hatch deck, we felt a heart-piercing unease as though clinging to a plank fragment severed from the ship. The freezing cold pierced our thinly clad skin with knife-edged sharpness. The ceaseless spray made every last one of them shrink back.

When the Lett's line-pulling speed slackened, it was halted by the handle, and the wire's length was read there. When they finished reading it, they had to hoist the sinker with two handles. That was the sailors' work. Because it was a deep-sea measuring device and because the ship was underway, the sinker reached the seabed while being dragged diagonally. When lengths of wire—one hundred meters, two hundred meters—were called out, we shrank back not at the depth of the sea but at the difficulty of hauling it up.

It was extremely light in and of itself. However, the ship’s forward motion and the waves’ resistance—even more than how a hooked fish seems many times heavier until finally hauled ashore—made that small sinker feel all the weightier. And because the hand-cranked winch was made exceedingly small, it could only wind the wire an extremely short distance per rotation—initially two inches, then about three inches at most. And before it reached the axle, the two sailors had to coat the wire with grease. Because it was impossible to coat each section individually, this resulted in the two sailors gripping the wire with grease-coated rags.

The winding work was grueling. At the same time, applying grease was bitterly cold. And what pained all of them most was the freezing cold and their drowsiness.

The cold was utterly relentless. Their raincoats froze stiff. Their skin hurt in various places. Their teeth wouldn’t fit together. Their bodies were growing numb. And sleep assaulted the sailors even more fiercely. Just as every instant of wage labor could be divided into necessary labor and surplus labor, so too did cold and sleepiness—at every instant—give them opposing stimuli, as if in contradiction. Against the cold, they shook their bodies excessively. Against sleepiness, their knee joints grew unsteady, rendering their work futile. And so they found themselves caught in a futile back-and-forth with each other. Their movements looked more like a half-joking effort than anything else.

Sekimētsu shouted and raged incessantly. In truth, for Sekimētsu, the sailors’ absurd antics not only hindered work efficiency but also felt like them “mocking me.” The sailors jumbled together the sounds of Sekimētsu’s shouting, the storm waves’ roaring, the screw’s thunderous noise, and the rigging’s tearing screech. And still, they continued their two reflexive motions in accordance with their inevitable necessity.

Sekimētsu planned to deliberately add one extra round each time he shouted. "I'll make them wind until tomorrow morning!" he became so enraged that he resolved. The sinker resisted stubbornly for a long time but finally came up. They extracted the glass tube from the sinker, inserted a replacement into it, and thoroughly coated the opening with grease. As soon as the glass tube settled into the sinker, Sekimētsu bellowed, “Reel out!” The Bosun removed the spring. The sinker and wire flew off like a hurled stone.

The sailors had to repeat this task. It was unbearable. But endure it they must, for there was no other choice. The sailors repeated it eight times. It was longer than eight days at sea or eight days in a cell. In that time, they spent four and a half hours. They had become utterly exhausted, like sodden wheat gluten.

Sekimētsu withdrew his resolve to work through the night—for his own sake. He too was now a soggy wheat gluten. The sailors burrowed into their bedbug-infested nest—which the vermin had long grown weary of awaiting—at a quarter to one in the morning. There, sleep slept.

IX

As they embraced all into dreams, the night deepened. As for the night itself, that was acceptable; however, the outer cabin was far worse than what Marx described for 1860s British lace-finishing homeworkers—each granted only 67 to 100 cubic feet of air per person. We would fall into a death-like sleep until dawn, and upon waking from that death-like slumber to open the "can lid" and let fresh air into the room, instead of thinking "Ah, I'm awake," we would think "I've truly been resurrected."

In stormy conditions, despite the abundance of ozone, we would sleep to the very brink of suffocation. Because of this, our entire bodies grew dull and heavy throughout the night. And the idea that sleep could provide any revitalization was utterly inconceivable.

We opened the lid-like door of the canned sailors' quarters and, for the first time, regained our human composure. —This has no bearing on the main text, but at this time, among those aboard—Fujiwara, Hata, Ogura, Nishizawa, Daiku, and Yasui—all were tuberculosis patients—and this foul air, stemming from that fact, dared create a contradiction: producing lung disease patients at sea. What it meant to have living beings inside that canned space—what that was like—was something anyone could clearly imagine. Yet when we opened that lid, we were immensely saved by the purity outside.

While they slept for five hours, the sea calmed. The sea surface, as jagged as the Alps, rolled like the Yamanashi Plateau. The clouds that had snagged and battered against the mast now climbed high into the sky above.

Like after a seizure had subsided, she advanced meekly and quietly.

Since their departure from Muroran had fallen on a Sunday—a day of labor, and no ordinary labor at that—the rascals discussed with toothpicks clenched in their teeth: they ought to request the Bosun designate this Monday as their deferred Sunday holiday. "That’s only right—it goes without saying!" "We should just take the day off without a word!" Fujiwara asserted combatively. "This situation—having to beg and plead each and every time is such a hassle, and whoever goes to negotiate ends up looking like the bad guy. If we establish one permanent arrangement—formally codify something like 'When departure or arrival falls on a Sunday holiday, the following day shall be designated an official holiday'—wouldn’t that save us from fumbling around every single time?" Hata proposed.

“You don’t need to go that far—this isn’t something that happens every time. Why not just ask for today off?” the Bosun mediated.

Poor Bosun! He was advanced in years, had many children, life was hard, his wife was ill—everyone resolved to obey this timid, bald old man.

The Bosun hurriedly washed his face and went straight to the Chief Mate to make the request. The ship rode the great swells and glided along pleasantly.

To the right, the mountains of northern Honshū jutted out all the way to the coast, their majestic forms gleaming pure white. Desolate mountains and rivers. There were almost no ports we could call at there. It was a landscape that made one feel as though they were in an unpeopled forest region or a primeval grassland.

Until the Bosun’s reply came, the sailors went up on deck, gazing at the longed-for land and staring out at the sea that had tormented them the day before. The wind today was not as cold as yesterday. Because they were under the influence of the Kuroshio Current, when they went up on deck, they did not feel the scalpel-like pain that split their cheeks.

The sailors all immersed themselves in fantasies about their actions and food once they reached Yokohama, each according to their own preferences. On deck, they thought that if only they could reach land, all pleasures awaited them there. They subconsciously believed their being bound, treated as slaves, robbed of freedom, and exploited for labor stemmed from the sea lying between land and deck. It resembled a prisoner confined in a jail believing absolute freedom existed beyond high red brick walls. There, he could do exactly as he pleased. That place seemed like heaven itself. Yet just as no trace of such imagined freedom existed beyond prison walls, neither did the freedom and happiness envisioned on deck ever materialize on land. They tasted this truth every time they went ashore. On land, they wanted to slam their wallets against the ground, tear their ill-fitting soiled clothes, and rip off their hands' calloused skin—roughened by labor like foot soles. Despite finally reaching the land they'd desperately yearned for, these very impulses drove freedom and happiness away from them.

Workers come to realize that it is utterly impossible for freedom, happiness, or humanity to be granted to them while earning wages—or for them to attain these things through their own efforts. As long as an era persists where humans devour humans just as they devour beef，workers must remain aware that their lives lie beneath a yoke. The sailors felt such things. No sooner had they thought this than immediately followed：What was the use of me alone sweating over it？Even monks visited brothels—weren’t we treated as dregs of humanity？Thus they ended up accepting society’s imposed roles and confines.

On land, they get better wages than this—so why is mine so meager here at sea? Couldn't I go ashore and work on land too? No, I probably couldn't. There'd be no openings. And so, they had come to believe in accordance with the natural order.

The Bosun returned from *tomo*. And he relayed that he would grant them a holiday today in particular.

This report was accepted without criticism by all and met with joy. “Making fun of us with this ‘especially’!” they cried out mockingly, and everyone rushed toward their beds without even knowing why. And so this precious, begrudgingly granted holiday—they would mostly end up sleeping through it. Truly, as was always the case, this time too, every last one of them had no sooner burrowed into their nests than they fell fast asleep.

The sailors, whose sole urgent desire lay in sleep—from that fact alone, one could understand just how overworked and exploited they were.

10

Breakfast was at eight o'clock. Due to the apprentice's injury, Hata had to handle cooking duties during work hours. Since there were about two hours to spare, he burrowed into his own bed during that time. When eight o'clock came, he was awakened by the cook. He brought a large miso soup pot and a bowl from the cook's area and placed them on the table hung against a pillar for the crew on deck to eat. Then he finished all preparations and bellowed, "Meal's ready!"

He served the apprentice miso soup as he had the night before and was the first to begin breakfast. It was truly a delicious meal. The miso soup was also delicious. The takuan was also… While Hata was eating, the others also rubbed their sleepy eyes again and again, got up, and began their meal.

The ship’s food was good. It was devoured in great quantity. In terms of flavor, it was truly unparalleled in its awfulness. Whether it was the miso soup or the takuan, when tasted for flavor alone, they were utterly lacking. Yet to the sailors, this was supremely delicious. They devoured it so voraciously that one might wonder how they could possibly eat such vast amounts. The Storekeeper had told Hata that psychological factors contributed significantly to why the sailors ate so much awful-tasting food. According to the Storekeeper, this was how it worked.

The sailors were given food at fixed intervals. They were made to perform at least four hours of labor before every meal. They were thoroughly hungry. When the time came, they rushed to the dining table. On the dining table were placed heaping portions of side dishes, one plate each. To eat even somewhat sufficiently, there was only takuan. They always found the next meal exceedingly longed-for. This was because—beyond hunger making them wait—another crucial reason lay in how the arrival of the next meal gave them reassurance that they had accomplished that day’s labor, and in how some time was granted to them after that meal. Due to these psychological effects, once they finished their long-awaited meal, they would immediately begin waiting for the next one, belching noisily all the while. They also could not snack between meals. When it came to meals, they absolutely could not eat more than the amount of side dishes served there. Moreover, there was no way to obtain other side dishes at sea. Just as prisoners, their stomachs ruined by meager rations yet crying out from unbearable hunger, wait in anxious anticipation for the next meal—so too were they.

The reason sailors await their meals so eagerly and devour them is that this act—though it also serves to reproduce labor for the capitalists—is the sole means of living they perform for themselves. When one has no work done for oneself, if there exists even a single act performed for oneself alone, that must be treated with utmost gravity by anyone. Especially when it concerns the matter of bread, this must be all the more so.

In reality, they would season their meals with imagination and eat them as something far beyond what they actually were. When potatoes boiled and seasoned with salt were served, they would call them *kinton*. And it was truly as delicious as sweet potato paste.

On ships on foreign routes, such a state of affairs did not exist, but even so psychologically it remained unchanged. Yet on the *Manshūmaru*, this reached extremes. On the *Manshūmaru*, the shipowner seemed convinced he was raising pigs in the deck department.

“In such conditions, it’s a fact that anyone—if only out of sheer anxiety—would want to stuff themselves to the brim.” This was Storekeeper’s proletarian philosophy. In truth—given Storekeeper’s malicious approach of positioning himself as some disinterested third party after having preemptively steeled his own stance—when observing that state of affairs, one couldn’t help but acknowledge how precisely his observations and criticisms struck home. The meal concluded exactly as Fujiwara’s sardonic observation had predicted. No sooner had it ended than Mikami crawled back into his bunk like a dog, just as before. Nishizawa lit a cigarette and launched into one of his signature romantic tales from his days working at a spinning mill near Okaya in Shinshū. His storytelling was masterful indeed. He narrated everything with such creative flair that you’d think even a professional raconteur couldn’t spin yarns to that degree. And the more skillfully his story unfolded, the more it impressed the newcomers—while sending the old hands scrambling for escape.

Now, Fujiwara and Hata could no longer escape. It was because there was no one else left to endure Nishizawa’s romantic tales. Fujiwara smoked his cigarette recklessly, resolved to endure this as well.

Just as Nishizawa’s story entered its climactic peak and was about to reach its conclusion, Fujiwara spoke.

“You spin quite the tale.” “And it’s extremely entertaining. But if you were to tell me a purely true story just once, I think it would be even more interesting.” “Ahahahaha, your sarcasm is more skillful.” “I’d like to tell a true story myself just once, but at this point, I can’t even tell which parts are real and which I’ve made up anymore.” “Ha ha ha ha!” he laughed good-naturedly.

“You truly are the jewel of proletarian artists.” “Absolutely,” Fujiwara said with complete seriousness.

“If it were rifles, I could hold my ground, but once Fujiwara-kun starts bringing out tanks, I’ve got no choice but to retreat.” “Ha ha ha ha!”

Nishizawa also climbed into that bed and rolled over.

“How about it—they’ve all fallen asleep, huh? ‘There’s no rest as sweet as sleep—only fools rise to work in this fleeting world,’ there’s that old song, right? Seems everyone’s gotten wise now.” As he spoke, Hata brought out a book from his nest and began reading by the canned food lid.

For a while, Fujiwara sat in the dark room, occasionally making his cigarette's ember glow brighter as he pondered alone. But eventually, he discarded his cigarette and stood up.

“Hata-kun, you’re reading quite admirably there. What’s that book called?” “Nautical science?” “Well, I borrowed it from a friend, but it’s so damn hard I can’t make heads or tails of it.” “Let me take a look. Heh—Marx’s Collected Works, Volume I: Part II? *Capital*? Well now, isn’t this a socialist book you’ve got here?”

Fujiwara had also very much wanted to read that book himself, but it was too expensive, and he hadn’t been able to buy it until now. He flipped through the pages and asked, “Is it interesting?” “Whether it’s interesting or not, useful or not—I can’t tell at all.” “I can’t grasp the meaning.” “There are parts here and there that become clear—like spots lit up by a searchlight.” “Those parts are where they’ve cited examples to explain the text’s main argument.” “I can understand just those examples.” “And they’re absolutely fascinating.” “More than interesting—it’s like they’re writing about us in more detail than we even know ourselves.” “But outside of those examples, I don’t understand a damn thing.” Hata answered honestly.

“Let me read it too, okay?” Fujiwara asked. “Ah, sure thing—go ahead and read it. There are three more volumes after this one anyway.”

“I used to love reading books too. I read quite a lot of them,” he said, sitting down on the wooden bench beside Hata.

He was a brusque man who seemed to regard no one as fully human. And he seemed to dislike speaking more than necessary.

“You really are quite the book lover,” Hata agreed with Fujiwara. “And what kind of books did you like to read?” “As for me—” “I devoured every possible boring book there was.” “I even read books like *Self-Taught Abacus* without any intention of learning soroban, devoured *Don Quixote* and Watanabe Kazan’s works, pored over divination manuals, elementary geography, history, ethics—truly anything with printed text I could lay my hands on,” Fujiwara began, his words swirling forth as if a river’s embankment had burst.

——

Fujiwara—transforming in an instant from his habitually taciturn, stone-faced demeanor into a passionate, fiery orator—began recounting his life story to Hata.

“The reason I developed any ambition to have someone listen to my life story comes entirely from worthless sentimentalism.” “Such matters inevitably make both speaker and listener sink into strange loneliness afterward.” “Then the speaker thinks: 'I shouldn't have talked about such things." "'What a pathetic whiner I am' on one hand,' and 'Damn it—shouldn't have gotten so worked up telling him' on the other." "'This tale might become some damn hindrance later,' you're bound to think." “Yet those very stories that bring such results—they're precisely what give people impulses they can't resist spouting.” “Stories that end up meaning nothing don't give anyone that driving urge—that excitement forcing them to speak out.” “Today—starting from how I read books indiscriminately—I couldn't hold back anymore.” “To think my 'book-reading' made me feel so utterly ridiculous.” “‘Having read books’ makes people see me reading whether waking or sleeping or talking.” “Meaning—I only read dry books nobody should touch.”

And so I thoroughly wrecked my mind. Looking back now, I realize I hadn't understood the essential aspects of reading back then—the crucial question of what to read. At times, I would spend half a day in the library reading nothing but the catalog. And in the end, I realized that reading books gave me nothing. Now when I think about it, back then I had no real life. My existence then drifted like smoke—I was an arrogant student without grounding. Having recognized the futility of reading and become aware of my hollowed mind, I resolved to obtain true life. I realized life wasn't about graduating school, using that diploma to secure a monthly salary, and relying on family support beyond that scope. Life, I concluded, must be something that burns. That it must be something consuming—explosive. I was educated with my parents' money. That doesn't mean I was truly living. For me to live, I had to forge my own path through labor! And so I resolved. Every morning thereafter, I left my lodgings with a lunchbox, deposited my books at a friend's place, and made rounds of factories. Eventually I became a lathe apprentice at a factory called A.

Factory life was excruciatingly harsh. Compared to my student days, it was wretched as a gutter. From morning till night, even my fellow workers seemed to regard me—the apprentice—as their enemy. Nothing proceeded straightforwardly. "I’m now so inured to it that it shocks even myself—but when ordered things like ‘Go ask the Corporal to borrow some grain,’ I can’t begin to tally how often I suffered humiliation or raced about endlessly." I had started believing there was no real life here either. Yet this place differed from my student days in one respect: It held gravity. And everyone harbored something gloomy as snow clouds in their heart’s depths. Even the youngest laborers grumbled complaints. And they all considered their lives wretched. I too thought them utterly wretched. Thus we began contemplating a better life. “This sort of existence won’t do.”

We fully understood that this kind of life was problematic here and there in all these ways. So while glaring at the lathe for fourteen or sixteen hours a day， I thought about a better life—adjusting this part here， tweaking that part there． Even my comrades were thinking about it—though only in terms of whether there was more or less of it． “Seek a good life for humanity．” “That’s where my life exists，” I thought abruptly，the moment I applied feed to the lathe and sat down． After that，instead of reading books， I began to scrutinize our own lives． I glared at myself with hostile eyes as though I were my own enemy． After arriving at the factory at five o’clock， I went to urinate multiple times． Of those times， only a few were genuine needs；the rest were simply because I wanted to move from my spot． How many steps it took to reach the storekeeper’s spot in the factory， how many seconds it required—why would the foreman reprimand me for merely walking that distance slowly？ Was the foreman a worker himself， or something else？ Starting from such idiotic trifles to all sorts of other matters， these thoughts relentlessly chased my mind to its very limits．

And so came an era when my student days became something shameful to me. From that point, my personality changed completely. Until then, I had been someone loved by nearly everyone. An approachable young man. But as I began cursing my student days, I started cursing my time as a worker too. "In other words—'We workers today have been supporting this shameful student version of myself, and must keep supporting him'—it was precisely when this vague thought seized me that I met a worker."

“Do you know why humans have to work to eat?” he said, and I remained silent for a while. Then, “Do you know why those who don’t work are considered extravagant, huh?” he said again.

“Humans are suffering,” I said.

“That’s right.” “For one person, a thousand must be sacrificed; for ten people, ten thousand,” he said. I understood. That laborer was named Shiraishi. After that, I began associating with that man—this Shiraishi was an exceptionally rare type: a man of unyielding will who hammered emotions into rationality through intellect, possessed fiery revolutionary ideology, and implemented it with such calm composure that to outside observers it appeared as routine as us eating meals. At A Factory, everyone respected that man. At the company, they tried to fire him by employing every possible means. And it seemed Shiraishi had fully sensed this as well. He would keep only his eyes gleaming and hardly ever spoke to his superiors. The superiors too seemed to deliberately avoid him whenever they saw him. He clung fervently to the lathe from morning until shift’s end and worked. And the strange thing was, he neither particularly increased nor decreased his efficiency. He always worked with utmost effort, yet his efficiency remained slightly below average. Even the foreman couldn’t find fault with his skill. There was a rumor he had graduated from university in the same year as A Factory’s chief engineer. However, it seems Shiraishi hadn’t actually attended school. Yet he appears to have pursued self-study to an astonishing degree. Unlike me, he knew exactly what he should read. He possessed a clear purpose in his search. Moreover, Shiraishi had four previous convictions.

It seems he also studied foreign languages during each of his prison terms. He looked about thirty, but was actually twenty-six. He drew attention from both capitalists and laborers through differing perspectives and reasons. It was a dirty, dark six-tatami room. Shiraishi rented it. And he began cooking for himself there. Before long, that six-tatami room was never without five or six laborers gathering every night.

12

Fujiwara spoke earnestly. He was moved and, appearing blissfully happy, was intoxicated by his own story as though speaking to Shiraishi right before him. He lit his beloved cigarette after speaking up to this point, inhaling deeply and sharply so that the smoke permeated his entire lungs.

Hata listened intently. During pauses in Fujiwara’s story, he found himself suspecting that this “Shiraishi” might actually be Fujiwara’s former identity. Even accounting for Fujiwara’s narration, Shiraishi resembled him far too closely—but ultimately, that didn’t matter. “Hmm,” Hata remarked admiringly, “ironworkers make reliable comrades.” “Laborers will become the masters, you see.” Stoki spoke with visible relief. “Peace and happiness—they’ll be attained through laborers’ own hands.”

“And then, what happened to that man?” Hata asked while fiddling with his book. “Shiraishi used his six-tatami room—more dim than dark, practically pitch-black—at night. It could’ve been daytime too, but everyone was out working then.” “Though some did bring lunchboxes to read there during daylight hours—he’d opened it up.” “The faces changed, but we always had five or six people—sometimes fifteen or sixteen when more came.” “All sorts of talk got swapped there.” “I went to those meetings every night myself.”

In his room or at those gatherings, Shiraishi would become gentle and relaxed, as if he were a different person from the one at the factory. At first, everyone found it strange. When someone remarked [to him], “Shiraishi—you’ve got two entirely different versions of yourself at work and home,” he responded as follows. “That’s not something unique to me.” “You’re no different, are you? The you that’s an appendage to the machine, the you that exists for your wife, the you that’s a slave, the you that’s your own master—there’s not a single laborer who doesn’t possess these two personas.” “You too—the face and feelings you have when working as an appendage to the machine versus the face and mood of the you that exists for your wife and children—you can’t imagine how much more familiar and dear the latter feels.” “You can’t see what’s right under your nose! Ha ha ha ha!” All those present there also laughed in unison. His explanation softened people like a skilled masseur and dispelled their doubts.

And the discussion would always begin with such jokes, from which the question of why laborers were mere appendages to machines would arise. To this, Mr. Shiraishi would add explanations—slowly and clearly—when no one responded. In this manner, the laborers who gathered there came to return home having invariably grasped—whether one or two at a time—an analysis of their own circumstances.

Even while all this was going on, Shiraishi was constantly being tailed by the police, subjected to stakeouts, and summoned for questioning. And the fact that their nightly gatherings there were the cause gradually became clear even to the people who came to gather. Before long, even those of us who constantly gathered there began to occasionally find ourselves under the police’s gaze. "We didn’t understand why that was happening." However, the young laborers developed intense resentment toward being lectured by the police about this and that, and consequently found themselves in a position that only further inflamed those feelings. They had been innocently listening until now. However, when the police began visiting their homes and coming to their factory, they started listening with genuine seriousness. And they gradually ceased to fear the police.

“What’s wrong with us studying what we ourselves are?” After undergoing this baptism of police provocation, the young laborers came to harbor a kind of proletarian conviction—. And finally, these youths who’d been goaded by the police became splendid “vanguards of the proletarian army,” and through further trials imposed upon them, they came to live with an unshakable belief that neither prison nor gallows held any terror. Thus when that came to pass, what awaited them was the trap that the very whip lashing their backsides had prepared and lay waiting. At last they found themselves slamming bodily against actual prison walls.

It was autumn of a certain year. N City, home to A Factory, was struck by the violent storm that had assailed all of Japan. The scale of devastation was such that it ranked among the most wretched suffered by any of Japan’s cities.

The wind was fierce, the rain blew sideways, and umbrellas were useless. Because roof tiles were being blown off, they couldn’t go out into town. The coastal areas were flooded up to the eaves. At the same time as the water receded, there were countless collapsed houses. The ship was washed ashore and resembled the ships displayed in front of a toy store. In Menuki too, the elementary school collapsed. Private houses collapsed. The citizens could not even go outside. They could not even remain inside.

The laborers of A Factory, too, could not escape this natural disaster. Not only that, but due to the areas they lived in, they suffered the calamity to an even greater degree. They chose cheap rent to stretch their meager earnings in supporting their many dependents. That place was indeed a coastal lowland.

A laborer from A Factory who worked in the same section as Shiraishi was made to fully taste the briny bitterness of the floodwaters. His house was flooded two feet above the floor. Just as the tatami mats were about to be soaked by the foul tidewater, his wife—reaching precisely that critical moment—gave birth to a baby in accordance with physiological laws. Beside that childbed lay his elderly mother, afflicted with gout, who for over twelve years had been lying down wherever she could.

With the same fairness and precision with which the sun waits for no one, the foul tidewater continued to rise in volume. There was a scream. There was a loss of consciousness. A cry rose. This laborer placed the baby in a tub. He pushed his elderly mother into the upper shelf of the closet as deeply as possible. Next he pushed his wife in front of her. After wiping the baby himself with rags, this man fulfilled his rightful duty as a father. It was an extremely simple and clear fact, but even in its simplicity, it was equally evident that this very fact would incur expenses. However, how could this man possibly manage his mother’s medicine costs, his wife’s funeral arrangements, the child’s care, and the midwife’s fee? He was in no position to do any of that. He could no longer even go to A Factory, which had been supporting his family until now. The tatami mats were sopping wet. The space beneath the floorboards looked as if fish could live there. Even though the toilet and well water had become intermingled, it still hadn’t been cleaned.

“If this man had been even slightly neurotic from being unaccustomed to hardship or poverty, we ourselves might have thought it more sensible for him to hang himself. However, this man endured. We later learned that this man endures—no, endures everything with a patience so infuriating it grates on the nerves. And that’s what we were thinking. But here’s the thing—he doesn’t feel a thing at all.”

He seemed to feel nothing at all in response to this devastating fact. All he needed was a little money. That would solve everything. “You see, when humans are kept in misery for too long, it seems they lose all capacity to feel.” “These brothers too can be seen as another example of that.” “Humans being conditioned to endure their pain—with no necessity for it at all—what do you think that signifies?” “Just as castrated horses lose their sexual desire, humans—bound, forced into molds, deprived of freedom like castrated horses—lose their sensitivity.” “Not knowing what kind of slaves they are, they work thinking that if they work, things will get easier.” “The laborers have all had their sensitivity completely paralyzed.” “The more the laborers work, the more surplus labor is extracted by the capital that exploits them, thereby increasing the capital.”

These castrated brothers, who had become exactly like horses, went to the company a couple of days later.

“I’d like to receive my Welfare Association savings, seeing as...” he launched into a tedious explanation of facts with pure objectivity—by now it seemed even his own circumstances appeared to him only objectively—laying everything out in exhaustive detail. “This Welfare Association forces laborers to set aside five percent of their wages every month,” Fujiwara explained. “Then they generously ‘grant’ us a fixed amount from that fund along with some company subsidy—depending on whether fortune smiles or frowns.” “Once a year they throw a sports day with the money and dole out a single envelope—fifty sen—as drinking funds.” “That’s how they perverted the Factory Act’s purpose into a burden on laborers—that’s what this Welfare Association really is.” “So this man asked them, ‘From that Welfare Association fund, please give me my savings.’”

Of course, that was flatly rejected, and he ended up receiving just two yen from the Welfare Association as a consolation payment. However, the man said that two yen didn’t resolve a thing. “Can’t something be done?” he pleaded, and took his case to Shirasui.

“You should just take your savings from the reserve fund.” “The reserve fund is workers’ savings, isn’t it?” “Take that then.” With this reasoning—that “the Welfare Association matter would work itself out”—Shirasui went to the office accompanied by the man whose gnarled form resembled a tree stump. A man from the engineering section named Akira—his ill-starred name evoking a misfired halo—faced them and asked their business. The pitiful man who had crammed his mother, wife and baby into a closet began recounting every detail with tedious objectivity: how waves had risen above door thresholds, how filthy water first bubbled up between tatami mats, how he’d fortunately managed to stuff all three into that closet—as if reliving each moment.

His story was not at all the kind that should have been irritating. However, due to its length, repetition, and lack of breaks, everyone had to endure boredom; moreover, there was the troublesome flaw that within his account, before anyone realized it, the issue and the central point of his story had drifted apart.

“So, what exactly are you getting at?” Akira asked the man. “Huh… so,” the pitiful man echoed back mechanically. With that, he found himself unable to continue. He already felt he’d stated his request in everything he’d said up to now—that he’d repeated it endlessly. His expression pleaded that he had nothing left to add.

13

“Given these tragic circumstances, since a portion of his labor wages has been set aside, he is requesting the return of his savings,” Shirasui interjected.

“Were you asked to come here?” Akira demanded, his tone implying this was the primary issue to settle. “Yes.” “Is that so,” Akira now turned to address the man. “Uh,” came the laborer’s noncommittal grunt. “This matter—concerning the savings withdrawal—is hardly such a critical prerequisite issue. The problem is perfectly straightforward,” Shirasui interjected. “The company forcibly withholds a portion of wages paid for sold labor power under the pretext of safeguarding workers’ interests. For laborers to demand their own money back shouldn’t require even a moment’s deliberation—wouldn’t you agree?”

“Well, nobody’s refusing payment—but through what procedure do you plan to claim it?” “Doesn’t it suffice to simply write a payment slip?” “In other words, you intend to resign,” said Akira from personnel, his tone malicious. “Resign?!” “Who mentioned resigning? When was that ever said?” Shirasui’s agitation began mounting. “But company regulations stipulate that savings are disbursed upon resignation.” “Therefore, those receiving their savings will simultaneously be paid their remaining wage balance,” declared that pig, settling into his seat with aggravating composure.

“Of course,” Shirasui cut in. He used that solemn tone reserved for moments of firm resolution. “When workers resign, their savings being paid alongside wages is natural—this is expressly stipulated in the Factory Act.” “But this money fundamentally can’t be deducted under any circumstances, even if the company suffers losses.” “If those funds remain with the company post-resignation, isn’t that outright embezzlement of entrusted money? And you dare spout this sophistry—that receiving one’s own savings signifies resignation—simply because payments always come last?” “Your entire line of argument has done nothing but create precedents for withholding workers’ money regardless of necessity.” “By your logic, how many laborers have you fired over the years for daring to withdraw their own savings in emergencies?” “If this company’s savings were as vital as a fang whose removal meant death, I’d fight through our own means or via the Factory Act’s legal framework.”

Shirasui spoke in his grave tone, as if driving a drill between his ribs straight toward the heart, and while he did so, his opponent Akira—who had initially acted with unwarranted arrogance, puffing himself up—seemed to grow frightened by the end. “However, I still haven’t said to dismiss you or demand your resignation.” “It’s simply that there’s no precedent for this—all I’ve said is that up until now, this has been the custom,” he added, slicking oil onto that thousand-layered face of his.

“If it’s a bad precedent, then why not break it?” “Why not smash these archaic customs?” “If we adhered to precedent in absolutely everything, humanity would still be subsisting on human flesh.” “We’re still devouring human flesh even now—to end that, all archaic customs must be shattered.” “To exploit and plunder laborers even within domains supposedly protected by law is unmistakably a form of human cannibalism.” Shirasui twisted his drill deeper.

“Now, getting so worked up won’t help,” said Akira. “Given these unfortunate circumstances, I’ll arrange payment, but since there’s no precedent, I must consult the executives first—is immediate processing truly necessary?” “Hey,” he asked the pitiful stump, “do you need it right away?” “Of course immediately,” Shirasui answered, stepping back as he anticipated the stump’s panicked fumbling. “We’re already three days behind schedule as of today.”

“Then I’ll go discuss it, so wait here,” Akira said before leaving, his appearance resembling a dog whose fur had been carelessly clipped with clippers.

After making them wait a long time, Akira returned and handed over a scrap of paper. “Please write the amount there. Since this sum will be deducted from your income over the next three months and redeposited, you’d best keep that in mind,” he declared with audacity. “What the hell, you mangy dog!” Shirasui suddenly roared, swinging up a nearby chair—but the stump-like man stopped him. “Well, thank you kindly. If we can just survive this moment, we’ll surely repay it within three months,” he said, pulling Shirasui back with one hand while making an exaggeratedly polite bow to Akira.

“Well, once we’ve settled this current matter, we’ll just work until we’re black with grime to earn it back,” Akira said to Shirasui.

After that incident, Shirasui came to be intensely detested by the company. And Shirasui’s dismissal escalated from a matter handled by clerks to an issue requiring executive deliberation. Following the Stump Flooding Incident, Shirasui, myself, and many other comrades attempted N City’s first large-scale counterattack against A Factory—only for all of us to fall splendidly at the front lines. On top of that, Shirasui, myself, and four other comrades ended up passing through the red brick walls of prison due to that labor dispute. It must have been around the end of September. Following the Stump Flooding Incident, the laborers of A Factory began investigating what stratagems might exist among the capitalist class—using as their stated reasons Shirasui’s exposure of the Welfare Association’s complete lack of accounting reports for its savings fund, along with numerous regulatory violations such as breaches of factory assistance rules and underage labor practices.

N City was a provincially self-centered place. Because of this, even our labor disputes took on a certain provincial character, but we were dragged off by the police immediately after the first day’s demonstration and sent straight to the detention center, so we had no idea how the dispute unfolded. But on the day after we were arrested by the police, as a thousand brothers from A Factory came through the pouring rain to stage a demonstration at the police station—sending delegates to demand the reasons for our detention while the ranks of laborers joined in harmony to sing revolutionary songs in the rain—the five of us inside couldn’t help but join in singing those revolutionary songs. And that evening, Suzuki, who had led the day’s demonstration, was dragged in barefoot.

We followed the prescribed path in order—from the police to the prosecutor’s office, from the prosecutor’s office to the detention center, and through preliminary hearings. The five first-time prisoners sent there realized that the police were not to be feared—just as they also came to understand they must not become ******. That labor dispute became the permanent foundation for establishing the proletarian movement in N City.

And when they finished their sentences, the comrades parted ways and scattered to other cities. And so I alone ended up becoming a sailor. I often wonder where Shirasui is active now. Lately I began to realize combat at sea differs entirely in nature from land. Until we can completely reform laborers' status—those who grow rice for a hundred yet starve, weave cloth for a thousand yet freeze, erect grand buildings yet collapse exhausted—we must wage ceaseless struggle. And that time will surely come. There exists no law forbidding us from welcoming the good that should rightfully arrive. "We'll keep welcoming it until it comes."

Stoki took out a cigarette from his pocket and lit it. “Hata, my story didn’t leave a bad taste in your mouth, did it? You must be sick of it by now.” “No—it was interesting. I want to hear about the prison you all experienced.” “Prison! Prison stories are monotonous. Just the pain of monotony and futility. In society, our lives get exploited too busily to even glance back at them—thrown into cesspools—but in prison, all we do is stare fixedly at them.”

Fujiwara quietly went out to the deck.

“Well then, I need to prepare lunch,” Hata said as he headed out to the cook’s room.

On the deck, Fujiwara leaned against the bulwark, gazing at the desolate northern Honshu landscape.

14

Our *Manshūmaru*, having traveled a three-day journey, was supposed to anchor off Yokohama Port around eleven o’clock that night. The ship passed off Katsura. The ship passed off Uraga. Before long, the bright lights of Yokohama Port would soon begin to appear. Yokohama was the bosom of the sailors and stokers. The hearts of the sailors, weary from waiting, resembled those of prisoners on the eve of their release.

The waves of Tokyo Bay, combined with the residual swell from the Pacific, ran high. Just as toadlets emerge in such numbers on country roads after the rainy season that one cannot walk without crushing them, none of the many sailing ships and fishing boats that should have crowded the waters remained. Only the lighthouses of Kannonzaki, Uraga, Yokosuka, and other such lights flickered as if in pain. The stench of spent storms lingered in the darkness. A straggling bank of clouds pursued at full speed. Even so, the ship no longer rolled drunkenly as before. Watching Honmoku Lighthouse and observing the port entrance markers ahead, our *Manshūmaru* anchored off Yokohama until morning quarantine. With a thunderous roar like some monstrous beast's growl, the anchor—three thousand tons in weight and bulk—plunged down. The vessel stilled its pitching.

At once, everything fell silent. All excitement and tension subsided at once. “Everything rests on tomorrow. Tomorrow holds all happiness and liberation,” everyone reassured themselves.

The sailors had been standing on the forecastle deck, but as the anchor was cast, they began scrambling into their respective nests. Before Hata at the front had even finished descending the gangway, the Bosun roared.

“Hey! We’re lowering the sampan now!” As if struck by a powerful radio wave, the sailors were jolted by these words. The sailors all felt the same fear and pity as trembling girls—and the parents who had daughters—who might be marked with the white-feathered arrow to become sacrifices for the tutelary deity from the *Iwami Buiden* tales (whose true form was hyenas). This was an inevitable phenomenon whenever they arrived in Yokohama at night. And again, the Captain would order them to reach Yokohama at night, whether they liked it or not. Only when scheduled to arrive in the morning did she enter port as planned. As for all other times, she was forced to take a detour either off Inubōsaki or Katsuura so that she would necessarily arrive at night.

From ancient times to the present, hyenas had always chosen the cover of night to emerge. And the lamentable fact was that Iwami Jūtarō was not aboard our Manshūmaru. At eleven o'clock, the sampan had to be lowered into the perilously turbulent seas. Two rowers had to be seized from among the sailors. The white-feathered arrow of selection fell upon Mikami, tempered on bonito boats, and Ogura the helmsman as the rowers. Mikami was mentally deficient. Ogura was quiet. Unlike in the Iwami Buiden tales, the white-feathered arrow would customarily strike these two as a matter of routine.

The two rowers had to brave over one *ri* of pitch-black sea, risking violation of the sampan ban—a prohibition by the port authority barring all small boats due to storm dangers—to secretly deliver the Captain to Nihon Wharf. The Captain was returning to his family under the guise of a "secret" disembarkation. And come morning, he was to return to the ship by launch in “secret,” then make an “official” port entry—such was the procedure.

Those troublesome and dangerous acts exposed the lives of two people—utterly unrelated to that single individual—to peril. Through this “secret” adventure, the Captain could become a human being within his household for ten hours—or perhaps even as few as eight.

The Captain was preparing in the captain’s cabin. He strictly segregated the thoughts he could entertain about his family from all other considerations pertaining to the ship. Prior to his “secret” disembarkation, he would undergo a transformation—within the ship’s confines—from Captain back into a mere human being. His mind overflowed with thoughts of his wife, his children, and every domestic trifle. Where his wife was concerned, he burned with jealous suspicion.

He stuffed various items into the trunk. And then he took them out again. And he sighed. “What’s taking so long with the sampan preparations?!” “Isn’t this obvious? It’s not like it’s your first time! Tch!” But he was still holding back from pressing the matter. And he looked around his room.

It was the most beautiful, spacious, elaborate, and convenient room aboard. But to him, it was the inside of a beer crate. It held not an ounce of comfort. Like a dried-out coarse straw mat, it left his nerves coated in dust and muddled.

The steward brought coffee. “Still not ready? Call the Bosun!” he ordered the steward. And he grew angry at the steward as well. “Tch! You bring me this flat coffee—those bastards don’t even know how to store it properly!” He moistened his throat with the scalding coffee. “Quietly... stealthily... I’ve got to slip back home. I’ll have to send the car back far enough from home that it won’t be noticed, and then...” The Captain was constantly jealous of his wife. And he, intending to flaunt that he did not love his wife all that much, would visit the brothels at every port of call. There, he would often end up sharing a woman with a sailor!

It was an utterly amusing, farcical scene from a comedy they were staging—but now, the sampan was being prepared.

15 The sailors attached two men to No. 3 Winch. On the boat deck, two men secured themselves to each rope. And Hata boarded the sampan. This was to maneuver it to the gangway. The poor Donkey had to enter the engine room again and send steam to the winch. The stokers too had to stand ready at the furnace mouths.

The cable was paid out little by little. If it were being lowered onto a plank, all they needed to do was release the hook attached to the sampan once the cable slackened, and the sampan would settle there properly—but when lowering it toward waves, particularly ones heaving violently that night, the task became exceedingly difficult. If they released only one hook when rising to the crest of a wave, in the next instant the sampan would be dangling like a salmon. It was impossible to lower it all the way to the trough of the waves. The hook would come off. If the hook didn’t come off, it would smash its head or fragile belly against the main ship’s broadside and end up shattered.

The two sailors handling the ropes on the boat deck and Hata—inside the sampan, gripping the hook firmly to prevent it from coming loose—were literally working "with all their might." The waves writhed and coiled along the main ship’s hull like swimming snakes, their crests and troughs differing by about three *ken* (roughly 5.4 meters).

Now, the sampan rode the slope of a wave. Hata released the stern hook. At that moment, someone shouted: “Strike! Strike! Let’s go!” It meant: “Let it out! Let it out! Let it strike!” The ropes that had served as umbilical cords from the main ship to the sampan now had one side detached, and both were fully extended. Hata quickly managed to skillfully release the bow rope as well. And now, the sampan had become a small boat completely independent from the main ship. At the same time, the sampan had already been swept over eighteen meters away. And it rolled and tumbled like azuki beans being sorted in a tray.

Hata set the oar in place. The ship loomed like a jet-black boulder, immovable against the churning sea. The wave-battered sampan tumbled wildly. Loneliness gripped him. He threw his full weight against the oar. When he tried steering around the ship's stern, the sampan's bow resisted all attempts to turn. Like a panicked pup fleeing headlong, it fought him—straining to be swept away by the gale. Yet his body's total exertion, sweat streaming down his drenched frame, finally wrenched the bow windward. Still it teetered on the edge of being blown sideways.

When he brought the sampan to the gangway, his entire body was drenched in sweat as if washed. The wind that carved through the waves was sharp as a knife, yet it blew pleasantly against his cheek. He immediately went onto the deck and wiped his sweat.

Everyone had returned to the deck and, with a listless air, were adding a word or two of criticism about the Captain’s departure. Mikami and Ogura had completely prepared by wrapping their entire bodies in raincoats.

“Hey, let’s go!” shouted the Quartermaster on duty from the bridge.

“Alright, we’re counting on you.” “We appreciate your hard work,” said those remaining to the two as they saw them off to the gangway. The two boatmen had to undertake twice the Captain’s share of peril for his personal errand. The Captain was guided by the boy and emerged at the gangway entrance. The trunk, which he had been putting things into and taking out, was held reverently by the boy as if it were a precious object.

The Captain, burning with resentment, boarded the sampan like a triumphant Roman general Caesar. Everyone except the Captain was weighed down by hearts as heavy and dull as lead. The sampan's mooring rope was cast off. Immediately, it was swept away. In the pitch-black darkness, a single small lantern glowed faintly. From nearby came the voices of Ogura and Mikami chanting, "Heave-ho, heave-ho!"

The sailors returned to the deck. And once they had sent off the Captain, they were allowed to sleep until the sampan returned. Yet no one spoke; they lined up on the benches, sat down, and stared blankly as if entranced by foxes. Due to overwork, the sailors had been lulled into a trance-like state without resistance. And there was nothing there except death-like weariness. Like lifers who had lost all hope, they were habitual and mechanical. They hung limply, as if their arms had been crushed or something.

Occasionally, when someone’s nerves began to stir slightly, the many unpleasant stimuli that had been lying in wait would creep in with a tingling irritation. It was nothing but petty, utterly unbearable trivialities lying in wait—like lice gnawing at their skin or mosquitoes whining incessantly by their ears—that awaited them. Moreover, the entire structure of this ship’s cabin and the uniform, fundamental sensation they were all made to share closely resembled that of prisoners gnawed hollow by weariness—who, even so, would stare vacantly at a high window and dully perceive their own thoroughly familiar exhaustion and numbness.

The sailors had never thought of this as "labor". They knew they were wage laborers whether asleep or awake. But they couldn’t keep that fact clenched tightly in their awareness at all times. Especially because their workplace was a ship, they tended to feel as if they were living in a single house. They often all too easily came to believe that the unfair labor imposed upon them—the unpaid labor—was simply their “duty.”

“Since we all eat from the same pot,” the sailors thought, enduring it. And this turned their own comrades—their mates—into the supreme, most powerful whip. They found that no matter what other methods they tried, whenever those “scrawny nags” sulked and resisted, all they had to do was give them a taste of that ready whip, and everything would fall into place. One by one, they went to settle into their bunks. After all, the sampan that had taken the Captain wouldn’t return until two-thirty or three—if it came back early at all. In this storm, it might never return. The Captain was simply too homesick!

“Agh, I’m sick of humans,” groaned Nishizawa from his nest at the far end. “How ’bout becoming a stud horse?” Hata tossed back—and with that, everything was swallowed into deathly weariness. The Captain had returned to his house, while the injured boatswain lay in a box, packed like cargo.

16

The sampan that had left the main ship faced a voyage even more arduous than what the main ship itself had experienced. The harbor entrance appeared deceptively close. Yet despite Ogura and Mikami's skilled rowing, the sampan showed no sign of nearing the harbor entrance. The Captain was growing increasingly impatient. "That light over there must be my house," he had been thinking for nearly twenty minutes since boarding. However, no matter how much time passed, the harbor entrance showed no sign of drawing nearer. Yet through the pitch darkness, even he could hear their oar's rhythm and labored breaths cutting through the wind's ferocious howl.

The sampan had Mikami—honed on bonito boats off Sendai—pushing the oar, while Ogura, with arms tempered in the Oki Sea of Japan, pressed against the side. However, no sooner had they left the main ship than both intuitively realized this would be difficult. Even as they swung the oar like a cracking whip, the sampan, caught in the current flowing out from the harbor mouth, made no progress whatsoever. So they resolved to use the reverse current to reach the harbor entrance. They turned the bow toward Honmoku. The sampan advanced. Yet it advanced as though crossing a raging torrent. About thirty minutes after leaving the main ship, they wiped the sweat from their brows with one hand and scanned to locate where the main ship was.

The main ship appeared black and small toward the harbor entrance. They realized they were being swept away. However, they could not exert more than the maximum strength they possessed. Moreover, they had already exerted their full strength for thirty minutes. When they realized they could not overcome the current and the wind, they sharply reduced their efforts. And they pushed just enough to avoid being swept away, and did not turn the bow sideways again.

Everything held its breath and shut its eyes. At that moment, in the darkness where nothing could be seen, fighting desperately against the waves and currents was an endurance they could not sustain—even for them, whose nerves had become like those of life prisoners condemned to rot away in prison. Above all, the conviction that everything stemmed solely from the selfishness of the Captain—who sat dimly in the darkness, occasionally barking nothing but “Get a grip!”—had, as if implanted by the darkness itself, taken root in the two men’s chests before they knew it.

Now, the two rowers had given up concentrating on the oar and instead began circling the thought of “Why must we suffer like this?”—directed at this creature who called himself Captain, this ambiguous being with a shadowy visage sitting in the sampan. It was pitch-black darkness where none could see, hear, or sense anything. There raged a storm and tidal howl that swallowed every scream whole. There flowed a torrent capable of washing away all things. There lurked sharks that would devour humans down to their bones.

“And he’s just one man.” Moreover, that guy’s arm might have five times the strength, but I’ve got arms too—I could take down five of him without breaking a sweat! “And yet…” Like a wolf deliberately circling its prey yet hesitating to strike, Mikami prowled around that thought. Ogura approached the same idea from another angle. There was hunger. There was disease. There was disability. There was injury. And all these had become roads leading to death. He was being driven down this path by the bourgeoisie alongside countless other laborers. Those who pursued were few in number. Though those being chased outnumbered them by thousands upon thousands, among those multitudes of workers there wasn’t even one comrade baring fangs to turn against their pursuers. Laborers were slugs doused with salt. They dissolved without resistance. A single laborer—not even one in ten existed, not even one in a hundred thousand. And thus humans could be mass-produced like factory goods. Humans couldn’t die for their own sake. Humans were creatures that craved commands. Under orders, all humans could perish—yet not one could properly kill themselves by their own will.

Were there not hundreds of thousands who died because one person lived? Has not all of world history been dyed in blood and written in flesh by this unwelcome—or perhaps welcome—weakness of human nature? Before reading the history of slaves and becoming enraged by their masters’ tyranny, would people not first lament the slaves’ ignorance and passivity? Will we wage laborers too, like slaves, like serfs, not make our descendants clench their fists? Was that something which, even with human strength, even with the power of will, remained nigh impossible to alter?

Just as I weep when I look upon human history, I now add yet more history that must be wept over. I had managed until now to stand as an obstacle against that tainted history. I still could. But precisely where that becomes impossible arises a monumental consequence—one that stains humanity’s annals. Yet history built from blood and flesh blooms all the more beautifully where sacrifices run deepest. I would follow history’s course and push its oar.

“Hey! The sampan’s gettin’ swept away! What’re you doin’?” “Captain! It’s ebb tide—no matter how much we push, it’s no use. If we head for the harbor entrance, we’re just gonna get swept away again. We’re better off waitin’ for high tide instead, I tell ya.” Mikami kept using crude language, lingering unsettlingly close like he was still prowlin’ round his prey.

“Don’t talk nonsense! It’ll be dawn soon! Push harder!” “Why don’t you try doing it yourself? Our arms can’t handle any more than this.” Mikami finally barked, his words striking like hammer blows. “What?! Are you refusing? Fine!” “You’ll remember this!” The Captain had no choice. In such pitch darkness at sea, fighting meant certain defeat. He resolved to wait until morning.

“What did you say?!” “You’ll pay for this?” “You bastard!” “What the hell are you… Don’t you know today’s storm’s why the sampan’s stuck?! You bastard, it’d be nothing to throw you into the sea! Where the hell d’you think you’re lookin’?!” Mikami stopped rowing. Mikami was called dim-witted. He had all sorts of impulsive fits. The Captain knew that. He turned sullen. If he kept provoking this fool and got himself truly thrown into the dark sea, the Captain knew full well that’d be the end of it all.

“Mikami, there’s no need to get so angry. Look, once we make shore, I’ll make sure you’re rewarded to your liking. So stop raging and row hard, eh?” “So we’ll ‘understand’ once we make shore, huh? Alright, let’s go.” Sendai began pushing the oar again, bit by bit. Ogura found it absurd. You’ll understand once we make shore! That bastard Mikami will understand having his head cut off, you fool! Just when things had gotten interesting, they went and wrapped it all up with a “you’ll understand.” Hmph, so this is what they call “workers.” They can be neatly deceived with just a single word. This is why human history remains forever so infuriating and grating—utterly unbearable. Ah, I get it, I get it. I understand everything completely.

But truly, it was a desolate “voyage.” The sea roared right beneath their feet. It snarled. And shook that body violently.

Just as the greater part of their lives had been, so too were Mikami and Ogura now merely working mechanically. However, they had become terribly worn down. They had, as they say, become "burned out." Since they were not getting sufficient nutrition—just as a machine without oil would quickly burn out—their bodies too had begun to burn out. They—especially Ogura, whose physical strength was far inferior to Mikami’s—had begun to feel heat in areas from their shoulders down their backs and around their thigh bones. At the same time, both of them felt an intense lethargy and a decline in their strength. They steeled themselves with "To hell with it—let come what may!"

The Captain could no longer resort to forceful, summary rebukes. Of course, his finest pistol had been left behind on the main ship. Because of this, his cowardice had grown somewhat more pronounced—but after all, he was utterly alone. The background that guaranteed this power—bestowed—and rendered it violent was not at all given to him now.

Power determines everything. The people were now gaining power with terrifying momentum. Whether power functions rightly or wrongly，exploitatively or cooperatively—this determines whether humanity finds happiness or misery，brutality or peace.

Ogura witnessed the comedy of the Captain—who held supreme authority aboard ship, both public and private—being forced to cower under Mikami’s bark within mere moments, all because he’d left behind every violent prop of his power. And there, he saw the true nature of power laid bare.

“Even if we possess power individually, all our defeats fester in the fact that it remains unorganized and untrained!” Ogura found that thoughts about it kept welling up one after another, arising from the intriguing clash of individual outcrops. “But in the Manshūmaru’s current state, can we even organize the individual power of laborers? Spasmodic, impulsive, fratricidal violence lies within our ranks.” (Eight characters illegible) is upon us. “We are wounded by sufficiently organized violence, and on top of that—lacking even that—we use our own violence to wound ourselves.”

The small sampan, upon that perilous sea and within that darkness, utterly trampling the Captain’s status and power, spun round and round as if in jest, barely managing to drift in one place. The Captain had drawn his neck into his shoulders like a turtle. And yet, despite being bundled up in both quality and quantity far more than Ogura and Mikami combined, he was trembling from the cold. And, at Mikami’s words, he continued to flinch, his face still flushed. And the length of today’s tide was grating on his nerves.

For him, even a single second of insult from Mikami deserved lifelong punishment, and Ogura, who had silently rowed beside them, was equally guilty for having heard it. And he resolved that during their Yokohama anchorage, he must make those bastards realize exactly “what they were.”

"Even so, they don't know their place—these ruffians. What’s with laborers these days—either impertinent, insolent, or else just plain good-for-nothing scum? There isn’t a single one of them with an obedient bone in their body. Punishing each individually would be an unbearable burden. The reason laborers have grown so insolent is that the laws coddle them too much. We need labor legislation like Britain had from the fifteenth to nineteenth centuries—branding their foreheads would be a fine start. Whip them. Cut off half their ears. Enslave them for life. Clamp iron collars around their necks."

The Captain was infuriated beyond endurance by Mikami. That was an impossibility. It was unimaginable. The thought that these slave-like beings could find this situation “most unpleasant”— Such things must be eradicated. No—the law was utterly inadequate. The Captain resolved to torment Mikami through an unorthodox dismissal method.

17

The tide now reached the peak of its ebb.

The Manshūmaru's sampan began approaching the harbor entrance through Mikami and Ogura's practical rowing speed. The sampan that had been lowered at eleven o'clock now remained motionless in pitch-black darkness until twelve-thirty, as if sucked into place. It would take at least an hour to reach Nippon Wharf. Ogura was calculating. "We'll arrive at 1:30, return to the ship by 3:00, hoist the sampan by 3:30, then I'll be on watch from 4:00." Tch! Damn it! "Smarter to just collapse and sleep right here, damn it all!"

At this moment, Mikami was devising an exceedingly optimistic yet practical—and even fictional—outlandish plan. And this plan was one that wouldn’t have to be carried out if the Captain “understood” things properly—but if he tried to deceive him, then he’d go through with it regardless, containing as it did a vengeful intent. Mikami thought as follows: The Captain undoubtedly intends to send me whoring. Even the Captain knows I go whoring every time I go ashore—and tonight, after what he said earlier, he’ll definitely tell me, “Leave the sampan tied up, stay overnight, and come back in the morning. Here!” and hand over ten yen. So, since Ogura definitely wouldn’t go whoring, he’d dump him at an inn or something, and then… He inadvertently laughed.

“If by any chance he tries to ditch me like that, I’ll make him pay for sure,” he declared, flashing a fierce glare into the darkness. Mikami—whether one called it deviant sexual tendencies or an insatiable sexual appetite—possessed a physique as formidable as his libido was voracious. Thus, under the sexually restrictive conditions endemic to sailors’ lives, he would scour for every opportunity with desperate intensity, clutching at them like a drowning man seizing straws. He was a popular figure aboard the ship both as a man of primal education and as an innovator of carnal eccentricities.

Had he been able to restrain that persistence even slightly, his popularity might have gained more profound meaning; but as it was, everyone found his tenacity utterly exhausting. And this characteristic of his manifested most fully when he visited the brothel district. Nishizawa often went ashore with Mikami, but only because no matter how Nishizawa tried to escape or hide, Mikami would inevitably follow. Mikami would crawl on his stomach outside Nishizawa's cabin, listening intently to his nighttime murmurs. No one could fathom why he did this. However, Nishizawa had once said, "The night I went ashore with you..." he recounted. "In other words—'Nishizawa asked the woman, 'How did you end up becoming a prostitute?''" "'I suppose there's some tragic story behind it,' he said, and then that woman replied, 'My father was a poor farmer. After three straight years of bad harvests, we couldn't pay the landlord's rice tribute. When we'd suffered all we could bear, I finally sold myself to fulfill our duty to him.'" "And then that woman said in a nasal whine, 'There's nothing as painful as obligation in this world.'"

This story was better received by the audience than Mikami’s usual blatantly obscene tales that focused solely on his own exploits. Despite Nishizawa’s utmost efforts to disrupt them, the sailors egged Mikami on and made him repeat every last bit of that pillow talk. “So then, when I wondered what that lecherous bastard Nishizawa would say next—‘Ah, there’s nothing as painful as duty.” “And it’s always the poor who have to uphold that painful duty.” “It’s because they uphold duty that they end up poor.” “My family’s poor too, and I’ve got a sister about your age.” “That sister of mine is also in this wretched trade, just like you, sending money to our parents in Shinshu together with me.” “Through letters from my sister, I know full well what harsh circumstances you all endure.” “Just endure until the new year comes, okay?” “And don’t you go losing your temper or anything, okay?” he goes. “Bastard!” “He’s mocking me!” Then the woman started sobbing, saying, “There’s no one as kind and understanding as you.” “While she was saying, ‘I feel like you could be my brother,’ she did something so I couldn’t hear the rest—but then this time, Nishizawa goes, ‘I can’t help but feel you’re like my sister.’” “After that, their conversation turned to hushed whispers I couldn’t make out, so I wet my finger with spit, poked a hole in the shoji screen, and peeked through.” “And then, you see—” Mikami recreated the scene as perceived through his unique brand of intellect—without the slightest restraint, in a description so graphic that even Nishizawa couldn’t bear it. And finally, he added, “Turns out this guy’s got so many sisters working as prostitutes all over the place. “And then again, how can that bastard do such things with a woman he claims feels like a sister?” “That guy’s a real lecherous bastard,” he added. And in this regard, what Mikami said was the truth.

The sailors endured countless hardships before ever becoming seamen. And Ogura and others resolved to shoulder the fate of an entire village. Both geographically and socially, the sea was the lowest place—and those labeled “human dregs,” having flowed down into its depths—seemed now burdened with every curse modern society could muster.

Visiting brothels was said to be a common practice among sailors. Society uniformly believed that lower-ranking sailors especially squandered their entire income for that reason. And that was, in many cases, a fact. But what of it? They too did not want to visit brothels. They needed lovers. But in this society—wearing split-toed shoes, clad in grease-stained work clothes, with palms as hard as their heels, yet penniless—who would ever associate with such “sea brutes”! What “daughter” would ever associate with these crude “sea brutes”—men who could vanish into sea foam at any moment, have a hand torn off, or depart on some distant ocean route without warning?

The bourgeoisie paraded their daughters in dance halls and sucked proletarian daughters into factories encircled by brick walls higher than prison barriers, turning the most attractive among them into playthings—their so-called “mistresses.”

The bourgeoisie possess an instinctive desire to reduce all humans—every last one except themselves—to literal "beast of burden"-like wage slaves. And the laborers, still alive, are carried by the screw conveyor into the "meat grinder" driven by electric motors of tens of thousands of horsepower. Thus, wage slaves have their hopes and efforts to remain human crushed to the very end, only to be discarded like inorganic matter along the roadside of bourgeois culture. And it is planned that they become a single stone within the concrete meant to make the bourgeois road permanent, forever forming part of that road.

But now that plan would no longer proceed as intended! The fact that we lacked education lay with those bastards who had plundered educational opportunities from us—but even if we made those bastards take responsibility, what good would that do the working class? Now we ourselves would educate ourselves. Now we were determined to do everything with our own hands and show it. We would teach ourselves and guide ourselves, create our ideals, devise our tactics, establish our morals, and build a communal society for all humanity. All of those things—we ourselves would do them. And we were all those who worked with sweat on our brows!

18

The sampan slipped. And though the Captain was freezing, the two men arrived at the Japanese pier drenched in sweat.

The Captain jumped up. The trunk was flung up. Ogura secured the mooring cable to the pier. And both of them leaped onto the floating pier. The Captain’s authority had not yet been fully substantiated. The Captain took out his gold pocket watch and, striking a match, learned that it was now 1:40. He could get home by two o’clock in fifteen minutes by car. So he had to quickly send these “unreliable wretches” back to the main ship.

He grabbed two fifty-sen silver coins from his pocket, confirmed there were indeed two, and handed them to Ogura.

“Go eat some soba or whatever and get back right away! Don’t be late.” With that, he took the trunk and started walking briskly.

“Captain!” Mikami shouted involuntarily. The Captain was startled. He was so startled he nearly dropped the trunk. Without a moment’s hesitation, Mikami blocked the Captain’s path. “What’s wrong? “Don’t you get it?” Mikami snarled, his voice a growl.

Ogura stood quietly, silently watching how things would unfold. "I know exactly what needs to be done here." "Things can’t be settled until they’ve begun." "But it hasn’t even started yet!" "I’ve given the money to Ogura, so use that to get something to eat and go back!"

The Captain considered that remaining on the pier placed him at a grave disadvantage.—There was no escaping now—

Mikami stood silently blocking the Captain’s path, but eventually stepped aside.

The Captain started walking with a sigh of relief. Mikami suddenly moved in front of him again and stood blocking his path. —Something was about to happen this time—both the Captain and Ogura instantly felt. Mikami had been the strongest on the Manshūmaru. He was a man who could calmly handle two men’s workload even when his swollen lymph nodes threatened to burst. “You haven’t forgotten, have you?” Mikami growled. “Ah, right, right,” the Captain said, thrusting his hand into his pocket again. Fumbling hurriedly, he grabbed two more fifty-sen silver coins. “I’d completely forgotten.”

“You’re still forgetting something.” Mikami snapped. The Captain stood frozen, clutching two fifty-sen coins as he trembled violently. He just wanted to get back soon... Tch! “How much do you want?” Finally unable to sustain his pretense any longer, the Captain asked.

“Ten yen,” Mikami answered. “Ten yen!” The Captain was utterly astonished. Handing over two yen had already been a daring move for him. Mikami demanded ten yen. “Can’t that wait until tomorrow?” The Captain knew that tomorrow would resolve everything. “Tomorrow’s tomorrow,” he said, but within Mikami’s heart, a fury that could never be vented by mere words now exploded through his entire body.

“If we go back tonight, we’ll freeze to death on the way!” he roared, as though swinging a hammer down onto the Captain’s head. “You get to go home and sleep with your woman! We’ll freeze to death going back! Look at this sweat!”

Though it was too dark to see, they were soaked on the outside by spray and drenched on the inside by sweat, with not a single dry spot remaining on either their clothing or skin. They had felt from the very beginning that returning in their current state was impossible. Their raincoats—and even their work clothes—were frozen stiff as boards. The Captain felt an intense attachment to the ten yen, but more than that, he ultimately prioritized his own life. He pulled out a ten-yen note from his inner pocket and handed it to Mikami. And he started to say something but abruptly clamped his mouth shut.

And then, he left the pier and went to the rickshaw stand office. He started to call the police but stopped again. If I make the call tonight, I won’t be able to sleep at home. Moreover, I’m not supposed to go ashore tonight. Even if that deception works, no matter what—tonight, home!

The rickshaw stand office also served as a car dealership. The Captain returned to his house as if soaring through the air by automobile. And, having completely forgotten his plans along the way, he rode the automobile all the way to the front of his own house. He became a man with a warm home.

His wife became convinced that her husband's lateness stemmed from "that sailor Mikami—a scoundrel among them—having deliberately caused trouble and even extorted twelve yen from him." For that reason, her husband had been in mortal danger for a time. She grew certain that whenever he left home, it was as if he were being abandoned forlornly in a den of robbery and murder. Yet she had always heard him declare: "I hold the highest rank on the ship—I can truss up any sailor who crosses me! On board, I'm like a king on land! I command sailors as freely as my own limbs. Without me, that great steamship couldn't move an inch! Anyway, on the Manshūmaru, I'm the king!" Now, she supposed he must be both king and victim. "The only decent man on that ship must be my husband," she concluded. "The rest are surely scoundrels."

The two of them lay in bed talking until dawn.

19

Mikami and Ogura, looking like dogs that had clambered from water, went to the sampan hut. There, the lumpen proletariat working as sampan pushers were crammed into a tiny house, swarming like lice. There was neither day nor night there. All those gathered gave the impression they had lain there since time immemorial and would continue doing so into eternity. They had never once been separated from the apex of all vice, desperation, and starvation.

Just as even dying dogs were plagued by fleas and ticks, around them swarmed hungry peddlers selling daifuku mochi and tomoe-yaki almost ceaselessly.

That night, even those night stalls were nowhere to be seen. Mikami and Ogura had to search for an inn or an eatery to escape the freezing cold and hunger. They felt they could no longer endure the cold and hunger. Through their familiarity with the area, they had a rough idea of where to find eateries that stayed open late into the night or even operated all night. That was either near the coastal area where they were now wandering or else in the vicinity of the red-light district.

They reached the main street. And when they had walked fifteen or sixteen ken, they found that the alley still had eateries characteristic of a port town still open. They immediately went inside. The port town’s eateries were accustomed to both the men’s bizarre appearance and their frozen, soaked state. Fortunately, the two of them were able to take off their soaked-through shoes and dry their clothes in one of the rooms there. A maid of about twenty-seven or twenty-eight immediately lit the brazier and brought it over.

“What happened? Did you just make port now, at this hour! Right? Oh my! You’re absolutely soaked through, aren’t you. Because you’re young, hohoho. Take off those wet things and dry them. Here, I’ll bring you some clothes. You are staying over, aren’t you? Of course you are! Hohohohoho!” She said this as though it stemmed entirely from kindness. And then she went downstairs. It seemed she was going to bring something like a padded coat. Mikami was of course delighted. And he, of course, intended to stay. Ogura couldn’t very well leave alone either. Moreover, he had to consider how to handle the incident involving Mikami that had occurred that night. By morning, the Captain would issue a disciplinary discharge order against Mikami, rendering him unable to board any ship for perhaps a year or even three. Not only that—and it would be one thing if it ended there—but depending on how things go, he might even press charges for something like extortion. Regarding these matters as well, I had to somehow organize my thoughts and prepare. Moreover, there was no helping it—they were utterly drenched and ravenously hungry. So, the two of them turned their thoughts to getting some food.

“Miss, sorry to trouble you so late, but if it’s possible, we’d like sukiyaki.” “It’s freezing—if it’s not sukiyaki, we’ll never warm up,” Ogura ordered. “Yes, I can do it—I’m sure, for your sake.” “Hohohoho! And sake?” she asked while standing. “Bring the sake!” Mikami responded. “Hohohoho! Everything, of course… right?” she sang out as she went downstairs to place the order.

They changed into padded coats and hung all their worn clothes on a pillar. They longed for people. Above all, they longed for women. No matter what motives drove them, the only women in this world who might speak kind words to them—if any such women still lived—were their mothers or sisters. But they had either lost them completely, never known them at all, or left them far behind.

Kind women! To them, it was a jewel more precious than anything. Women pitiful and frail, oppressed throughout all history! The oppressed women—those who did not require rebellion from them, those who must be protected even by them—shared a fate closely resembling that of the laboring class, itself oppressed and tormented. They longed for women. And that was limited to prostitutes and streetwalkers. Between the weakest class of women and the most oppressed class of men, unlike when faced with the bourgeoisie, there existed some point of mutual understanding. They were comrades-in-arms who shared a common enemy.

Even if their relationship had been superficially reduced to buying and selling, the faint remnants of humanity left within them could still find opportunities to reclaim it as something human. And they were both proletarians. In a heart grown wild and desolate, how sorrowful was a single falling tear. The maid soon brought a bowl of beef arranged on a platter. And then, right after that, a young maid of about twenty-two or twenty-three came in carrying a sake decanter with heated sake.

The presence of women and sake sent Mikami into raptures. He kept drinking by himself. He poured for the women too. They drank a little too. "Why aren't you drinking at all?" the younger one asked, leaning against Ogura. "Instead, I'm eating." "But we're having some too, you know." "A man should drink at least a little, right?" She apparently thought to liven him up a bit after seeing how earnestly serious Ogura was, focused solely on eating meat.

"But I can’t drink alcohol." "It’s not very sailor-like of me, is it?" "But I still can’t drink." "I suppose you could say I hate bugs," Ogura said, poking at the meat and green onions while his thoughts remained fixed on the sampan left tied up and the unresolved matter between Mikami and the Captain. And he failed to notice how Mikami, even as he was frequently teasing the women or harassing them with his usual perverse antics, occasionally cast probing glances his way.

Mikami had indeed wanted to hear Ogura's opinion regarding the incident with the Captain, but more than that—despite the shallow joy of the moment that might have been mere formality, that undoubtedly was such superficial joy; despite the women's appearance and demeanor that might have induced vomiting in ordinary land-dwellers; despite all such conditions—he did not want to deviate one step from that joy and pleasure, like an adventurer who had abandoned everything during long years of fruitless searching only to discover a gold mine. In truth, had there been a woman who truly loved Mikami, he would have done anything for her without hesitation. From the moment he was born, he was parted from his living mother by death, and from that point on grew up without even knowing that children had mothers to suckle them—let alone knowing that human love existed. From an extremely young age, he went out to the seaside and helped fishermen. And from around the age of five, he earned his own food. And instead of attending elementary school, he set out into the Pacific aboard a bonito fishing boat. Seeing a mountain-like ship passing offshore with people in "Western clothes" working inside—thinking "I want to wear Western clothes and work like that too"—he abandoned the bonito boat and became a steamship sailor. He was a person who had never been truly loved by anyone. So abnormally twisted was he that one might think no one could ever truly love Mikami from the heart. And yet there was never a time when he did not think: If only someone would be truly kind to me... Therefore, whenever he heard that Nishizawa had been loved by a prostitute, he would inevitably track down the woman’s name and—on his next voyage—sneak off alone to investigate what this "love" was all about. No one knew this secret of Mikami’s heart. Therefore he had come to be labeled both a sexual deviant and a primitive pilgrim in search of that genuine "love." And so—having realized that he himself could never correspond to sincere love for others—he became a joker himself.

Mikami would steal glances at Ogura while drinking, and grab the middle-aged woman to play rough pranks. But Ogura ate in silence. The woman paired with Ogura couldn’t find an opening to engage and was at a loss. After Mikami got up to go to the restroom and the woman accompanying him followed to show the way, the young woman beside Ogura asked, “Why are you so quiet? Is something bothering you? The other one’s being so lively, aren’t you? Or are you already sleepy?” she asked, leaning against Ogura’s knee.

“That man... he’s a pitiable man,” Ogura answered. “I’m worried about him.” “Why is he pitiable?” “If you ask me, you’re the pitiable one,” the woman said earnestly. “Just because someone seems cheerful doesn’t mean they’re free from hardship.” “He acts lively because he’s unbearably lonely.” “And he has his own troubles.” “I too bear troubles for his sake,” said Ogura, trying to imply she needn’t force herself to humor him.

“Oh my! You’re such a young old man, aren’t you? You’re younger than him, aren’t you? Yet you worry about that man like he’s your own son—but you’re a good person, aren’t you?” she said, her tone growing earnest yet still laced with teasing.

"What's wrong? He's taking an awfully long time in the restroom," Ogura asked the woman. "Oh!" She feigned surprise. "But you've already retired for bed—and still haven't been to the toilet yourself?"

“I wonder what time it is now.”

“Three o’clock. It’ll be soon.” “Let’s rest, okay?”

"But I have to return to the ship with that man by tonight," Ogura said with a troubled look.

“Why? Do you dislike me?” “Then I can take your place.” “Please don’t say things like that.” “I beg you!” The woman, thinking Ogura disliked her and was throwing a tantrum, was utterly at a loss.

“Listen.” “You mustn’t misunderstand.” “I don’t hate you at all.” “It’s just that the Captain ordered us to return to the ship by tonight—we had no choice but to go back.” “Moreover, on the ship, everyone’s caught in this violent storm—so I think they’re anxiously waiting for us.” “As for what the Captain says, I don’t care, but our comrades on the ship—well, it’d be pitiful for them to stay up all night.” “So I want to return with that man before daybreak, but…”

“Well then, I’ll go ask that man for you. I’ll find out what he intends to do. But hasn’t it gotten terribly rough out there? It’s dangerous, isn’t it?” she said while sliding open the shoji screen and stepping out. As she closed it, she glanced back and added, “Wait here a moment,” before heading toward Mikami. “The proletariat shares common emotions,” Ogura thought. Suddenly feeling sentimental, he decided that when the woman returned, he would give her a passionate kiss right away.

Before long, the woman returned. And then, sitting down hesitantly beside Ogura, “Hey, about that Mr. Mikami—you’re Mr. Ogura, right? Mr. Ogura—Mr. Mikami said he’s terribly sorry for dragging you into this, but he absolutely couldn’t return tonight. Even if it comes to tomorrow, he said there’s no telling whether he’ll make it back then either.” “And he said, ‘I’m sorry, but please wait until tomorrow morning,’ then just went ahead and fell asleep.”

“Ah, that’s fine.” “In that case, I’ll take you up on staying.” “Listen.” “I don’t dislike you at all, you know.” “I want to hug you and kiss you so much.” “But you see, there’s someone who loves me just as much as I love them.” “So I’ll sleep alone. But if there’s any trouble with the front desk, you can lay out two futons and we’ll sleep side by side.” “And as a bedtime story, let’s hear about your real lover,” Ogura said with a lonely, pitying laugh.

"Oh!" The woman, who had been about to lay out the futon, suddenly threw herself onto Ogura's lap. She burst into tears. Ogura was startled.

“What’s wrong? If the front desk situation is that troublesome, I really don’t mind us being together. So stop crying, okay?” Ogura tried to rouse the woman. She wouldn’t wake. And still she kept weeping. “There now—stop crying already. I don’t know what hardship you’re facing, but I can’t understand unless you tell me. If it’s something worth crying over—something you’d get on your knees to discuss—then maybe talking to me could help distract you. I probably can’t do much, but if there’s anything useful I can manage—anything at all—stop crying and just tell me. Okay? I have to return to the ship first thing tomorrow. We’ll be anchored two or three days—maybe four or five—so I’ll come daily, alright? Come on—lay out the futon.” Ogura lifted her from his lap.

“Okay, I’ll lay out the futon now. Just wait a moment—I’ll tidy up.” Pressing her eyes with a handkerchief, she began tidying the scattered food around them with a lonely look. Ogura also helped her move the brazier and such to the side.

20 The futon was laid out there. There was only one. The pillow too was just a single man's. "What's wrong? Why did you start crying?" Ogura asked sympathetically as he crawled into the futon.

“I…” “Since coming to this house, this is the first time I’ve met someone like you.” “At first, I thought of you as a ‘guest’ too,” she said bashfully, sitting modestly before the brazier by the pillow like an innocent girl as she spoke. “But as I talked with you more, listened to you, watched you—I started thinking you weren’t really a sailor at all.” “I thought to myself—” “This person must’ve come here by mistake.” “Isn’t that right?” “You really believed this was just a place to eat beef sukiyaki, didn’t you?” “Don’t you think it’s shameful for us to show ourselves before people like that?” “We can only become beasts ourselves when facing beasts.” “We curse everything—everything. Gods and buddhas? I cursed them ages ago and keep them far from me.” “But you—coming to our house wanting something other than our flesh with that naive young master’s pure heart—you’ll never understand how we feel.”

“We never see people like you,” she said. “Women in prison see men far more often than we ever get to see someone like you. That’s because all men are beasts.” “Yes, utterly beasts,” she continued. “I can state that with certainty. But… that’s not even the men’s fault. That—it’s the sin of the gods and buddhas.” “Isn’t that right?” Her voice sharpened. “They create humans themselves, decide what’s good or evil themselves, then trap their own creations in the sins they manufactured—like dropping them into pitfall traps! That’s the gods’ and buddhas’ responsibility.” “So what I fear isn’t gods and buddhas.”

“Then what are you afraid of?” Ogura was unbearably sleepy, but he found himself kept awake by the woman’s unusual words. “I’m cold, so may I come close to you? Okay? Since it’s just to get close, okay? It’s fine.” As she spoke, the woman entered Ogura’s futon without even undoing her obi. And then, huddled small like a golden beetle in the corner of the futon, “We can’t find anyone we can truly ‘love’ from the heart.”

“Do you also think our pickiness is wrong from the very start? Even we have some discernment—there’s nothing wrong with that, right? Imperfect as it may be, it still exists. That’s why we can’t love anyone wholeheartedly. But you know—it’s not that there are no men in this world worth loving. Such men do exist. Yes, they do exist. And what’s truly maddening—this utterly infuriating, insolent gall—is that those very men we’d want to love with true sincerity always turn out to be complete fools through and through. Fools who’re dim-witted and spaced out. And those fools never realize we love them. What’s more—they’re such utter fools. Women like us grow indifferent—as if we can only love men professionally. Honestly—there’s never been a cure for fools since ancient times, has there?”

She lay like a sleepwalker staring at the ceiling, her wide-open eyes fixed as though peering into her own skull, speaking rapidly and fervently—as if delirious with fever—in hurried bursts like someone desperately trying to stamp out a small fire alone. Yet her body stayed rigidly fixed in place as if riveted down, unmoving.

Ogura understood the conversation well. And he knew that he—being both pretentious and a fool—was being thoroughly taken to task. But even so—What an astute woman she is—he found himself completely robbed of sleep, his exhausted consciousness dragged about and torn to bloody shreds by the shifting currents of her words.

“And you know—such absurd things shouldn’t exist—but we’re fools too.” “Why do you think that is?” “You see—we always end up hopelessly falling for nothing but fools.” “That fool’s always utterly hopeless—just blundering in like some bewildered sparrow that’s lost its way.” “Hohohohoho! Now Mr. Ogura—you think yourself clever and upstanding don’t you? A rare breed among sailors—steadfast—virtuous—and oh yes—one more thing—a human being who benefits all mankind!” “Right? Isn’t that so?” “That’s right—that’s right—you see—I can even understand things about yourself that you don’t know.” “So—just listen.” “But—Mr. Ogura—” “You’re even worse than Mr. Mikami—still just a useless good-for-nothing!” “Understand.” “In this world—there are so many people who make no effort to improve this filthy world—striving only to make it worse and more rotten—yet still consider themselves flawlessly virtuous.” “Properly wearing your hat—walking fussily with meticulousness—never borrowing even a single sen from others—giving beggars exactly one sen—no more no less—and when it comes to women—knowing only your wife—drying her up as uninterestingly as a household rag—never once visiting brothels since youth—and instead Mr. Ogura—you’re reading navigation studies aren’t you?” “And scheming to obtain a higher-grade seaman’s license aren’t you?” “You’re studying aren’t you?” “You are.” “Look—it’s fine—you studying and breaking your back trying to climb those stairs.” “But those stairs—they’re the stairs to ruin.” “Understand.” “Even if you climb them skillfully—those stairs themselves are fated to perish—and as long as they exist—it’s the stairs of ruin where countless people at their foundation will be lost.”

“Those stairs are the root of everything.” “Now, Mr. Ogura.” “In truth, is it right for real people to suffer eternally for the sake of an illusory staircase that doesn’t even exist?” “You should understand.” “You’ve never once taken those burning eyes of yours off that staircase.” “That is something you must understand.” “You—me, every other unfortunate soul, and you yourself—are foremost among those unfortunate people.” “All right—to multiply those countless unfortunate people even more, you’re breaking your back studying and playing the virtuous one.” “Hohohohoho! I’ve finally turned you into a complete fool, haven’t I?” “My apologies.” “But truly, you are an utter fool.” “Hohohohoho!” The woman’s laughter resembled a ship’s screw shaft rotating at full speed.

“Ah, that is the truth!” Ogura blurted out. “I was hiding behind the grand signboard of social order, seeking only my own profit.” “That is entirely true.”

“There! I’ve confessed.” “You—” “You want to become just a Captain, mistreat people like Mr. Mikami, and then have some senile old man in a car spout nonsense at you?” “Stop it.” “Quit spitting upward while lying on your back.” “But once you’re Captain, some pure maiden will fall for you.” “And every docking, she’ll beg you for a diamond ring as love’s ‘symbol,’ hohohohoho!” “That’d make you happy, wouldn’t it?” “Someone like me—yes, I’m a whore. So what? Mr. Ogura, you prefer proper courtesans over streetwalkers, don’t you? Hohohoho!” “But you said earlier—‘There’s a woman who loves me as I love her.’” “I—I—I have love too! But I’m a convict.” “Hohohoho.” “People feel relief thinking their iron chains bind others too—like their own chains lighten.” “That’s slave morality’s chains.” “Convention’s chains.” “But Mr. Ogura…” “For me—no such chains exist.”

"I don't even dream of such things—but say I wanted to love you. You'd claim a prostitute like me has no right to, wouldn't you?" "No, that's right—just keep quiet!" she cut in hastily though Ogura hadn't tried to speak. "I know I've no right to ask you to let me love you." "But Mr. Ogura, no matter how they beg me, I won't touch self-serving men chasing phantom staircases." "That's the path chosen by spineless weaklings." "It's more shameful and depraved than our disgraceful trade—downright heretical."

“But Mr. Ogura, if you weren’t like that—if you were a decent person who didn’t acknowledge such staircases—I—I—I would confess that I’ve met someone like you for the first time.” “And if you were the strongest ally of the weak in all the world, I—I would want to love you.” “But you know… why am I such a fool?” “You had someone good, didn’t you? I—I—I too, Mr. Ogura. Unlike you taking higher-grade seaman’s exams to rise as Captain—without exams or wishes—I was thrown into this trade by force.” “You understand what I’m saying—Hohohohoho.” “What I’m saying is—even if I’m in this trade, that’s none of my concern.” “The nature of you being a sailor and me doing such filthy work is the same.” “And then.” “I’m the one who’s taken on the painful burdens that truly deserve far more respect than they get.” “Do you understand?” “To live, people have to endure any kind of pain.” “To live, people will leap at even methods of dying sooner.”

“By the time I die, I’ll have done nothing but the exact opposite of what I truly wanted—then I’ll finally die.” “Not a single thing ever goes how I want it to.” “At first, I thought you were just another customer. Then I saw you as a young master. After that, as someone truly understanding and gentle. And now… what should I say? You’re… my father.” “The real father who sired me—the one I’ve never known… Hohohohoho… My father…”

二一

That night was truly a night possessed by demons. It was an oppressive, tormenting, alluring night—as if a branding iron were searing human nerves. It was a night where extreme joy and endless suffering had thickly blended together. That night burned into both Mikami and Ogura memories unbearable to look back on—each of their own. It seemed it should have been a night that would never fade for all eternity. That night was so profoundly significant for the two of them.

In a human life, there exist momentous events that overturn all of one's circumstances with a single blow, and in society, there exist great events that shake the entire social order. Moreover, that these events inevitably occur either at night or during the day—while night falls and morning breaks entirely unrelated to said events—must surely instill in those confronting them, both as individuals and as a society, an absurd and uncanny sensation. Among them were those made to think: "Ah, though something so momentous happened to me, look—the night has ended."

Mikami and Ogura each awoke at six in the morning with such feelings. Both of them had swollen eyes. The night had ended. And so, with the major incident still unresolved, the night carried over and dawned. Because it had been carried over through the night, the incident had taken on a form a thousand times more substantial. One night—five hours—sampan mooring—sailors’ sleep—it was nothing significant. It was a completely ordinary and trivial matter.

However, when narrowed from society to the *Manshūmaru*, the stage caused the problem to swell into one of grave significance.

Anyway, even if Ogura had forgotten about the "staircase," he thought it would be better to resolve everything after returning to the main ship. However, Mikami thought that was a foolish approach. There lay the difference between Mikami and Ogura.

The two left that house. And as they retraced their steps along the coast toward where the sampan was moored, they discussed how to conclude the incident.

“I ain’t goin’ back,” Mikami had been insisting. “But if we don’t go back, we won’t know how things stand, will we?” This was Ogura’s remark. “We don’t need to know how things stand.” “We should either sell off that sampan or pawn it and get the hell out of here.” Mikami voiced his plan for the first time. “But that’s a problem.” “I have my seaman’s handbook deposited there and my luggage too—that’s a problem.” Ogura was truly at a loss. He had even sunk twice for the captain’s license exam, thereby obtaining the necessary practical experience. It had been entered in the seaman’s handbook.

“That’s why—even though I’ve been saying goodbye this whole time—you’re the one dragging your feet and following me around.” “You go hire a sampan and get back.” “Then just say Mikami stole the boat or whatever and leave it at that.” “I’m selling this thing and getting out of here.” “I don’t need your damn luggage or handbook.” “Get moving and go back!”

Mikami turned sharply in the opposite direction and retraced his steps toward the pier. Ogura followed without thinking. "But it’s not like you’re the only one at fault here—it’s the Captain who’s being unreasonable to begin with. So even if you go back, nothing’ll happen." "You should go back." Ogura kept urging Mikami to take the peaceful approach.

“Everything and anything—I hate it all. If you decide to go back, I’ll return just before departure. Until then, I’ll stay hidden and keep an eye on the ship.”

He said this and strode off resolutely. Ogura walked after Mikami unconsciously, dazedly, as if still in a dream. Mikami came to the pier and nimbly jumped onto the sampan he had tied up the night before. When Ogura tried to board as well, Mikami waved his hand and said, “Tell everyone—point at the sampan and say—that I’ll come back just before departure.” “Hey,” he said as he shoved off the pier with a forceful push and moved away.

Ogura stood as if in a daze. Mikami, putting all his strength into arms that could have belonged to five men, passed under the bridge and disappeared from view.

“Indeed, Mikami couldn’t go back. He’d threatened the Captain, and yet I’d told him to return and stayed overnight—what an utter fool I’d been. Whether there’d been justification or not, Mikami was bound to get beaten in the end. He’d gone off after hatching his own style of plan—something about pawning the sampan. But no matter how absurd that method might’ve been, it was far better than him waltzing back to the ship like some obedient dog. If he’d known about it all along, there was no reason for him to stick his head into a pitfall.” Ogura stood there perplexedly, like a country bumpkin who’d forgotten his destination. His role had become something utterly strange—absurdly indescribable and altogether mysterious.

"I came aboard the ship’s sampan and hired a sampan to return! What on earth had happened? And this responsibility lay with both Mikami and me. What on earth would happen? Oh well! If I went back and saw, things would work out somehow."

He hired a sampan and asked to be taken to the Manshūmaru.

“When did the Manshū arrive?” asked the brother, crawling out of the lice-infested shack.

“Late last night.” He answered.

“Wasn’t the sampan moored here this morning from the *Manshūmaru*?” asked the boatman. “These guys know about it. Heh, they must know.” “It’s seven o’clock, after all.” “But was what happened last night something I really experienced, or... It’s all so strange.”

Ogura was thinking about the woman from last night. She was wise and a "pure" woman.

二二

Ogura returned to the Manshūmaru. The duty quartermaster, upon climbing up the ladder, immediately grabbed Ogura.

“What’s the matter?” “I was worried, y’know—whether you got swept away last night.” “And what about the sampan? Was it wrecked after all?” Those who had remained on the ship should indeed have been unaware of all the circumstances. And so, on that stormy night rough enough to halt sampans, the sailors had arbitrarily imagined that they had been unable to return at night because the sampan had been wrecked and had been fretting over it. The sampan was damaged when we hit it while passing under the bridge on our way back after dropping off the Captain—though it wasn’t that old or frail—but if we explain it that way, the sailors won’t figure anything out unless Mikami returns or the sampan boatman talks. But then where did Mikami go? Since there’s no need to hide anything, it’d be better to just lay everything out. “If that’s no good, then we’ll deal with it when the time comes,” Ogura thought in that instant.

“Nah，it wasn’t wrecked at all.” “Things took a strange turn and now we’re stuck.” Ogura acutely felt—now speaking openly about it—that this wasn’t an issue that could be neatly resolved like he’d imagined; it was thoroughly vexing.

“What happened?” “What on earth happened? And Mikami?”

“Mikami should’ve come back on the sampan this morning.” Ogura resolved not to mention Mikami’s plan—the one about selling or pawning the sampan—which seemed completely unrealistic. “Don’t joke around.” “No one’s come back at all!”

“In that case, I’ll explain all the circumstances in detail out on the main deck.” “We’ve run into a bit of trouble.” “The Captain and Mikami had a quarrel.” “I’ll talk about that now on the main deck.” “Is everyone here?” While saying this, Ogura descended the gangway to the main deck and ran off.

On the main deck, from the bosun to the carpenters and sailors, all had made preparations to be ready for entry into port at any moment and were waiting for the Captain’s return. But even more than that, they had been anxiously awaiting word about Mikami and Ogura’s whereabouts.

"I’m really sorry! I’m back!" Ogura shouted as he came running into their midst.

“What does Mikami want to do?” “So he went whoring around after all!” “Did he come back on the sampan?”

“Slick move there, you bastard.” The first words each had imagined flew at him like coal tumbling from the pier—a thunderous barrage of overlapping voices. Ogura concisely recounted last night’s ordeal: the Captain’s conduct, Mikami’s actions, their stay at a lodging house (avoiding naming it *Aimaiya*) where they’d dried frozen clothes until morning. How Mikami had slipped out early, telling the staff he’d return via the ship’s sampan. How rushing to the pier revealed no trace of him. How he outlined what measures the Captain might take—measures that wouldn’t let matters rest.

The sailors listened in silence. Moreover, not only were they not as concerned as Ogura about Mikami having left ahead and still not returning, but they even found it rather satisfying.

“It would’ve been something if he’d just run off on the main ship,” they even joked. Not a single person came forward with an opinion about what should be done regarding the matter. Everyone, having heard this unusual, bizarre story, found themselves satisfied with both the tale and the incident. Ogura keenly felt there, once again, that he had overlooked the matter too simply, and that now he alone had been transformed into the responsible party.

Ogura was an extremely kind-hearted yet weak-willed young man—what one might call calm and sensible. Thus, he had always been a "peace-at-any-price" type. For someone as conflict-avoidant as him to be dragged into the eye of this whirlwind incident was utterly unbearable. He didn’t know what to do or how to do it, who he himself was, or what on earth he should do—everything was utterly unclear. Even though none of them had ever confided in each other before, whenever their most critical secrets became too overwhelming to handle on their own, it had become an established routine for everyone to bring their troubles to Fujiwara—someone who never appeared particularly close to any of them in daily life. Ogura too, following this example, resolved to seek Fujiwara’s opinion.

Fujiwara had withdrawn from the discussion he had been leading until now and sat silently in a corner listening to accounts of the incident. He was smoking his cigarette so fiercely it seemed tar might seep from the filter end.

“Fujiwara,” Ogura said as he sat facing him. “What do you think we should do?” “I don’t fully grasp the situation yet,” he replied, “but from what I understand, neither you nor Mikami bear any responsibility.” “You think so? But Mikami practically had to force himself to borrow ten yen. And he didn’t return last night—today he took the sampan somewhere. Now I’m terrified all this responsibility might land on me. Though of course I am responsible... What should I do? If the Captain returns, maybe I should go apologize immediately—don’t you think?”

Ogura was at a loss. He would have been far more willing—and relieved—to strip naked and leap into the sea that very moment if doing so could have erased the entire affair. He was terrified of remaining in this suspended state where “a problem of this magnitude still hadn’t been resolved.” He thought that if this problem were to persist for one or two months in a state where “it would surface someday, but no one knew when,” it might have been far easier for him to shoulder all responsibility—morally, legally (if such existed), and materially—for both his own actions and Mikami’s together.

“I can’t help but feel like this has been dragging on for three years already.” Ogura, like a hysterical woman, couldn’t get his mind off the sampan.

“Should I go apologize to the Captain?” “That’s one way to handle it.” “But you—what on earth do you intend to apologize for?” “Are you talking about how they neglected the injury of an apprentice leader they didn’t even hire, while he alone went ashore in the middle of the night?” “Or are you talking about how he passed right by the shipwreck with a nonchalant expression?” “If there are reasons and matters to apologize for, then by all means go ahead and apologize.” “But apologizing when there’s nothing to apologize for either becomes a display of your own righteousness or ends up as mere brownnosing.” “There’s no need for you to panic so much.” “Calmly consider everything from the beginning to the end.” “Setting aside victory or defeat, which side holds the moral high ground in their reasoning—shouldn’t that be immediately clear?” “Sneaking ashore under cover of night without the port authority’s permission or going ashore before quarantine—even if it were on the calmest evening imaginable—would undoubtedly be wrong.” “So as a matter of procedure, they should start by apologizing for that point first, don’t you think?”

Fujiwara had a completely different way of seeing things than I did. But that too was one way of seeing things. It was a rather brutal way of seeing things, but it was the truthful way. What should I do? Would it really be alright to do what was truly right? And so, Ogura remained unable to reach a decision.

Ogura suddenly thought that what Fujiwara said bore some resemblance to what the woman from last night had told him. That woman is a jewel! But now wasn't the time for that—but wait—hadn't that woman called me a bigger grain waster than Mikami? And she was absolutely right. What about me? I can't even get my own thoughts straight while Mikami handled everything splendidly on his own. In me there exists a bourgeois transactional spirit that betrays my own mind and wags its tail. That's what utterly ruins me—why don't I act as my mind commands like Fujiwara says? Ah! I really am a slug after all! I attribute working-class misery to lacking resolve and sacrifice—and among them all I'm foremost. Within myself I've found capitalism's quintessential coward—the sole traitor betraying workers. Before raging against ideology I must sacrifice myself—this disgraceful cowardly obsequious self-serving capitalist lackey. I must discard this fallacy that becoming bourgeoisie's lackey could save my village. What I must save isn't just my village but everything on earth.

Ogura thought with vigorous intensity—as if he might pounce upon any bourgeois he encountered this very instant—but this remained utterly impossible for him. He remained a lackey at heart. Even if everything rotted away, as long as it remained round, that was "reassurance."

Ogura, owing to his indecisive nature, was nothing more than a puppet incapable of fulfilling any role in the progression of this incident.

The insult Mikami gave to the Captain was taken by the Captain in the form of revenge against all lower-ranking sailors.

And this incident triggered what we shall call the strike. Bourgeois lackeys versus proletariat! Aboard ship, the bourgeoisie never revealed themselves to the laborers as employers.

Two or three

Mikami pushed the sampan out to the mouth of Kanagawa once, but then turned back and entered Horikawa. When he went out to the mouth of Kanagawa, he used a sheath knife to scrape off *Manshūmaru*, which had been painted on the sampan.

He tied the sampan to its mooring spot at Boren—his regular lodgings in Okina-machi—and trudged up to that same Boren run by Kobayashi. Boren’s Owner had gone out to sea opportunity-hunting in his sole property—a sampan as flimsy as a bamboo basket—using a sailor who lodged rent-free as his boatman. He was away from home. The aunt was there. She was a dark-skinned, emaciated woman with a lanky frame—a former prostitute who resembled a withered pumpkin flower and evoked an amateur country kabuki actress. In short, she was what you might call the gaunt “saury” aunt. The aunt was there.

This aunt was not Boren’s Owner’s wife. She was the wife of a sailor who had boarded a ship through Boren’s Owner’s arrangements—now working on a foreign vessel—who about four years earlier had sent a letter from Hamburg along with two hundred yen saying he would return soon. That wife, while waiting day after day for her husband’s return, saw both the two hundred yen and a year vanish into nothingness. So for about three years by then, this grass widow had been coming to Boren’s Owner here to cook meals while “lying in wait” for her husband’s return.

“Oh, Mr. Mikami,” she said. “What’s wrong? When did you arrive?” When Aunt saw Mikami lumber in, she placed her half-smoked long pipe on the elongated hibachi, spun toward the entrance, and spoke. “Out chasing opportunities, is he?” Mikami asked bluntly. “Yes, same as always—are you in a hurry?” Aunt inquired. “Or can you take your time?” “No rush. Let me come up,” he said, already stepping onto the zabuton cushion in front of the hibachi. He began puffing vigorously at Aunt’s long pipe with tobacco.

“It’s been quite some time, Mr. Mikami. You haven’t been neglecting to visit over there like this, have you? Or you’ll get scolded.” “Shinkane-cho? Every voyage, the old man must be getting back late, huh. How many are there now?” “Eleven people. Night’s coming on, there’s no food, nowhere to stay—the old man’s really in a bind,” she said, forming a circle with her finger. The eleven sailors were now resting. “Aunt, hasn’t your husband come back yet?” Mikami asked.

“He won’t be back yet.” “Over there, he’s probably got himself a red-haired, blue-eyed wife or something.” “If your husband’s out there philandering like that, he’s in for it! Ha ha ha ha!”

“If only there were someone willing.” “Ho ho ho ho ho!” “Since I’ve left the ship, I’ll be imposing on you again for a while.” “I’m counting on you, okay?” “I’ll be out for a bit—when the old man gets back, make sure to tell him that.”

As Mikami was putting on his shoes,

“And your belongings? “A room? “The old man’s been tight on funds lately—you’ve got to put in at least ten or fifteen yen upfront.” “You get it, right?” Aunt pressed, making doubly sure. “He said unless you fork over ten or fifteen yen in advance, there’s no way he’ll take you in.” “Don’t sweat it. “No need to spell it out—how crude.” “Heh heh heh heh heh.”

Mikami went out to the street. He went to a nearby pawnshop. This was his regular pawnshop. “Welcome back—it’s been a while. What have you brought us today?” the owner asked. “Well, here’s the thing... I can’t bring the item here, but I want to borrow money against the sampan for two days.” “We need to repay the cash where the Bosun arranged the loan, but we’re short right now.” “The ship—the ××-maru—is docked now, so the sampan’s moored there.” “So I want to borrow against it for two days.” “I don’t care how steep the interest is.” “What do you think?” “Could you go take a look?” “It’s tied up over there.” Mikami had been planning this since before boarding the sampan last night. And he had absolute faith in this scheme.

“I’m afraid a sampan poses difficulties.” “It won’t fit in the warehouse.” “And being a ship’s sampan makes it altogether impossible to handle.” “Please—if you had some other item instead...”

The owner refused outright. Mikami was surprised. He was indeed surprised.

He had never before planned anything as meticulously and over such a long period as this current matter. It had been a plan since their time anchored in Muroran. The plan had proceeded according to his own design up to the point of seizing the sampan. And yet, when it came to the final step, the fact that such a trivial matter would be refused—this shocked him. "But this place isn’t used to handling sampans," he immediately reconsidered.

“Goodbye.” He dashed out of there. Then he walked a bit more hurriedly than before. As he walked, he found it inconvenient that despite being such a sizable pier, not a single sampan shop had set up business. “Even shoes are being sold at secondhand night stalls, yet—” He was utterly disappointed.

All day long, he was turned away by every pawnshop and every boat lender until he was utterly consumed by misery.

"The sampan won't sell—can't do it in a hurry—but maybe I can sell it to the old man." Like a dog kicked around until both body and spirit were utterly spent, he had set his sights on Boren’s Owner. He felt no despair.

He opened the front door of Boren around eleven at night.

The old man was awake. And then, he glared sharply at him as he came up. Mikami went to sit in front of the long charcoal brazier and lit a cigarette. It was a six-tatami-mat room. In the corner, two sailors were sleeping. The old man remained silent for a while, smoking a cigarette as well.

“Old man. I’ve gotten off the ship today. I’ll need to rely on you again for a while.” Mikami began. “You got off? So you’re planning to board another ship?” The old man responded oddly. When a sailor disembarked and stayed at Boren’s, resting there while looking for work until boarding the next ship was the only path available.

“Ah, I’m done with the Manshūmaru. This time I’m aiming for a real ocean route.” But something felt off—the old man was acting suspicious. Maybe he’d gone to check on the Manshūmaru today? Still, I decided playing dumb until I could pull it off was my best bet.

“I see. An ocean route might be good.” “But for an ocean route, your record needs to be spotless.” “Show me your handbook—I’ll keep hold of it.” The masterful shuriken pierced Mikami’s chest with precision.

“Ah! The seaman’s handbook!” Mikami exclaimed, slapping his knee. “I left it on the ship.”

“Don’t joke around.” “Mikami, I went to the Manshūmaru today and heard everything.” “Enough already! You even stole the damn sampan!” “What’re you planning to do with that thing?” “Yeah!” “To hell with this! Damn you, bastard!” “The sampan’s tied up.” “Where?”

“The place where your sampan’s tied up.” “Why’d you go rowing that hulking thing over here so damn slow?” “I’m selling it off!” “You think there’s buyers for that?”

“If it’s merchandise, there ought to be buyers, shouldn’t there?”

The old man decided he would no longer have "serious" talks with Mikami. But even so, being stuck with this bastard—it meant his business would go under.

“Since you’re no good in Yokohama anymore, why don’t you try going to Kobe or somewhere? Take that sampan, huh?” “I’m waitin’ here till the *Manshū* gets back.” “At the pier.” “The seaman’s handbook is mine, I tell ya!” “The Captain of the *Manshū* said he’s gonna throw you in prison.” “The Captain though—he won’t do that.” “Before I get thrown in prison, that bastard’ll get tossed into the sea!”

“You threatened the Captain, didn’t you? ‘I’ll toss you into the sea!’” “You’ve really gone and done it now—but everyone ashore was cheering.” “‘Say what you will about Mikami—when push comes to shove, there’s no one else who’d pull off something like that.’” “But you’d better watch your back for a while—best lay low outside Yokohama for some time.” “Why not try Kobe or Nagasaki?”

“Will you get the seaman’s handbook for me?” “I could fetch it for you, but I won’t hand it over. At my place, there’s a record way better than that—take that one.” Mikami took another person’s handbook, became another person, and went to Kobe. The sampan was left in Boren’s Owner’s custody, to be returned when the *Manshū* made port.

The hiring of seamen was an entirely troublesome procedure. Under extremely rigorous procedures, they were subjected to extremely rigorous oversight, and there were few other instances of laborers being exploited to the extent they were. For example, Mikami had worked on steamships for five years and had only just reached a monthly salary of eighteen yen. It was beyond absurd. Unbelievable!

And yet, in exchange for that, their very lives were being brazenly cast aside!

24

The Manshūmaru gulped down three boilers bound for the Hokkaido Manshū Coal Mine into its gaping hold during the voyage from Yokohama to Muroran. It was an excruciatingly laborious loading operation. But Yokohama had stevedores aplenty seasoned in such cargo work. Thus the sailors pitched in without anxiety. And since the Chief Mate knew the drill himself, he kept his usual composure.

Because it was an unusual cargo, they managed to relieve their boredom and break the monotony, so much so that when they finished loading it, the sailors felt as though they had somehow accomplished something pleasant. From Yokohama to Muroran, the *Manshūmaru* appeared three times larger than it had when traveling from Muroran to Yokohama. Because there was no cargo, the ship plowed through the waves with its screw propeller, its red underbelly almost entirely exposed. Consequently, the distance from the deck to the water’s surface grew significantly. The seawater pump on the outer deck ended up hissing and hissing, just like an air pump.

In this situation, Hata, the toilet cleaner, found his task made a hundred times more difficult. He would either go all the way to the freshwater pump to draw water—a method he seldom used, as it would cause quite a commotion if discovered—or tie a rope to an oil can and haul it up from the sea. This was truly an unpleasant task. It seemed that even a single oil can of water shouldn’t be so heavy or take so long to linger halfway up. If he neglected to flush water through the toilet just once in the evening due to the hassle of hauling it up, the pipe would become packed with frozen feces. On days when it froze, Hata would literally "grab feces"—on the ship, encountering a clog was called "grabbing feces."

The pipe—an iron tube about one shaku in diameter—would freeze in such a way that the sewage reservoir itself seemed to solidify. When it froze, Hata would first descend to the engine room to fetch boiling water. The distance from the engine room to the outer deck was immense—the climb up and down to the boiler room alone was grueling. Most crucially, he had to dangle an oil can brimming with scalding water without spilling a drop—any leakage would scald the stokers below. He had to scale that slippery iron ladder coated in oil. This required meticulous attention and thorough preparation. He performed this task—carrying the bucket down, climbing back up while preventing slips and spills—sweating as if in the peak of summer's heat, then immediately transitioning to frozen toilet maintenance upon exiting the boiler room.

Using boiling water and a bamboo stick, he applied both chemical and physical actions to eliminate the crew’s filth that had stubbornly frozen solid. Before pouring the boiling water, he attempted a fierce physical operation using the handle of a bamboo broom—"physical operation" being a term borrowed from the Second Mate’s lexicon—and when gaps began to form between the molecules of feces, he would—at this moment, never sparingly drizzle it in drops, but resolutely—dash the boiling water all at once.

Instantly, an intense stench rose with the steam, as though someone had opened a vat of fuming nitric acid. And this steam, much like fuming nitric acid, made even its vapor appear yellow. And amidst this billowing steam and stench, if there came a thunderous roar, it was proof that the waste had flushed out. If, unfortunately, the sound did not follow, Hata had to repeat the same process several times.

No sooner had Hata poured the boiling water into the waste pot than he dropped both stick and bucket there and went to observe from the side how filth gushed through the scuppers.

It was a dirty job. And it was an unpleasant, difficult job. It was just as unpleasant as squatting over a toilet. That it all gushed out forcefully meant—just as when squatting to clear one’s bowels—both a thorough internal cleansing and something pleasantly satisfying. Hata watched the cascading filth spewing from the scuppers toward the Pacific’s surging waves and thought this was truly a gratifying experience no one but a toilet cleaner could savor.

“Now I feel good, and everyone else feels good too!” Hata went to the boiler room to wash and dry his garment. And as he washed the soiled garment, he thought that if there was a god, it should reside precisely in the cesspit. “For if there were gods or buddhas, how could they monopolize such vast spaces when the humans they supposedly love live in pigsties beneath temple floors or under shrine eaves? If such gods exist, they’d need vanquishing by Iwami Jūtarō—couldn’t be the real thing. Even now, humans who should rank below gods declare ‘Until all have bread, none may hold sweets’! If that’s so, God belongs in the cesspit!”

According to Hata, God was terrifying and needed to burrow into filthy places.

“I saw God in the toilet.” “I’ve never seen Him anywhere else,” Hata would assert at every opportunity. “And that God wears work clothes just like mine, always cleaning the toilets before I even get there! That was a laborer. That took the form of a laborer who doesn’t receive wages!” “And if God were neither a laborer nor present in the toilet, I could never drag myself ashore to go shuffling around searching for Him in temples or shrines. Taking real bread from humans and offering spiritual bread that can’t be eaten or fill their stomachs—that’s not God. That’s the bourgeoisie or their kin!”

This was Hata’s religious view. "If that God received even eight yen a month in wages, he’d just be Hata-kun." "The only trouble was there’s just one difference—what a pain." Fujiwara laughed derisively after saying this.

It could safely be said there was not a single person aboard who believed in religion. Only the bosun and carpenter would pull out Kotohira Daimyōjin from under their bunks' drawers during riots. They habitually reasoned that if those things offered even slight utility, they'd be missing out by not using them. Hell lay just one plank below. Though people—sailors especially—might have wanted to rely on some superhuman "god or buddha," they ultimately found such notions too absurd to truly believe. Religion had become either utterly worthless or been ambiguously professionalized through sophistical theology and scriptures designed to obscure its true nature. Now religion barely sustained itself only by serving as henchmen for usurers or legal apologists for murderers.

The story veered off into an absurd detour.

25

The Manshūmaru was scheduled to quickly finish cargo handling in Muroran, thoroughly paint the ship’s masts and other components while anchored there, and return to Yokohama to spend New Year’s. And according to that schedule, if they carried out every task at maximum speed and all proceeded smoothly, they would barely arrive in Yokohama on New Year’s Eve.

Therefore, our Manshūmaru—resembling an uchiwa fan with its pig-like body drenched in sweat—was pushing its full speed of nine knots. And due to this high speed, the hull raced onward while quivering violently from its own vibrations—like those of the Pacific Line’s *Emuroshia* at full throttle. The reason our Manshūmaru shook at a mere nine knots was that she had been built from deck to bottom as a hollow cavern without support beams in any direction—all to devour as much coal as possible. It was like the inside of a soccer ball.

Winter in Hokkaido was plagued by dense fog. The foghorns sounded by steamships, the cannon-like fog signals fired from lighthouses. The Manshūmaru—which had tumbled into the sea like a football—was blinded by the fog and thus absolutely had to reduce its nine-knot speed even further. However, when it came to considering New Year’s, the Captain could not afford to reduce speed from this point onward. Instead, he recklessly and incessantly sounded the foghorn.

It resembled the distant howl of a dog heralding some calamitous event. The tone could not help but instill in its listeners something akin to an uneasy premonition. Though the same whistle sounded lonesome when signaling departure, it rang vigorous and triumphant upon arrival. Yet when sounding through fog, this identical whistle dragged people into an ominous, unsettled state of restless anxiety. The Captain himself—the very one pulling its strings—kept yanking them again and again as if pursued by their own reverberations. The foghorn grew ever deeper, and like the scenery-stealing fog itself, it robbed hearts of light and calm.

Even with precise nautical charts and a compass, and even though the sea stretched as vast as a lake teeming with minnows, being unable to see their destination left them deeply unsettled. To the sailors, it seemed as though a blind man were shouldering his cane and charging ahead in literal blind recklessness.

Nishizawa and Hata went up to the bridge and observed Ogura steering. Just as a car driver constantly turns their steering wheel, the steamship’s helm was ceaselessly rotated and adjusted while locked in a staring contest with the compass ahead. Even at nine knots per hour, this speed—which held the entire ship under its dominion—exerted a psychological influence on the Captain that was anything but sluggish when he stood on the bridge, where nothing but waves stretched before him and every part of the vessel obeyed his command. This small fan-shaped ship felt majestic to him. When fog thickened particularly dense, he could even envision this two-thousand-ton vessel expanded to twenty thousand tons. For the fog blurred the ship’s entire form into vague contours that imagination could magnify at will.

In the darkness, knowing no one was watching, just as most people might suddenly strut two steps like a police chief putting on airs, the *Manshūmaru* appeared to sail with all the pretension of a grand vessel.

But even so, it was strange. Daikoku Island, blocking Muroran Port’s entrance, should by now have marked their scheduled arrival time, guided their compass, and matched their nautical charts. Yet in reality, neither Daikoku Island’s lighthouse nor its fog signal could be seen or heard. Our *Manshūmaru* raced at full nine-knot speed, with the Captain himself standing on the bridge directing Ogura at the helm.

Hata and Nishizawa each intently observed how to take the steamship's helm and maintain its course, studying the process in their minds. They found it utterly bewildering how the ship raced frantically through the impenetrable fog with nothing but a compass and nautical chart to guide it. The *Manshūmaru*, ceaselessly sounding its pitiful distant howl of a dog, thus pressed onward.

Above the fog, the darkness of night began to spill its ink. Everything blurred like the last vestiges of sight in someone about to go blind. Then, suddenly, everyone on the bridge—from the Captain to Hata—leapt up. A gigantic warship with terrifying speed fired its main battery and, with that thunderous roar, came charging straight at the bow of the pitiful *Manshūmaru*. It was an entirely split-second situation.

“Hard a-port!” the Captain shouted as he leapt toward Ogura, who was operating the helm. His voice resounded desperately across the bridge. The signal device to the engine room commanded “Full Speed Astern” and pierced the air with a clang-clang-clang-clang.

The Captain, Ogura, and everyone else on the bridge had steeled themselves for a collision. Hata and Nishizawa were utterly bewildered.

All of this occurred in an instant too brief to catch a breath. And then, the ship turned sharply. Hata, Nishizawa, and even the Captain staggered violently despite their experience. And the mountainous monster that had seemed on the verge of collision—(Hata and Nishizawa had thought it a warship)—vanished to port at full speed, as if carried off by the wind. And then, from the monster came a rapid succession of thunderous booms—*boom-boom-boom*—as cannon fire roared out.

Like a pitiful puppy, our Manshūmaru now stood frozen in place. So to speak, she had been paralyzed with fear. They frantically sounded the emergency whistle, called for help, and hurled the anchor into those waters. The monster—as swift as a warship—that had so startled the Manshūmaru moments ago was none other than Daikoku Island, unchanging as though a hundred years were but a day, and its cannons had been fog signals. Our Manshūmaru had charged headlong at nine knots toward the rear of Daikoku Island, coming within twenty ken of it.

It was close. When the anchor was cast, everyone unintentionally sighed in relief. At Daikoku Island’s lighthouse, they had spotted a ship charging recklessly yet boldly toward them and had frantically sent out danger signals. Fortunately, this lawless one halted its violent rush at the final moment.

The Manshūmaru anchored there to wait out the night like a blind man frozen in place, as if declaring, "Moving would be dangerous." It was a bizarrely outlandish night. Both the ship and the senior officers remained restless. Only those on deck managed to sleep soundly through the night.

26 The next morning, the *Manshūmaru* discovered her location under crystalline surroundings illuminated by snow. She had thrust her head into an extremely perilous place. The sailors found themselves facing snow-covered rocks resembling eagle talons—so close they could nearly touch them—on Daikoku Island before their eyes, while to port they discovered a reef that turned the sea black like a demon’s pupil. As if ashamed to have her unsightly form witnessed, she stole into Muroran Port at dawn on tiptoe, maintaining an air of perfect innocence.

The *Manshūmaru* should have immediately docked at the elevated pier for coal loading, but until the boiler’s cargo work was completed, she had to remain offshore—so she dropped anchor with an air of nonchalance, almost dead center in Muroran Bay, using the very chain she had just retrieved. The launch belonging to the Hokkai Tansan Company, to which the *Manshūmaru* belonged, came surging energetically. Both the stern sampan and the outer sampan were rowed up by boatmen—wearing coats made from red blankets, who looked like prisoners. Okuriurou’s Daughter also came up promptly.

The sailors returned to the deck to have breakfast before preparing for the boiler unloading. On the dining table were rice, miso soup, and takuan pickles. In one corner of the seating area, Okuriurou’s daughter—a retail merchant who came to sell snacks and daily necessities to the ship—had stacked up boxes containing fruits and cheap sweets and was waiting for the right moment to open them.

Sailors, no matter how much they loved alcohol, were also fond of sweets. It was akin to prisoners in a jail seeing guards pass by with sweet buns they ate instead of lunch and thinking those guards were the happiest people in the world simply because they could eat such buns. In prison and aboard ship, sweets were more precious than diamonds. Hata devoted all his income to serving Okuriurou. He was not the type to indulge in sailors’ conventional vices, yet he "ruined himself with sweets." He was extremely poor—eight yen a month. Yet despite this, he simply couldn’t stop himself from eating about thirty sweet bean cakes. However, the finances did not permit him to eat that much. He always thought it would be better if Okuriurou simply didn’t come at all. Yet on days when Okuriurou didn’t come, he was listless. Truly, he was a man who "ruined himself with sweets."

Even in this situation, he quietly took out his money bag from his shelf, and upon seeing a single 50-sen coin glinting inside, felt an overwhelming temptation toward the snack box. "I really do need work clothes and a pair of shoes," he thought. He devoted all his income to the sweets shop; he owned only two sets of work clothes, had no shoes, and in even the coldest weather wore rubber-soled tabi stiff with frost. And, utilizing the tops of the Bosun’s rubber boots, he wore only the shin portions like makeshift gaiters. Another way to understand how he spent—or rather, *couldn’t* spend—money on anything but sweets was to look at his head. It was as if it were a feather duster—overgrown and utterly filthy. The Bosun, concerned about that, specifically lent him one yen as barbering fees—it was from the Bosun’s coffers, exploited at twenty percent monthly interest whenever the sweets seller came, that he had borrowed that single yen. The Bosun never lent him money for sweets, but Hata had requested barbering fees—with that sum, he devoured all the sweet bean cakes in one go.

He had found God in the toilet but grumbled that a poverty god inhabited the snack box. "But once New Year comes around, that'll work itself out somehow. No point worrying about it now." While making excuses to himself, he approached the snack box belonging to Okuriurou's Daughter.

“So, got any decent sweets here?” “They’re all tasty scraps though.” The snack vendor answered in thick Tōhoku dialect.

Hata took each tempting sweet one by one and ate them. And each time, he never failed to calculate the cost in his head. He wanted to eat sweet bean cakes, but Okuriurou hadn’t brought any.

In Muroran, only Tōyōken—Muroran’s top confectionery—made them. He would nonchalantly barge into that cake hall dressed like that. Before he even felt like he’d eaten properly, Hata had already devoured his entire planned budget of fifty sen. Since there was no other way beyond borrowing more money, he had no choice but to wait until Ogura returned. For Hata, sweets occupied the highest pinnacle of all desires.

If Mikami were present, Okuriurou’s Daughter would be mercilessly bullied under the joint front of the Bosun, the carpenter, and Mikami herself. Knowing full well what awaited her, she came to the ship wearing two layers of loincloths to earn her bread through Okuriurou. She was pitifully ugly—so wretchedly ugly that words could scarcely describe it. She appeared to be twenty-three or twenty-four years old. Her very existence as a woman seemed a cosmic miscalculation. When she grew out her hair and faced the mirror to tie it up, one imagined she must have cursed nature itself. Okuriurou, who accompanied her to the ship’s stokehold, stood in stark contrast. Though roughly the same age, she embodied the northern beauty archetype.

The sailors—particularly the Bosun and carpenters, who shamed her so pitifully that it pained others to witness—bluntly declared she closely resembled an “Indian ape,” berated her in earnest as though this resemblance were an intolerable flaw, and mocked her to humiliating disgrace. Even so, she would join in, giggling shrilly as she frolicked about, forgetting that her snack box—the very foundation of her livelihood—was being overturned, all while resisting and joking along.

They were rolling around roughhousing like puppies on the dimly lit deck. Hata had heard she sold not only snacks but also her flesh, yet even imagining such a thing seemed impossible to him. She appeared to possess none of the charms a woman could offer a man. She was uglier than the filthy men themselves. Yet it was only much later that Hata too came to understand she indeed provided things other than sweets, just as the rumors had said. It was the Bosun’s room.

Is this not akin to spiders devouring one another within a single bottle?

But on that day, none of those things occurred. Her sweets were picked one or two at a time by the sailors who finished their meals. The Bosun and the carpenter did not forget—at least as a formality—to push her into Hata’s bunk. Next to Hata’s bunk, the apprentice sailor—weakened and emaciated from his injuries—was still moaning. Hata bought two sticks of Korean candy for the apprentice sailor. The apprentice sailor shed tears of joy.

Illness, injury, even death—for people worn down by life and inured to suffering—were treated as trifles. People worn down by life were filled with pain scarcely different from that of illness or injury, even in their soundest state. For what reason did humans exist in such a state? For whose sake? Why must humans suffer so much? These were not matters to be discussed here.

What’s curious is that this daughter of Okuriurou later—four years after this was written—had ended up cohabiting with the ship’s cook for just two weeks. Two weeks later, she was sold off as a barmaid for the cook’s benefit and sent to the Yūbari Coal Fields, while the cook sold off his household goods, became a live-in son-in-law at a widow’s home, turned himself into an okuriurou, and began bringing daily necessities and sweets aboard the ship by boat—though this occurred much later.

When the sailors finished their meals, the Bosun went to the Chief Mate’s quarters to inquire about the work sequence. The Chief Mate ordered them to prepare the boiler in the meantime before the crane arrived. The Bosun returned topside and barked, “We’re taking off the hatch covers now!”

There, the sailors headed out to the deck.

27 With everyone from the storekeeper to the Bosun and carpenter having gone out to the deck, only the apprentice sailor Yasui—who had pointlessly spent over a week writhing in agony in his bunk within a dark room (it was practically a darkroom)—the sampan boatman, and Okuriurou’s Daughter remained. Okuriurou’s Daughter was sitting on the edge of Hata’s bunk. The sampan boatman sat down in front of the stove, and everyone remained silent.

On the outer deck, the sounds of beams striking the deck and winches revolving echoed as if the entire ship were a drum. The apprentice sailor was utterly bored, managing a body he could barely move on his own. "Miss, could you give me some sweets?" The apprentice sailor spoke in an utterly exhausted voice, as if whispering. “Oh! You startled me! Is someone there... in this place?” she exclaimed, leaping up to peer into the apprentice sailor’s dark room. There, the apprentice sailor was indeed lying.

“Oh, it’s just the apprentice! You scared me there!” She brought her snack box and spread it out before the apprentice sailor. The apprentice sailor bought thirty sen worth of them. Then he devoured them voraciously, as if they were delicious.

“Boatman! I want to go ashore today—please take me.” The apprentice sailor called out to the Boatman. “Ah, sure thing! You looking to visit a brothel?” The Boatman was a remarkably large man with a kind demeanor, in his fifties. “Nah. I’m hurt, so I gotta get to the hospital.” He thought that this time, he would finally make it to the hospital.

The apprentice sailor thought. "The fact that I'm injured—everyone must have forgotten about it by now. My injury must be a trivial matter to everyone else. But that would seem too heartless. What's worse, my leg has festered and is unbearably painful. Today, no matter what, I must ask the Captain to have me admitted to the hospital. If I don't take care of my own body, who will? I'll have the Boatman carry me to the hospital. I realized I had to do everything myself from now on."

“Boatman, is there a good hospital in Muroran?” The apprentice sailor asked. “Ah, there’s a good hospital—Muroran Hospital—up high in the hills.” “From the pier to there—how far is it?” “Well, let’s see… about twelve or thirteen chō, I’d say.”

There was no way someone could carry me there alone. Even if they had a sled here, it wouldn’t work—and that wasn’t happening—and if the Captain didn’t take this seriously, this time I would surely die during the voyage. “Is that the municipal hospital?” the apprentice sailor asked. “It’s not municipal, but it’s public,” the boatman answered. “But how’d you even get hurt in the first place?” he asked.

“You see, during the last voyage— “From the very day we sailed out of Muroran, there was this violent storm.” “During that crossing, I got caught between the rudder mechanism’s chain and its cover.” The apprentice sailor began recounting the events of that time here for the first time. “That day, I’d gone to Tomono Warehouse to fetch cabbages. “The old man up front told me to get ’em.” “So I put three cabbages in a basket and was walking across the deck toward the cook’s quarters when the ship lurched—I planted my left foot hard.” “But damn it all—the deck was frozen slick right where I stepped. Slipped straight toward the chain.” “Then that rudder gear started clattering—next thing I knew, I was wedged in the chain, half my body stuffed into the cover.” “They dragged me facedown—smashed my chest against the deck something fierce.” “I blacked out cold—only knew my leg got mangled bad. Never figured my chest and hands would keep hurting like this even after they pulled me free.” “But even if this leg heals up... if I gotta limp forever... what’ll I do?” “Ain’t got nothin’ but this body—can’t haul carts limping. No coin for school neither. Eight kids back home—sharecropper dad and ma working themselves raw in the fields. Still can’t make ends meet—had to send the little ’uns off as nursemaids.” “So I signed on this ship—heard the pay was good. Look where that got me.” “Now I don’t know how I’ll keep going.” “Times like this... even dirt poor... wish I had Ma and Pa here,” he said, voice breaking.

Even this youth, who sold his labor power to live, now felt a vague yet deep-seated indignation over the significant impairment inflicted upon that very labor power he sought to sell. After his injury, he had Ichthammol applied a few times and changed the gauze on his foot himself only a few times. He had become severely emaciated due to the pain from his wound. The pain had strained his nerves to the utmost.

When the sailors went out to work and no one remained on deck, he would let out the cries of pain he had been holding back. He shouted whatever came to mind without restraint. And he listened intently to his own voice. The pain in his leg had become severe after five or six hours since the injury. He thrashed his body—limp and exhausted like sodden wheat gluten—so violently from his bunk that he nearly tumbled onto the deck. He screamed like a madman. And even he himself had a very clear awareness of the pain, but having focused all his nerves solely on that, he was oblivious to his own thrashing and screams.

When the sailors returned and saw him writhing in agony, they could do nothing but console him: "If you thrash about too much, it'll only make the wound worse. You need to stay still and endure it." The sailors uniformly felt profound revulsion toward the apprentice sailor's injury. It was not that his injury had been his own fault. Nor was it because he was the one who had been injured. It was because the sailors harbored precisely the same emotion as the apprentice sailor—who, regarding his own injury, had strained his nerves to the limit, cursing himself and the world until at last despairingly cursing even his own foot. The sailors, whether consciously aware of it or not, could not escape feeling their own fate—wailing, screaming, thrashing about—searing into them day and night, in meals and sleep, like a heated iron pressed against their skin. There was no escaping it.

The sailors were made gloomy by the apprentice sailor’s injury as if it were their own. And they were irritated as if it were their own injury. They were frantic, trying to escape it. Their cold, indifferent attitude stemmed partly from their dulled nerves, partly from being accustomed to such things, and partly from a desire to escape being confronted too clearly with their own fate.

Hata had cut an oil can into two pieces to fashion a toilet and placed it in the corner where his and the apprentice sailor’s bunks formed an inverted L-shape. When no one was in sight, Yasui relieved himself in the makeshift toilet. The effort he exerted at that moment was truly immense. After relieving himself, he would fall into a state resembling unconsciousness from fatigue and pain. He was seized by the hallucination that everything was happening for a second time. It was as though he were viewing everything through cloudy calcite—all was hazy and doubled. He felt that even history from the distant past, as well as the fleeting thoughts he had just now, were occurring for a second time. He would trace back in thought where he had experienced and where he had thought that first instance. And there, his previous life existed. The unceasingly impoverished life as the hungry, cold child of a tenant farmer—and that too unfolded in a dual form. Memories of summer vacations from his elementary school days would become jumbled with his current injured, bedridden state. “This is exactly my second time,” he vaguely thought about his injury. “At that time, while everyone else was resting, I alone went out to the rice paddies with my father to pull weeds.” At times when I should have rested, I was out weeding in the boiling paddy water. I was never born with time to rest. But wait—didn’t I get injured back then? “And did I rest then?” Then, his pitiful, exhausted consciousness dragged him back from weeding rice paddies during summer vacation to the bitter cold of the *Manshūmaru*. And once more he had to writhe and moan in agony.

At the height of his excruciating pain, he felt.

Having to endure such pain so vividly—how utterly cruel. He wished instead for even greater pain—something he could suffer through in numbed oblivion—and such unfathomable thoughts consumed him. Yet this deliberate imposition of prolonged, unnecessary suffering clearly stemmed from the Captain’s cruelty. A budget for medical expenses had been allocated to the ship by the company upon request. But this would have been more accurately described as funds for senior crew members’ family healthcare or special allowances. And from these allocated funds, injuries like his were being “curtailed” by the Captain.

As for all matters aboard the ship, only the Captain knew them—just as a Sultan alone knew what transpired within the hall of Turkish Whirling Dervishes. The senior crew members were aware of matters that were less closely guarded. And the laborers did not even know how much the company was allocating for their food expenses. If one sought to exploit others, the fact that the exploited knew “something”—even something as trivial as two plus two equals four—would make it difficult for the exploiters to devise worse schemes. In other words, it was better if they knew nothing at all. Knowing bred troublesome reasoning! Thus these surface-dwelling “rogues” were left completely ignorant. Even their logbooks had been confiscated by the ship’s office. And their identification seals along with them. Thus they were branded as rogues.

There, those who plundered everything being regarded as gentlemen differed not one whit from eighteenth-century British gentry. And those robbed were always the rogues! Truly, those robbed were always the rogues! Between takers and taken, gentlemen and rogues knew no end!

The fact that he couldn’t even assert his right to survival must have infuriated the apprentice sailor so terribly. Yet despite hospitals with tiled roofs standing ready to treat human ailments, he had simply been sent back by ship from Yokohama. And perhaps this was because the Captain had merely ‘forgotten’ what he’d been told by the Chief Mate about his own ship’s apprentice sailor being injured. Of course, it might also stem from his refusal to deign hospitalizing such riffraff and his failure to recognize any necessity for the injury to “heal properly.” And that was certainly how it was.

It was indeed as it should be. Because there was a difference between "class" and "status." And this was because "class" and "status" separated and divided humans far more severely than they separated humans from apes. Thus, the apprentice sailor’s injury left the sailors with an inescapably grim impression, like a cataract clouding one’s vision—no matter how much they rubbed at it, it would not clear. And like a needle hidden in bedding, it pricked these rogues now and then. And eventually, the needle would inevitably jolt these "rogues" into leaping up from the sheer intensity of its sting.

The apprentice sailor, for the sake of his own life—more precious to him than anything—resolved that today, whether the other party was the Captain or anyone else, he would negotiate. And he decided that he should consult with Fujiwara.

28

Meanwhile, the sailors removed the hatch covers and detached the beams to unload the boiler. They climbed down along the scaffolding attached inside the mast into the *dumbler*. It had been securely packed. While recalling how utterly troublesome it had been to secure it firmly and work on fastening it from every direction to prevent shifting during the voyage, the sailors now removed it. The removal proceeded with incomparably greater ease than the installation.

The crane now approached the *Manshūmaru* from the direction where Muroran Station’s engine shed could be seen, its monstrous frame reluctantly towed by the launch. Mounted atop a square pontoon were an iron arm—with a skeletal frame and the power to hoist twenty-five tons—and a winch; like a poppy-seed-sized ant dragging a beetle, the small steam vessel strained to tow it closer, inching forward through the struggle.

On the ship’s side, the boiler had been released from all its restraints so it could be hoisted up at any moment. Now it could only wait for the giant arm to pull it free from that prison. The crane approached. Thrusting out its great arm, it extended over the ship’s hatch. Then a wire rope dangled down. At the rope’s tip hung a hook as thick as a man’s arm—too heavy for any single person to move. Yet in Muroran there were no stevedores accustomed to this cargo work. Though the massive hook hung ready to catch anything below and haul it up, the stevedores merely fumbled uselessly.

The sailors also assisted with the cargo handling. But regardless, their footing was on the boiler’s round, painted surface. To a surface that could not have been more slippery, the wire rope used to secure it was as thick as a man’s arm. If they fumbled, they would inevitably be flung by the wire. Moreover, the hook was something that couldn’t be moved by a single person. Consequently, the work was exceedingly difficult. However, the time the Captain had allocated for this boiler unloading was extremely short. The Chief Mate was also well aware of this. It went without saying that the Chief Mate, too, had wanted to spend New Year’s in Yokohama. Therefore, he too was rushing to unload the boiler. Thus, the boiler was being rushed on two fronts, but the stevedores were not only few in number but also less experienced than those in Yokohama. The work was not making much headway. The Chief Mate placed one foot on the hatch,

“Pull that wire! Not that way! From there to here!” “Bosun! Hook that wire over there and pull! There—the shackle’s come loose!” “No good!” “Bosun! You idiot!” “Wrong way!” “There! Hook it on! Heave-ho! Tsk—it’s come off again!” “Slack! Slack!” He turned crimson and bellowed like an auctioneer. Despite his mounting frustration, the boiler refused to catch on the crane’s hook. The Chief Mate began raising his voice louder still, as if he could physically hook the wire through sheer volume. Then he started foully berating the Bosun and sailors as if they alone were to blame for the hook’s unwieldy size.

The gentlemanly manager showed his true colors.

“Carpenter! Why’re you heading to the corner? Pull that wire!” “Bosun! What’re you doing spinning round like a damn mayfly?! Circling won’t lift the boiler! Where d’you think you’re going? Idiot!” He might as well have been holding up a sign proclaiming the Bosun’s stupidity. Just as the Bosun—viewed from above—seemed only to circle the boiler pointlessly, the Chief Mate did nothing but orbit the Bosun himself, hammering home the man’s incompetence with every revolution.

The Bosun panicked. He no longer knew where to even begin.

Fujiwara climbed onto the boiler and waited for the hook to reach a position where it would naturally catch. And he grew even more furious at how the spineless Bosun and carpenter were being cursed to hell and back by the Chief Mate, as they always were. "You’re all such fools! Even slaves aren’t that servile! You pigs squeeze twenty percent a month out of the sailors! Chief Mate bastard, say something to me! I’ll make you regret this, you usurer’s errand boy!"

He stood rigid atop the boiler like a loosening bolt. The hook descended neatly between him and Hata standing opposite. Hata lifted the wire hook’s eye—thick as an arm. It was a weight impossible to hold for even a second. Fujiwara swayed the hook with his body’s weight toward the eye Hata held. It reached precisely there but hadn’t lowered quite enough.

It was no good! It didn’t catch. “What the hell! You moron! Why aren’t you hooking it!” “Idiot!” “Cut it out!” The Chief Mate hurled abuse directly at Stoki. “Hata! Get down! The Chief Mate’s order is to cease.” Just like that, Fujiwara climbed down from the boiler along the wire and jumped off. Hata followed suit.

“What’s wrong, Stoki? Where do you think you’re going?!” “Bastard!” The Chief Mate was acting completely deranged. Fujiwara went down and called Nishizawa to a place out of sight from the deck.

“Can you really work like that, being called an idiot and told to stop over and over?” “What?” “Why don’t we just abandon ship before docking at the pier? This is absurd!” “We ain’t slaves!” Fujiwara shot a sharp glare at the Bosun. “Cut it out!” “Cut it out!” “Honestly, we can abandon this piece of junk anytime.” Nishizawa also agreed.

“A strike, huh? That’s something we absolutely have to do.” Hata also agreed. The Chief Mate panicked on the deck as if he had a mochi stuck in his throat. The Bosun below turned pale as if about to have a fit. And he rushed off to where Stoki was. “Stoki, what’s wrong? Did something upset you?” The Bosun asked timidly, as if another Chief Mate had arrived.

“The Bosun doesn’t seem angry at all,” Fujiwara said. “We only stopped because the Chief Mate ordered us to stop. And we’ve decided to stop assisting with cargo handling from now on. There are stevedores from shore who came specifically for that purpose. Besides, we can’t work with that kind of abuse being hurled around in front of them.” “Don’t say that—please! We’ll sort everything out later! Just get back to work! So what if they treat me like an animal? Come on, Stoki—do it!” The Bosun knew he was being called a brute. But the relationship between Bosun and Chief Mate differed completely from that between sailors and Chief Mate.

In the former existed a relationship between usurer and clerk; in the latter was a relationship of usurer versus laborer. "There's no doing or not doing about it—we're just obeying orders by stopping. You've been told plenty yourself to quit since earlier, Bosun. If we don't stop now, there'll be endless nagging later."

In any case, for the Bosun, it had become a noisy, troublesome affair that would cause problems later. The Bosun, while frantically smoothing his bald head, desperately pleaded—first with Stoki, then with Nishizawa, and from Nishizawa to Hata—for them to resume work.

On deck, the Chief Mate turned pale. He realized something was wrong. However, there was nothing he could do. At the crane, workers waited with sleeves rolled up, ready to hoist at his slightest signal. On deck, stevedores who had been pacing anxiously under the Chief Mate’s shouts grew bewildered when sailors abruptly climbed down from the boiler.

29 The Chief Mate shouted from the deck, “Bosun!” The Bosun grew increasingly flustered and suddenly began frantically smoothing his bald head as he pleaded. “Look—he’s shouting!” “I’m begging you—just hoist this boiler!” “We’ll sort everything out afterward! Look—he’s hollering again!” “Please—Stoki! Nishizawa! Hata—please!” Even while saying this, he kept dashing to the mast ladder every time the Chief Mate called out, only to come running back. “Right? “Hey—you’ll do it, yeah?” “C’mon—I’m counting on you!”

“We’re just stopping because of the Chief Mate’s orders. Even if you tell us to do it, Bosun, we can’t.” Stoki held firm. “This is a real mess, damn it! Please—the Chief Mate’s calling for me now, so I’m heading up. Just handle things while I’m gone. Got it? Think of it as helping me out. Right?” The Bosun, dressed like a stunted traveling performer’s joker, climbed the ladder attached to the mast.

The three sailors sat down there. They realized their power was great. They were merely three sailors. Moreover, they had merely descended from the boiler without saying a word. And yet because of that alone—this boiler wouldn’t move, that crane waited in vain, the stevedores idly stood by, the ship’s departure was delayed, and the Chief Mate had to turn pale. And this stems from the simple reason of temporarily suspending labor! And this speaks to how the very foundation of all society is maintained by workers’ labor. Though an extremely simple matter, it remains the one fact we’re never told!

The sailors felt that way and lit their cigarettes.

Fujiwara said to Nishizawa and Hata, “This is still nothing. We can’t escalate to a strike over such a trivial reason. This is a spasmodic convulsion of laborers. If a strike breaks out spasmodically and without a plan, it will inevitably fail. Still, depending on how things go, even this might become the spark for a real strike. A strike with a total membership of three must be unprecedented in history, huh?”

“But we’ve got to resist the Captain, Chief, and Bosun of this ship at every chance,” Fujiwara said to Nishizawa and Hata. “The Captain and Chief Mate are colluding—they get our food allowance from the company at the end of each month, then make the Bosun lend it out to others at twenty percent monthly interest. Look—if you don’t take on debt, your wages don’t go up and you get treated like shit. Even those without debts see their pay steadily increase over six months. They only raise wages to collect interest on our loans. That’s why they push us to visit brothels. With debt comes their twenty percent profit, plus it keeps our heads down and us trapped here.” “That’s why someone like Fujiwara here stays Stoki forever,” Nishizawa interjected. “And why Hata always gets his raise later than me.” Nishizawa framed his argument using their own circumstances as examples. Indeed, through astonishing self-study, Fujiwara had become far more knowledgeable about social realities and general academics than any academy-trained captain.

Ogura learned English, mathematics, and other subjects from Fujiwara. He studied with the intention of taking the higher maritime officer exam. Ogura was also intelligent—in a little over a year, he advanced through *National Leader* up to number five and progressed to higher levels in algebra. And he realized that neither the Captain nor the Chief had attained their positions through intellectual clarity. But Ogura attempted to escape overwork, subjugation, and humiliation by elevating his position. Only after exhausting every effort did he come to understand this: that saving even himself alone was not merely difficult—it was impossible—and this realization reduced him to a broken man. He detested oppression intensely, but instead of risking his life to resist, he schemed to cling to authority’s walls to hide himself—and for this, the sailors called him a coward.

The Bosun came down from the deck. Then he came to where the three were smoking their cigarettes and said: "The Chief Mate was furious and ordered your immediate disembarkation, but I managed to plead with him and get him to stop. So please—once you finish this smoke, start on the cargo work right away. If you don’t, the Chief Mate is ready to go fetch replacements from Boren." Fujiwara knew that in the case of seamen, the industrial reserve army had been systematically mobilized and prepared by Boren, and that due to unclear circumstances, strike-breaking could be carried out without hesitation. And he knew that in this case as well, it could be carried out. And he knew that resuming work was the most advantageous course.

“Then tell the Chief Mate we’ll work after a smoke break,” said Stoki as he readily agreed. The Bosun, springing up in relief, climbed back to the deck. Fujiwara told Nishizawa and Hata that since the situation was entirely unfavorable, they had to bide their time—with such small numbers, seizing the right opportunity was paramount to achieving total victory. “That time isn’t now.” “Therefore, to wait for that moment and demonstrate our strength, it’s better to endure for now.” Moreover, since it wasn’t anything serious yet, he elaborated on various points.

“But this is actually a prime moment—it’s right before New Year’s, and we’re at that critical point where we might just barely make it back to Yokohama.” “All conditions are aligned—winter’s the only drawback.” “The apprentice got injured without even being properly hired and then cast aside—if we’re content to be nothing but draft horses or slaves, fine—but there’s not a soul in Muroran idling around at this time of year anyway,” Hata pressed his case for immediate action.

“So that’s why we have to work now. Right now, since it’s unclear whether there are any replacements resting in Muroran, we have no choice but to work for the time being. Instead, when we go ashore tonight, we can check whether there are any replacements resting here or not. And if it turns out there are none, we can prevent the ship from moving at the moment of departure. Even if they were to summon sailors by telegram to Yokohama, it would take at least four or five days, no matter how quickly they acted. What’s more, it’s New Year’s. It’s right at the start of the New Year. Right? Moreover, we need to see how they handle the apprentice today. If it turns out they provide no aid to him whatsoever from the ship, I think we must rally the engine department as well and make this an issue for the entire ship.”

"The problem is that Mikami’s issue remains unresolved." "I expect the Captain’s side will try to use that as a pretext." "In short, our power can truly manifest all of this only when we acutely feel every slave-like condition and their beastly slaughter is exposed." "Whether that moment won’t come for some time or arrives tomorrow morning—we must keep vigilant watch. Right?" "So I think it’s better to wait until their tyranny becomes even more blatant than now—when it’s clear they disregard our lives completely, whether directly or indirectly, and instead only cause harm." Fujiwara laid out its essence and strategy with exhaustive logic.

The Bosun came down. After reaching a unanimous decision, Fujiwara and Hata took their posts on top of the boiler, while Nishizawa took his in the ship’s hold.

The boiler was longer than the hatch opening, making the work extremely difficult. However, by that evening, they managed to successfully and safely unload all three boilers.

Now, after that, the Manshūmaru had to position its hatch opening beneath the coal hopper of the elevated pier.

30 As soon as the boilers were loaded onto the barge, our Manshūmaru began weighing anchor to position itself alongside the elevated pier.

When they began to weigh the anchor, the room on deck vibrated so violently it seemed everything might come rattling loose. A roar reverberated through the space. The apprentice plugged his ears as if fearing his frayed nerves might snap. Removing the cover at the center of the sailors' quarters revealed a compartment below - the chain locker where anchor chains were stored. When fully emptied, this space measured roughly six shaku wide, six shaku five sun long, and ten shaku high. Two such lockers stood side by side. Chains being wound above passed through a deck opening into this compartment. Inside, Hata had to meticulously arrange each chain in order. Without this organization, the chains would pile up beneath the opening and jam.

Hata was lowering a lantern into the sludgy muck of this box. And he had to hook the falling chains with the hook at the end of an iron rod and arrange them in order. It had to be done quickly; it required strength; the space was cramped; it was wet and slippery; it was dark; oily smoke filled the air; it was stifling. And whenever the hook slipped from the chains, he had to thrust his elbow against the back wall with all his might. When the chains piled up, he had to position himself precariously among them to avoid being crushed. This was a job that would make anyone sick of it even once per voyage. This was the second time he had done it since yesterday morning.

Hata descended into the chain locker with a dark expression. He truly felt as if he were descending into hell each time he entered it.

He had heard a tragic story about the chain locker, but whenever he entered it, that story would swell up from his memory and threaten him.

That was in the 1910s. In the British colony of Singapore, along the two streets of Malay Street and Banda Street, three-story red-brick row houses stretched over two blocks on both sides. Those row houses were all homes where Japanese prostitutes lived. There, in terms of both number and scale, they far surpassed the brothel districts found in major cities of our country, such as Yokohama and Kobe. At that time, sailors were mostly thugs. They were genuine thugs—gamblers driven ashore had become sailors. Moreover, many of those called captains were disreputable, colluding with these sailors to transport stowaway women on a large scale to distant places like Singapore, Hong Kong, and even Antwerp. The fare was exorbitant, the food expenses were borne by the other party, and moreover, for the sailors’ sexual urges—their greatest torment during voyages—there couldn’t have been anything more convenient than transporting stowaway women.

The stowaway women had to endure any and all conditions. The pitiful women had to endure conditions so severe they could have suffocated to death in the forepeak; they had to endure five days and nights in beer crates in an indescribable state, driven to the brink of half-death.

The relationship between the chain locker and them reached the height of horror. The Captain and Bosun had conspired to hide the stowaway women inside the chain locker. Once a ship departed, the chain locker served no purpose until arrival at port; in that dark chamber, they had spread straw mats over the chains and slept. They landed in Singapore and were sold into its brothel district. The stokers opened the lid of that chain locker every night. They, overjoyed like prisoners released for exercise, would come to the sailors' quarters on deck as thanks for being let out—(eleven characters missing).

For them as well, that voyage must have been even more ** than the beer crates or the forepeak. The sailors continued their carefree voyage, while they wished to set foot on unshaking earth as soon as possible. However, the Bosun—who hadn’t forgotten to move the stowaway women to the forepeak when entering Hong Kong—somehow became so overjoyed in crucial Singapore that he forgot to take them out of the chain locker.

The situation went from bad to worse in an instant when they dropped anchor. Fragments of chains, fragments of human flesh, fragments of bones, and tattered straw mats tangled together in a clinging mass; through the chain pipe they flew—some into empty air, others into the sea with the chains—dismembering, crushing, and scattering the thirteen stowaway women. The Bosun, carpenters, sailors, and Chief Mates lined up on the bow deck were drenched head to toe in human viscera. For Hata, knowing this history made the chain locker’s already grueling labor even more repulsive, loathsome, and unbearable. Whenever he remembered it, entering that space became more detestable than anything. Each incoming link of chain now felt like it was hurtling toward him with murderous intent.

He felt not only physical but mental exhaustion beyond compare, and when he emerged from the chain locker, he resembled a man who had narrowly escaped drowning. His work clothes were indiscriminately caked with seabed clay, staining his hands and face as if painted with stage makeup. His face had turned ashen from the violent exertion. His heart leapt wildly and recklessly. His head ached, his vision swam, and it was customary for him to collapse on the deck or wherever nearby for a time.

If someone had not entered this chain locker, the ship could not have moved. Hata, his heart threatening to burst with agony, couldn’t help but think of how much he gave and how little he gained.

We suffer ourselves to death in this state, yet some bastard who spends his time playing around and owns ten villas he doesn’t even live in gets to own this ship!

Thus, the *Manshūmaru* was able to come alongside the pier.

On the pier, coal mined by underground miners from the Yūbari Coal Fields was loaded onto numerous coal cars, which came to the funnel atop the ship, dumped their loads, and returned.

The work of the station workers and stevedores on the elevated pier—jutting out into the sea at a height of dozens of *ken*—was undoubtedly bitterly cold. It was the season when people should have been warming themselves by stoves, drinking hot coffee, and eating hot meat. And many laborers had to labor while shivering, starving, and wandering, each confronting danger face-to-face to produce those very things. Thus everything proceeded smoothly as intended, and within ten days the dawn of a peaceful New Year—one awaited through countless generations—was sure to come, provided the calendar itself remained accurate.

And so it was that the bourgeoisie bastards held their New Year’s banquets. And so it was that they proceeded to hold after-parties.

But the story must not leap ahead to such a point.

31 After unloading the boiler, the sailors who had quickly eaten ascended straight to the bow deck and began mooring to the pier. The apprentice had made his request to Fujiwara during the meal: “Please ask the Captain to send me to the hospital tonight. I can’t endure this any longer.” “Alright.” “But listen—since we’re at the pier now, it’s better to wait until after docking.” “Besides, even if that seems trivial, there’s protocol to follow. I’ll speak to the Bosun first, have him raise it initially, then I’ll join him to settle matters.” “However painful it is, hold out until tonight.” “This time I’ll see it through,” Fujiwara pledged reassuringly. The apprentice brightened considerably.

The pier, the horseshoe-shaped town, the mountains behind it, and the plateau—all were beautifully and thickly blanketed in meticulous snow, while the Hokkaido wind sweeping across the snow’s surface bit with a numbingly sharp pain.

The *Manshūmaru* arrived at the pier. The pier’s funnel thrust its long beak into the ship’s hatch. From then on, instead of white snow, black coal came falling. The sailors, from the Captain down to the stokers, were each busy preparing to free themselves from the swaying house that completely bound them.

The Captain would invariably stay over in Noboribetsu, a hot spring resort a short distance inland from Muroran, whenever the ship was docked in Muroran. There, instead of his wife and children, his mistress awaited him. Generally speaking, whether *Hokkaido* had many beautiful women was uncertain, but occasionally we did encounter extraordinary beauties there. We could even find beauties with complexions so pale it seemed to “leach” the color and features of extraordinary elegance in the brothels nestled in snow-buried mountainsides. It was a lonely sight. For the sailors, it was an unmanageable, dreamlike sentiment. Therefore, for the sailors, it was nothing more than a purely instinctual, carnal contrast.

He hurriedly prepared to go there again that night, glaring at the train timetable all the while. The Captain was attempting to “elegantly” fasten the diamond pin to his tie when a bellboy in immaculate white knocked on his cabin door. “What?!” The Captain barked. “The Bosun and Stoki request an audience—they’re waiting in the salon.” “If it’s business,” he snapped without looking up from his pin, “tell them to take it up with the Chief Mate.” The bellboy relayed this dismissal to the Bosun and Stoki waiting in the salon.

“Well then,” said the Bosun—and it was at that very moment he began to speak to Stoki.

“I absolutely must meet him! Tell him again that I insist on seeing him!” Stoki, restraining the Bosun, said to the Bellboy. The Bellboy asked Stoki, “What’s this really about?” “It’s just a quick chat—he only needs to meet us briefly.” Fujiwara replied lightly. “He’s rushing to get to Noboribetsu.” “But this is far more urgent—I’m asking you to make it happen.”

The bellboy knocked on the door of the Captain’s cabin again. “They absolutely insist on meeting you.” “No! “I don’t have time!” The Captain was gazing at himself in the mirror but clicked his tongue with a “tch.” “What a nuisance they are! Go ask them what their business is.” “You fools,” he added in his thoughts—Your whole lot won’t last beyond Yokohama. Even though the replacement bosun had already come as far as Yokohama, those idiots—the Captain even felt like mocking the incompetence of those maggots a little.

“They are requesting that you arrange for him to be sent to Muroran Public Hospital to treat the apprentice’s injuries.”

“Apprentice! Tell them that won’t do.” “What on earth—the apprentice’s injury? How absurd!” “Do you think that kind of thing can be covered from the ship’s expenses?!” “That’s absurd.” “Enough with your jokes—you should know when to speak up!” Of all times—at a time when the fate of our necks was being decided. Besides, wasn’t this precisely when we were about to disembark, you good-for-nothings! The Captain, upon now being told and seeing that the apprentice had been injured, had brought himself to recall it. And that would need to be treated. “But—that couldn’t possibly be the case under these circumstances!” he thought.

When the hell did that happen? Shouldn’t they have dealt with that in Yokohama?! Bringing it up now was just looking for a fight! But he was mistaken. In Yokohama, there had been no chance to speak to him—and since the Chief Mate had insisted on consulting him first, the matter had fallen through there. The Captain was bound for the hot springs of Noboribetsu with her—a woman of utter beauty. She was a natural creature: uncontrived as a white birch, pure as a mountain stream redolent of alpine air. With every ounce of strength and passion devoted to recalling how he’d held her tight—to imagining holding her again—there remained no space in his mind for the bloody, filthy reality of the apprentice’s predicament.

“If you absolutely need that, then it’s a matter for the Chief Mate to handle properly!” The Captain thrust his legs into his trousers—clinging in a single tight layer like an emptied paint tube—.

"In Hokkaido, there’s nothing quite like this—it’s such a refreshing feeling. The creases in these trousers stand sharp." He swung his leg forward slightly as if taking a step. "Perfect." With that, his trousers’ trial fitting was complete. He hurried like an eighteen-year-old boy, making the ring he would give her gleam on his little finger, and presented himself on the salon deck in an ideally captain-like manner—neatly attired and splendidly postured.

There, despite the cold, Stoki and the Bosun stood waiting for him to emerge. He came to an abrupt halt. The Bosun—grabbed and held by Stoki like a petty thief—kept shrinking back but was encouraged to wait. But what was he supposed to say? He had nothing to say. The injured one was the apprentice, not him—this pitiful old man with a wife and children. If they threw him off this ship, where could he go? It was either the bridge or the graveyard. Right now he worked only for his kids and wife, not even himself—yet Stoki kept forcing this trouble on him. The apprentice's injury and himself—what connection did they have? Even if there was one, the Captain had already refused... And above all—he was freezing beyond endurance.

The Bosun gazed at Stoki’s face with a look of desperate supplication, then hurriedly saluted the Captain.

The Captain tried to pass by in silence and began walking toward the gangplank. Stoki prodded the Bosun sharply. The Bosun blinked rapidly only with his eyes, and kept his mouth tightly shut. Even a one-second delay would have been impermissible. Next, Stoki’s second fist flew into the Bosun’s side. Simultaneously,

“Captain,” a thick, low, heavy voice issued from Stoki’s lips in a commanding tone.

And Stoki, leaving the Bosun after hitting him, stood right in front of the Captain who was now trying to descend.

“Captain! Do you know that Yasui Noboru, the apprentice sailor, was injured? He’s saying he wants to be sent to the hospital today.”

“What of it?” said the Captain, measuring Stoki’s height from the top of his head to the tips of his toes with his eyes. “Has a landing ban been imposed? If not, he could go to the hospital today or tomorrow. So why are you standing in the way like this?” The Captain measured Stoki’s height again and again with the same meticulousness—and with a fervor and calm so infuriating it made his head burn—as he would conduct deep-sea measurements during stormy nights.

Fujiwara stood there before the Captain, stomping down every ounce of fury and indignation beneath his firmly planted feet.

“But shouldn’t the injury allowance be paid from the ship? Moreover, someone bedridden with a leg injury can’t very well walk through this snow. Please pay for the rickshaw fare and examination fee. And also…”

The Captain exploded. “ ‘Should pay’ the injury allowance from the ship?! “What do you mean ‘should’?!” “ ‘Should’?!” “If you dare spout such impudent, arrogant talk, then do as you please! I don’t have time to deal with you lot! You fools!”

After roaring, the Captain descended the gangplank without hesitation. Fujiwara kept suppressing the explosive fury he had been stomping beneath his feet—truly, he held it in check. He let out a booming "Ahahahaha!" and laughed derisively at the Captain’s retreating back.

The Captain leaped onto the wharf. Coins jingled in a pocket. He was furious, but he pressed onward. "I’ll settle this tomorrow," he reassured himself as he vanished into the wharf’s darkness.

After a short while, he shifted into a run at nearly full speed. Somehow, he couldn’t stop worrying that a scalpel seemed about to gleam toward his own heart. Lately, something felt off. Mikami—Fujiwara—this was a really bad trend.

He glanced back—looked back again and again like a fox—the wharf was black, pitch-dark. The anchor light of the ship flickered coldly and sorrowfully behind him. Eventually the pier ended, and he emerged onto the coast. Snow had accumulated to a depth of over two feet. Along the coast, a snow path had been trampled down deeply like small ditches. The town of Muroran peered out here and there like ruins from within the ashen snow. The town's lights, like will-o'-the-wisps, were reflected in the harbor water. The wind stabbed the waves, howling curses. He turned up his coat collar, wrapped his muffler up to his ears, and hurried toward the station at full speed.

The station was situated deep within Muroran’s town limits, near one end of a horseshoe formation. It was a desolate terminal station. Located in a lowland along the coast, it lay beneath an area where the brothel district’s lights burned especially bright. It was a cruel and desolate landscape. Before it, people clung together as if compelled to warm and aid one another. Somehow, they grew more sociable.

The Captain brushed off Stoki and the sailors and was drawn to Noboribetsu. There, he could escape nature’s cruelty for a while!

Stoki hurled a howling laugh at the Captain, then whirled around and strode back toward the deck. The Bosun trailed after him dejectedly.

On deck, the carpenters had finished all their preparations and were waiting for the Bosun to arrive, while the sailors had grown utterly weary waiting for Fujiwara to return. Fujiwara entered the deck. He collapsed onto the bench in front of the dining table. "How did it go?" they asked. "No good!" "This time, it's the Chief Mate," he answered. If he had had enough money for the apprentice to receive an examination and treatment, he would never have gone to negotiate with the Chief Mate again. The outcome was all too clear to him. However, if he could not take the apprentice at his own expense, he had no choice but to try every possible means—and this was also the sole remaining method to save him while keeping the apprentice from despair, if only temporarily.

“Since we don’t know how things will go with the Chief Mate either, if that fails, let’s agree to pool our money on deck. Doing this is practically giving free money to the shipowner, but under these circumstances, there’s no other choice.” “And I’m certain the Chief will refuse too.” “It’s a given that I’d be the one to do what the Captain refuses.” “So could you collect about two yen per person? Let’s have the Bosun handle that.” “Those who don’t have the money now can get an advance from the Bosun. Let’s settle on that, okay? I’ll go see the Chief—I’m counting on you.”

He left. After he had left and some time passed, Hata asked the Bosun to lend him five yen. Then he set aside two yen for the apprentice and tucked three yen into his pocket. And he passed through the deck, went near the Chief Mate’s cabin, and tried to listen in on Fujiwara’s negotiations. However, the Chief Mate’s cabin had its door firmly locked, with no sign of anyone inside. He circled around the salon deck. But nothing was happening there, and no one was present either.

Hata—Then where did Fujiwara-kun go?—wondered as he returned to the deck.

Fujiwara had already returned and had just finished reporting to the sailors that the Chief Mate had gone ashore by sampan from the sea ahead of the Captain. There, a discussion about what to do with the apprentice took place between the sailors and the four helmsmen.

32 After their discussion—since a motion had been raised that nighttime might be inconvenient for the hospital—they agreed that daytime would indeed be better. Thus it was decided they would go tomorrow morning. Though this was no trivial matter, they resolved to ask Fujiwara and Hata—who had been involved from the outset—to accompany him to the hospital. If five sailors, four helmsmen, and one carpenter each contributed two yen, they would have twenty yen total. With that sum, they could have him admitted if necessary—and should “tomo” refuse to cover the expenses, they’d handle it themselves on deck. In exchange, they concluded those tomo bastards had best brace themselves.

In that filthy, dark, cold bunk, Yasui grimaced from his wound's throbbing pain as he strained to hear how matters were progressing. And yet, despite Fujiwara's considerable efforts, when he heard it had been postponed until tomorrow, he let his head—which he had lifted slightly in hope—drop heavily back down. The sole joy he'd had—that he might reach the hospital tonight—had vanished. He felt pitch-black despair realizing he must endure yet another night of this "same" suffering in the ship's cabin.

However, nothing could be done; the circumstances were exactly as he had heard. To the people of “tomo,” he was merely something whose very life was not even worth a glance—a fact that had been reiterated to him in detail. And he—his life had held almost no value from the moment he was born; it had grown just as maggots laid and left to grow would. At every moment, his entire life—eighteen years in total, though fourteen or fifteen of those years were undeniably marked by it—in which his existence had never once escaped feeling terribly cramped alongside others’ existences during the distribution of bread, was made harshly clear to him through the pain of his wounds.

"Why does such a state exist—one so dire it makes people think 'I wish I'd never been born,' or drives them to starvation or suicide through the bitter realization 'Better to die'? And must this state endure eternally?" "Is it truly as immutable as Earth's roundness that we have one class swallowing medicine for their 'illness' of never feeling hunger, while another class perishes from their 'health' of being unable to eat? Time sows seeds—some sprout, some already bear fruit. But we mustn't stray down side paths. This truth was blindingly clear. After all, this too was one of the tasks imposed upon those healthy souls who couldn't eat—the laborers."

Fujiwara sat down beside the apprentice’s bunk and recounted the day’s events. After explaining the various details and their developments, he said: “The working class only realizes their lives are endangered by capitalist production when it becomes glaringly apparent, as in your case—but in reality, that realization comes too late.” “The very fact of being a wage laborer means your life is already being exploited.” “That’s why even the Factory Act sets a minimum payment for lost lives—if that system’s foundation lies in exploiting labor power, meaning human vitality itself, then why should the bourgeoisie find it surprising no matter how lives get depleted?” “Your life remains eternally precious to you, but to the bourgeoisie, it’s only useful as long as it can be exploited!” “The industrial reserve army is limitless!” “We’re all without exception under such circumstances now.” “And here we are trying to tear each other’s throats out.” “What absurdity!” “We must choose the path of survival.” “Just as your immediate path to staying alive lies in seeing a doctor, the working class must charge straight down life’s path as a class!”

It was less that he was speaking to the apprentice and more accurate to say he was talking to himself.

Hata, Nishizawa, Ogura, and others had not yet gone ashore and were listening to his talk together. Among the sailors, Hata was on duty tonight; among the quartermasters, it was Ogura. Of the four—Hata, Ogura, Nishizawa, and Fujiwara—only Nishizawa drank alcohol; the remaining three preferred sweets over liquor. Especially Hata—as mentioned before—was so addicted to confections that he was practically ruining himself. “Everyone, why don’t we go to Tōyōken and talk over some tea?” Fujiwara said—feeling guilty that they’d waited for him (how excruciating it was to delay shore leave, as readers knew from the Captain’s example)—and invited them all to a sweets shop.

“Alright.” Hata shouted while clutching the three yen in his pocket—a debt that would be deducted from his monthly pay with twenty percent interest at the end of the month. They all set out together. As they were about to leave, Hata said to the apprentice: “I’ll be right back—I’ll get you some sweets—wait here for me—and tomorrow morning we’re going to the hospital! I’ll be right back.”

He chased after the three, scampered down the gangway to the pier like a monkey, and leapt off. Nishizawa and the other two were waiting for him at the bottom of the gangway.

It was a cold night. The sailors, in inadequate cold-weather gear, were all trembling violently. The only ones who had overcoats were Fujiwara and Ogura. They had bought them at some secondhand store. Fujiwara’s was comically small for an overcoat, while Ogura’s hung as loosely as a one-to rice sack filled with only three sho.

They walked in single file along the horseshoe-shaped coast in silence. Their teeth ached. The wind pierced through their cheeks, severely aggravating the nerves in their teeth. The sailors were thinking that because they were poor, they had to suffer more than necessary. “If only I had one new knit shirt.” Hata, thinking “How warm would that be…”, clenched and unclenched his fist with all his might inside the pocket of his pants, stiff with oil and grime.

Nishizawa didn’t have an overcoat, so he wore a sweater instead. It was a cotton garment that had been “overestimated.” “These merchants really are ruthless.” That said, he thought it wiser not to publicize too loudly that he had paid one yen and twenty sen for it at a night stall. And so, beneath their woefully inadequate cold-weather gear, each of them faced an intensely cold, desolate, bleak—in a word, indescribable—yes, a relationship that forced them to confront “death” whether they liked it or not: namely, the proletariat versus the cold! Through this instinctive loneliness, the four hurried onward, thinking of warm tea and sweets awaiting them on the bright second floor of a desolate street in the port town.

To the left were the railway cut on the mountainside that looped around from the station, then the elevated line—both running parallel toward where the *Manshū* was moored. On the piled coal, snow had completely coated the surface. Here and there stood police box-like structures serving as both laborers’ teahouses and overseers’ stations.

They passed through the treacherous pass between coal and sea and the valleys between mountains of coal, crossed the railway line leading to the Yūbari Coal Mine, and emerged into the streets of Muroran. The town was a place that felt as desolate at noon as it did at midnight. They had lost their bearings, but walking desolately along the main street to the right after ascending the pier—opposite where the Muroran Steel Works stood—the road divided into roughly three tiers: upper, middle, and lower, running parallel along the mountainside with rows of houses. On that middle-tier street stood a shop called Tōyōken—one they had discovered in this town, with a "cultural" structure so splendid and "cultural" sweets so impressive that they had initially been astonished by its existence. Fifteen or sixteen splendid glass cases were arranged across the spacious shop floor. Inside them lay pies of the sort foreigners might eat at Christmas, along with various other fresh confections, while on shelves to one side were displayed Tokyo-style steamed sweets such as chestnut buns, bean-paste cakes, and deer-shaped mochi. Taking off their shoes in the shop’s entryway and climbing the stairs led to two rooms on the second floor converted into a hall; upon entering, the left side held a large table and several chairs. The room on the right was a Japanese-style room of six tatami mats.

The sailors crammed their oil-stained group into the room with the table. The reason Tōyōken wasn’t surprised was that Hata always came in that state and invariably spent around two yen there. A white cloth was spread over the table. When rubbed hard with their fingers, it turned black. No matter how much they scrubbed their hands with soap and pumice! They therefore took precautions. The young waiter brought bean-paste cakes, chestnut buns, and tea.

They pounced on them and ate like famine victims. Even among them, Hata drew astonished looks from his comrades. Yet their craving for these things was no different from prisoners desiring sweets tens—no, thousands—of times more than jewels, beyond all comparison. When something is taken from humans, that very lack becomes their most urgent need and desire. Deprive them of light—light becomes essential; take their air—air becomes vital. Activity, sound, luxuries—all secondary until lost, then every one transforms into primal necessity. Those stripped of freedom come to treasure it above life itself.

The sweets came with small silver forks in place of toothpicks. The teacup came with a silver spoon. Careful not to dirty these utensils, they quickly finished off the first plate and ordered a second. ***

Their craving for sweets was somewhat alleviated. So they ordered sweets to take back to the Boychō. Then they discussed how we should protest the Boychō’s injury and the Tomos’ stance on it, as well as how to address the Captain’s reckless attitude—exemplified by incidents like Mikami’s—that would inevitably provoke conflict. If negotiating these matters, they resolved to demand clearly defined working hours and a wage increase, since their current pay was completely out of line with market rates.—This was during the era of the Great European War, when coal was packed even into the sailors’ sleeping quarters, and thus the steamship company’s profits were enormous. Furthermore, even if Sundays or other days off get taken up by departures or arrivals—resulting in canceled holidays—we should have them postpone those holidays to the next day. These are matters of a nature that must be resolved without fail, and we are being driven into a state where they must be settled. Thereupon, the question of when to begin negotiations regarding these matters was broached by Nishizawa among them and became an issue.

“The question is whether we should negotiate with the Chief Mate or take it up with the Captain from the outset,” said Ogura. “Of course, that must be our first and final negotiation with the Captain—the one who holds decision-making authority,” Fujiwara answered. “If we declare it our first and last chance as you say—what happens if they reject our demands?” Ogura feared precisely that outcome. If negotiations broke down and led to something like a collective walkout, he would clearly face being blacklisted from shipboard service. Then I’d lose all qualification to obtain a senior mariner’s license! He found himself in an excruciating position. For unless he became a senior mariner and secured slightly better income, his entire remote village in the San’indō mountains would freeze to death from cold and starve from hunger—persecuted by both ruthless nature and brutal exploitation.

His village was a desolate, rugged hamlet—sparsely populated and bitterly cold—located north of the Chūgoku Mountain Range that divides San’yōdō from San’indō. With bear bamboo at its back, it clung to the mountainside as if leaning against a rock where one might sit. The villagers had subsisted on the forest's bounty for their livelihood. Yet those very forests had been nationalized. Thus were they forced to choose between two paths: prison or starvation. The indistinct mountain path from Ogura's birthplace—neither proper village lane nor mountain stream—led toward that prison. This settlement comprised of just three households had seen each family's patriarch taken to jail. Thirteen boys between six and sixteen years old had left their village—as forsaken by the gods as a shrine—to venture into the world and save their homeland teetering on extinction's brink. And instead of sending money back home, they found themselves exploited as labor for others' gain.

But if he were to participate in this and the plan were to fail, he would not only lose his position as a senior mariner—toward which he had devoted all his strength for the past three years—but even his professional life as a junior sailor would be stripped away. He had experienced a similar feeling when he had pushed the sampan with Mikami. Deep anguish and questions about life enveloped him like a spider’s web.

“It will turn into a struggle,” Fujiwara answered. “Since we have no weapons, we’ll likely just huddle together and refuse to act. Then the ship will terminate our contracts and blacklist us. Depending on how things go, the pier might become a path straight to prison.” “But wouldn’t that destroy our lives? No—it wouldn’t just be us. It’d bring ruin to the old folks and children depending on us,” Ogura said, voicing thoughts that rose from his wretched heart alongside tears. “When I think of my hometown, I feel I must endure any hardship.”

“That’s right! When you’ve mustered the utmost ‘endurance’ you can bear, you’ll end up slaughtering your comrades with all your might—and then snatching bread as the result.”

Fujiwara’s face had taken on an expression that was almost cruelty itself. And only his eyes burned like fire, blazing brightly. “I don’t see it that way.” “If I were to lose my job now, there’s no telling how much they’d grieve back in my hometown.” “That’s not all.” “In my household, we’ll end up struggling for food!” Ogura grew agitated. In his mind, the heartrending scene of his departure from the village welled up, clouded by tears.

“I sympathize! Workers have almost all been driven down into positions where they can’t strike! Every organization has us bound and gagged! And even if they slit our throats, we still can’t strike! We suffer more than new recruits forced to maintain rigid attention—punched and kicked without breaking posture! The capitalist system forces every last worker into a straitjacket—those leather restraints they put on violent prisoners that leave you immobilized and in agony—and clamps on handcuffs and leg irons!” Fujiwara’s eyes alone blazed even fiercer. But his face conversely grew increasingly bloodless and pale.

“But Ogura, whichever path you take, you can’t avoid being implicated in someone’s death. The apprentice leader came seeking his bread and ended up plunging himself into mortal peril—like a fish swallowing a baited hook.” “That’s the problem we face ‘now’.” “This manifested through the apprentice leader’s case—but becoming a sailor to get bread? That’s no different from a fish biting a hooked bait!” “It’s an unchanging fate shared by all of us.” “For us, there’s no bait except what’s attached to hooks.” “You’d been on sinking ships twice before—if you’d died then, imagine your family’s grief.” “If nobody had saved you back then, you’d have forced that grief upon your family—isn’t that true?” “That’s how it goes—wherever you swim, the bait’s got hooks.”

“But Ogura, I understand what you’re saying.” “We either live like workhorses or starve to death.” “Until the time truly comes when we ourselves are astonished by the great power we possess—until then—we must needlessly die like dogs!”

The single cup of tea they could only drink when going ashore seemed to excite them. Fujiwara continued speaking while thinking this himself, driven onward as if pursued by his own self.

“I get it, Mr. Fujiwara! We’re better off advancing bit by bit rather than leaping all at once. Rather than trying to become bourgeois alone, even if unsuccessful, it’s better to fall as a proletarian warrior. I understand that perfectly. And I’ve always admired you all. But I don’t have the courage, the resolve, or the conviction! In other words, I’m a coward! I am! I’m a coward! But this time, I’ll do it! I’ll try! I’ll try to rouse even the four Quartermasters. I think I finally get it now.” Ogura picked up the remaining sweets with an expression that seemed to say he had finally shaken off something troublesome.

“So…” Nishizawa cut in. “Who’s going to take on the Captain?” He spat out those words with the same feeling one might have when forced to speak after being unable to stay silent.

“Since we can’t possibly stand a chance against them, we’ll have to rely on Stoki after all.” “Then let’s draft the demands tonight, have everyone sign them together, and present them to the Captain.” Hata said.

“Very well.” Everyone agreed.

“But when will we do it?” “Choosing the moment determines victory or defeat—it’s all about timing. Especially since the Captain’s rushing to return.” “New Year’s is practically here.” “Once our work’s done, trying to show our strength then would be useless.” Fujiwara proposed this as a battle-tested strategist. “But like I said earlier—what’ll we do if they reject our demands?” Ogura absorbed this. “If it comes to starting,” he steeled himself, “I’ll have to go all the way too.”

“This is a critical issue that must be collectively decided by everyone’s will to determine the strike.” “Merely presenting demands still means nothing. When they’re rejected, we have methods like work stoppages, slowdowns, or outright disembarkation.” “Since we can’t reasonably disembark here, of course we’re prepared to descend naked into this snow if forced—but we’ll save disembarking for absolute last resort. On days when it’s less crucial, we’ll halt work rather than slack off during tasks where negligence would be unforgivable.” “I believe this is the most effective method.” The leader was Fujiwara—the battle-hardened warrior!

“Where on earth are we to discuss such things?” Nishizawa asked.

“Well, if all the quartermasters agree, why don’t we do it in the quartermasters’ room?” said Ogura. “That sounds good,” and with that, the group designated the helmsman’s room—a space smaller than three tatami mats—as their primary candidate location. If the quartermasters didn’t join, it was decided they would “do it outside.” “So when exactly are we going to do it?” Hata asked this time. “When do you think would be best?” Fujiwara countered. “The best time is when everyone thinks it’s best.”

“I think departure time’s our best shot,” said Nishizawa. “If we slack off then, those wires and hawsers’ll never get unmoored from the pier.” He chuckled darkly, like he’d just launched an attack. Ogura rubbed his chin. “So… we bring the demand letter to the bridge right as we cast off? Something polite like ‘Kindly approve these reasonable requests’?”

“That’s not it.” “We’ll thrust the demand letter right in that bastard’s face.” “‘Hey! See this? Put your seal here! If you don't, we won't make Yokohama by New Year's!’ Wouldn't that feel damn satisfying if we confronted him like overlords?” Nishizawa said.

“The time of departure should work.” “First off, I’m not going into the chain locker.” Hata clearly realized that his own arduous task was an indispensable operation that absolutely could not be omitted when the ship departed. “We ought to make them clearly realize that viewing us as wage thieves is completely wrong.” He could not help but feel a bright pride and confidence—as a human being, as a laborer—that he was now, for the first time, able to take part in this noble, sacrificial, and great undertaking.

“But even if this gets approved, you must realize this isn’t the final victory—and handle things with utmost caution.” “Suppose our demands are accepted, but then we grow complacent. If they start forcing one crew member off every voyage, within two or three trips everyone else will be exploited again just like before—and we’ll be left looking like fools. While the labor action matters in the moment, managing the aftermath matters even more.” Fujiwara recalled his bitter experiences. “Even if you clean something until it’s spotless, if you leave dust piled in corners instead of sweeping it all away, the filth will come flying back worse than before.” “Especially Mikami’s reckless methods—we can’t use those when considering our remaining comrades.” Fujiwara said while formulating the entire plan in his mind. “And what about the Bosun and Kamune—that’s dialect for ‘carpenters,’ right?”

Hata feared that the Bosun and carpenters might become traitors. They were like Japanese white-eyes hatched inside a cage. They were like children born within their own prison, refusing to leave it. They had been assimilated into the ship to such an extent that they absolutely could not obtain bread outside of it. For example, they had been turned into screws as thick as human beings. They were embedded in some part of the ship as if forgotten. And those were important screws. Therefore, they were left there untouched until they rusted. When they rusted, they had to be replaced with new ones.

They had to be seen as things rusted into the ship’s hull by their very nature as screws. “Unless there’s a real exception, those bastards would never challenge the Captain,” the storekeeper added. “That’s obvious! Even tonight, the Bosun and carpenters were called to DaiKokuro by the Chief Mate and are drinking there.” “Of course they’re screws!” “But it’s better they don’t come back—we’d have fewer obstacles that way.” “Tonight’s when we settle the loan interest.” Nishizawa had been spying deftly.

“We’re pooling one-fifth of our monthly income each to make those bastards buy geishas and drink themselves rotten,” Hata said. “Then,” Fujiwara said, “I’ll draft the demand letter myself. Once it’s compiled, we’ll make a clean copy, stamp it with our seals, then submit it—that’s our course.” “Until then, absolute secrecy of course. But persuading the Quartermaster while keeping the contents under wraps… Ogura, I’ll entrust that entirely to you.” “Well—does that settle it? Anything else we should prepare?” He tapped his head lightly and pondered.

“That seems to cover it.” Nishizawa answered. “But I feel like Hata-kun here is lacking sweets, and I’m lacking alcohol and women.” He opened his mouth wide and laughed.

Breaking through a stillness so profound that even the air seemed frozen solid with loneliness, a voice rang out into the street.

“Hata-kun, how about it? Can you handle that much?” Fujiwara asked while standing.

“I’m good.” “It’s not that I can’t eat if I do—financially speaking.” “Financially speaking.” He laughed—a dry “Ha ha ha ha.”

The four went outside. Nishizawa said, “I’ll go poke around and have a drink,” and headed up the slope toward the red-light district. The three set off together toward the ship in a horseshoe formation, carrying with them a sense that this place might as well have been some foreign town.

The apprentice sailor was delighted to receive sweets from Hata.

The three of them, kept awake by the tea, stayed beside the apprentice sailor, tossing coal into the stove while recalling and talking over the tragic story of how the previous Bosun had been cast ashore and abandoned in Naoetsu.

34

That might not have been something to write here and now. But it was more convenient to write it. What exactly was the Captain? That would form part of the answer.

It was the end of summer, the beginning of autumn. It was a time when there were occasionally hot days and nights that felt unseasonably cool. The *Manshūmaru* too had been placed under Captain Yoshitake’s supervision—who was, after all, nothing more than a rusted screw embedded in the ship’s bridge—to oversee exploitation. And it was an incident that occurred when they transported coal from Otaru to Naoetsu.

It was around 1:00 PM when our ship neared Sakata Port in Akita. They found themselves in a mad evening squall—as if dashed against an unexpected waterfall or smashed through an ice pack. At that moment, a tarpaulin covered the bow deck. From the bridge, it appeared the wind might tear away the entire deck. The Captain completely lost his composure. He immediately barked orders to remove it. In the sweltering pre-storm heat, everyone on deck lay naked during their post-lunch nap. Just then, the Quartermaster came rushing in and shouted to take down the awning.

Hata, Mikami, Fujiwara, Nishizawa, and the others were in their prime and didn’t particularly “fear” the Captain, so they rushed out wearing nothing but loincloths. Sendai and Hata dashed out completely naked. This served as a decent substitute for bathing on a ship without proper facilities. But with the wind raging fiercely, the work proved exceedingly dangerous. A moment’s carelessness could see them caught by the awning’s force and hurled into the sea. Even so, for these young sailors, rampaging about stark naked felt “exhilarating.” In the end, they completed their task naked despite growing somewhat chilled. Yet how peculiar of the Captain! Because the bosun hadn’t rushed out naked immediately, he gave him a severe dressing-down!

Truly, this was an unexpectedly bad result that the sailors had brought about. Since they’re sailors—and not a fishing boat crew—the Captain must have thought that working completely naked in front of him, who could watch them, would be disrespectful. But removing the awning was something he was in a hurry to do again. So, by taking advantage of such moments, they had intended to shove our [symbol] right under the bastard’s nose. However, that night, the Bosun was wrung dry by the Captain until the screws rattled loose. “If you’re like that, you’re useless in an emergency—no, worse than useless, you’d just get in the way.”

Because of this, the Bosun was utterly dejected. The sailors, too, were somewhat apologetic for having recklessly dashed off in the wrong direction. But that did not become an issue, and they arrived at Naoetsu. Early autumn in Naoetsu! It was a scene of utter desolation, characteristic of the Sea of Japan. Even at the best of times prone to loneliness, the sailors gazed longingly at the rarely visited shores of Naoetsu before the lonely yet endearing natural scene. However, the troublesome fact was that Naoetsu’s sea was extremely shallow, and furthermore, because its coastline formed a gently curving slope that even a slight wind would expose, the steamship had to weigh anchor and flee in haste toward Sado.

Take refuge in Sado! That too suited the sailors just fine. There too lay unfamiliar towns with exotic customs. Though the *Manshūmaru* itself had no pressing need to weigh anchor and flee, three or four maddeningly indeterminate days dragged on—days when the coal barges couldn’t approach through the waves. At this even the Captain—let alone the rest—flew into a rage. Yet our *Manshūmaru* couldn’t simply swagger off to Sado like some delinquent youth chasing women.

Just then, Sunday arrived. In a gesture ridiculing the incompetence of Naoetsu’s barges, the Captain announced to all stokers and sailors that—excluding those on duty—the others could lower the lifeboat and sampan for drills, declaring this unprecedented plan and grand endeavor since the ship’s commissioning. Accordingly, the deck crew was assigned to the sampan and the engine crew to the cutter.

No sooner had this plan been announced than the Bosun, the current carpenter, and Mikami—the three of them—swiftly hatched a secret plot. The plan was to row the sampan vigorously ashore, patronize Naoetsu’s prostitutes “for educational purposes,” and return by morning. To prevent dawdling around and having impure elements like Fujiwara, Ogura, or Hata come aboard, they enticed the like-minded stoker chief and Number Two Oilman (No. 2 Oilman) and seized control of the sampan. This was an innocent, amusing scheme. They were certain this scheme would be met with cheers.

Viewed from offshore, the town of Naoetsu was a place where pines emerged halfway from the sandy beach here and there, the town itself hardly revealing its form. That fact—how concealment only sharpens the desire to see—intensely stirred people’s hearts. Moreover, someone had once been to Naoetsu. “The prostitutes here are all run by brothel-keepers! And they’ve all got their own houses, see! They take you to their own houses, I tell ya! Some are like amateurs, and then you’ve got ones even geisha can’t hold a candle to! And they’re all amateurs through and through, I tell ya! It’s just like going back to their own homes, I tell ya! The best in Japan! A sailor who doesn’t know about the prostitutes here ain’t fit to be called a sailor at all, I tell ya!” That terribly excited everyone. Married prostitutes, amateur prostitutes! The sailors, starved for human company, had already been sent into ecstasy. It was as if plucked straight from the vibrant scenes of a ukiyo-e print.

It utterly and terrifyingly piqued their curiosity. Amateur prostitutes! Prostitutes who own their own houses! It was something truly unique. This stimulant displayed fearsome potency. The sampan was immediately lowered.

They lowered it with a great commotion. It descended to the sea surface without difficulty. And Mikami, as if mocking Naoetsu's fishermen, effortlessly rowed up to the bow. The Bosun, Namban, Nambutō, and the carpenter climbed down the rope and boarded in that order.

Two oars were set up. Mikami and the carpenter pushed them. Rowing through wave peaks and troughs, they advanced, now visible, now hidden.

And then, just like that, they went somewhere and vanished from sight. The cutter was lowered afterward. And then, with even the Third Mate and Chief Mate boarding, they genuinely practiced their rowing. “The sampan—” said the Chief Mate, standing atop the cutter and scanning the surroundings, but it was nowhere to be seen. The cutter was raised. And then night fell. The sampan, of course, did not return. If the sampan crew had taken the Captain with them, such a problem would not have occurred, but the Captain had remained on the ship.

The Captain, like a hornet’s nest that had been struck down, flew into a rage! Like a husband who had sniffed out his wife’s infidelity, the Captain did not sleep a wink that night. And because of this, the apprentice couldn’t sleep either. This was because the Captain kept leaping from his bed and shouting things like “Hasn’t the Bosun returned yet? Bring him to me the moment he comes back—understand?” or “Still no sign of the sampan?”, all while continuously ringing his bell.

“It’s just like a madman’s ward!” “This caretaker can’t take it anymore!” The apprentice grumbled while scratching his back vigorously. For the Captain, having his pride wounded, his sense of superiority betrayed, his privileges trampled upon—and above all, that they had gone “whoring” despite even him still holding back—was nothing short of a gross “mockery” of him. That, in days past, would have been equivalent to “a crime deserving death”! From time to time, he would leap up from his bed and shout at the apprentice. He would leap up as if boiling water had been poured on his foot. And every time he leapt up, he would think of making his revenge on those bastards even more cruel.

Bosun, Namban, and the others had “outwitted” him. The fact that they had gone to Naoetsu to visit prostitutes who maintained their own independent houses drove the Captain—in his overwhelming fury—into behaving like a feverish patient seized by convulsions.

Trivial—yet why did the Captain have to rage so intensely over such a matter? That was something no one could comprehend. Those on deck were also saying they still couldn’t “discover” the “reason” why he had to be so indignant. It was probably because he was in a foul mood. And because he was in a foul mood, it led to the following outcome.

35

For the Captain, that night was an utterly unpleasant, interminably long night. For the Bosun and his party, that night was an utterly delightful, all-too-brief affair. And for those on deck, it was a night painted over in gray—an inert night like that of convicts.

When dawn broke that night, the Bosun and his men showed the sampan emerging from the Sea of Japan’s distinctive rolling waves near shore. The waves, sharing the same color and width as themselves, looked like bolts of cloth unfurling from open sea toward land. Near shore, these waves would often spectacularly capsize the sampan. The sampan seemed engulfed by them. But it popped back up at once. The poppy-seed-sized sampan gradually grew larger.

Even though he should have refrained, the Bosun—a former navy man and quite a character—stood rigidly at the sampan’s prow, waving his handkerchief as if proudly proclaiming his feat.

It was so beautiful and poetic that one might have thought Urashima Taro was returning from Princess Otohime’s Dragon Palace. The inky blue sea, with its great swells, held not a single other ship beyond. The air was sweet, smelling like a lover’s skin. The sky was like a mirror reflecting the entire sea. On the sampan’s deck, pine trees and roofs stretched upward, peeking through gaps in the endless white sand dunes. Everything was perfectly clear and still.

It was not 1914, but a sea surface from before it bore the name Sea of Japan—the second century of its era. The Bosun dangled the box received from Princess Otohime while waving his handkerchief. When the apprentice reported to the Captain that the Bosun’s sampan had come into view, the sheer fury of his reaction—both in manner and spirit—defied all description. He snatched up German-made binoculars and charged up to the bridge. Through his lenses, the sampan swelled into focus.

“That’s beyond audacious—he’s waving a handkerchief!” He growled. Both the sailors and the stokers came out onto the deck and gazed at the wretched delinquents. The sampan approached. The carpenter was humming a tune. He also had a good voice. It could not help but evoke sweet memories of when anyone who heard it had clung to their mothers and suckled milk. They had a rope lowered from the deck and climbed up.

Before they had all finished climbing up, the Quartermaster came rushing over. “Leave the sampan as it is and tell Bosun to come immediately—that’s what the Captain says,” he said to Bosun. “Hey, Bosun! If you’re not careful, he’s gonna turn crimson with rage!” Bosun was reminded of his own family—his wife and six children—in disarray like seaweed debris washed ashore. “Oh no,” “I shouldn’t have gone,” he thought. He regretted it deeply. Not because he felt guilty, but because it had become the catalyst for something worse—he wanted to smash his head against the deck. ...his heart pounded as if it were attached to the outside of his ribs. Like a captured criminal, he intuited that his fate had been decided. He imagined his wife and children—exhausted, weakened, starving and freezing—in his own home on the brink of ruin. Trembling, he went to the Captain’s quarters.

His accomplices? They too, like frost-gathering fish, had clustered in one place and were *in trouble*. Mikami alone among them possessed both the courage to recount how he had spent the previous night carousing and the compulsion that drove him to share it with his crewmates.

According to his story, for the young sailors, gaining that joy was an exceptionally good and rare thing—even if it meant they might be dismissed for it. The reason was this:

Mikami explained as follows. “She really treated me kindly, like her own husband,” he said. They were parched and starved for human "love," whether false or true, like a desert. Just as travelers in a desert see the mirage of an oasis, so too did they seek even the mirage of "love." It may have been but an empty form of "love." Moreover, they knew nothing beyond that. They brought themselves there and spent a night of "love"—a vestige of primitive institutions, containing some semblance of truth—likely born from their own phantoms and extreme imaginings.

When they—the women—were approached by them as genuine human beings and comrades, there were times when those women too, out of fierce resistance and self-abandonment that night, would suddenly show a tearful, feminine side. That was likely not a good thing. But beyond that point, it would probably never mend.

The Captain was waiting in the salon. The Chief Mate was also there. The Second and Third Mates were also there, their heads lined up as if on display. To those men as well, the Captain was an untouchable figure. Therefore, Bosun and others were "secondary retainers." Bosun was utterly dejected, like a fallen fireworks doll. He stood at the door, fidgeting nervously. He was hesitating, but because a deathly silence and corpse-like cold eyes were gathered, he steeled himself and went in.

The space was exactly like a courtroom. In that space, who was good and who was evil had already been determined. What Bosun had done left no room for discussion.

“I order you to disembark! “Immediately. “Pack your belongings and go ashore on that sampan—this isn’t a mutual disembarkation agreement! It’s a disembarkation order!” “That will suffice.”

It was extremely simple. There was no protest. There was nothing at all. There was no leeway. The Captain retreated to his cabin to rest his bloodshot eyes. Each of the mates also withdrew like ghosts. Bosun returned to the deck. And then, with a thud, he flung his body into his own berth. Everything had been decided. Bosun had been given a disembarkation order for dereliction of duty, so his right to board ships was to be suspended for one year under the authority of the Maritime Bureau. That is the sole fact!

Tragic facts were compiled collectively in the "deceased" column on the third page of newspapers. The breakdown of a bourgeois marriage filled the entire newspaper for days on end. That was all it amounted to! [...] freezing to death, starving to death, dying of illness, committing suicide, or being slaughtered—this was precisely that state! [Seven characters illegible]! If you thought that newspapers and other societal entities were inverting the facts, it was because you were not seeing capitalist society.

If those tragic facts did not exist, what would become of the bourgeois social edifice built solely upon those tragedies? That, therefore, is not actually a tragedy. Dying out due to poverty is not at all tragic. Precisely because the majority are impoverished to the point of dying out, the bourgeoisie are so wealthy!

Therefore, since everything was in the optimal state, "This must not be disturbed!"

Bosun began tidying up the items around him. He began stuffing everything into a canvas bag. And in the midst of this, he let out a heavy sigh. He thought gloomily and felt gloomily, like a cloudy evening. He pulled out the torn rubber boots from under his berth—boots that had been shoved there for ages—and stared at them intently. Salt had settled like white powder. But it wasn’t as though he was thinking about the boots. He was staring vacantly at them.

Namban, the carpenter, and other implicated individuals had planned to plead for Bosun’s life and were making separate appeals around. Especially since the carpenter was from Yamaguchi Prefecture, the same as the Captain. He had gone to the Captain’s quarters under the pretext of being a fellow countryman—what a pitiful, petty, miserly reason it was—relying on the favor he usually received. “If you weren’t a fellow countryman, you’d be getting the same treatment!” The carpenter, having been yelled at like that by the Captain, returned to the deck and reported that “it didn’t work out,” his mood a mix of apparent disappointment, relieved tension, and an oddly buoyant cheeriness. And then, in his heart, he felt so buoyant he could have whistled a tune.

Mikami didn’t think anything of it. That was someone else’s affair! Namban and Nambutō were exactly the same. Readers mustn’t resent the author over this matter. It wasn’t that the author acted coldly! If everyone hadn’t been like that, something like Bosun being dismissed would never have occurred in the first place. In short, it’s highly inconvenient for the author to be resented over laborers failing to unite.

Bosun, like a foolish child clenching a belt in their mouth, kept fiddling with the boots for ages.

After a while, he slammed the boots onto the floor with all his strength. And after thinking for a while again, he picked them up once more, examined the tear in detail, and gently set them back down. He had made a celluloid toothpick and placed it in the corner of his berth’s edge. He had convinced himself that it would be good for his teeth. He turned his attention to it again. What should I do with this? He picked it up and began examining it in detail once more. He began to feel as though everything had suddenly become extremely significant and precious.

The sailors made pitiful faces whenever they peeked into Bosun’s room. Hata had evaluated Bosun—who charged twenty percent monthly interest—as little more than a model of the Captain; but upon hearing that he had been “dismissed,” he suddenly became sympathetic.

He entered Bosun’s room in a mood like a rainy-season evening. And he helped with various things—the “gaiters” on the rubber boots he now occasionally wears on his legs were a memento he received at this time.

From the crew came constant urgings, asking if Bosun wasn’t coming up yet.

“There’s nothing as incomprehensible as humans. Ah, there’s nothing as incomprehensible as humans,” Bosun said with a sigh.

Bosun, seen off by Mikami, pushed an oar himself and rowed away toward the streets of Naoetsu he had just returned from. From the bridge, the Captain and Chief Mate watched them depart through a telescope. The sampan gradually grew smaller, appearing atop wave crests and troughs as it rode them, then sinking down as it went.

As it happened, there was no cargo handling that day either. Since there was no other work either, the sailors had stretched an awning over the forecastle deck and were lying beneath it, watching Bosun’s sampan depart.

The sampan steadily advanced. And when it had drawn near the shore, advancing to within a couple of meters or so, the sampan was enveloped by that familiar swirling wave chasing from behind—rolling sideways with a thunderous rumble, like a whirlwind churning up dust. Of course, the Captain and Chief Mate found this utterly amusing and clapped their hands in delight.

On the shore, the coal laborers—waiting for the sea to calm a bit more before heading out to work on the main ship—had gathered in large numbers and were watching the spectacle.

Four or five of the coal laborers immediately leaped in. And the two men—Mikami, locked in a grapple with the oar—tumbled over repeatedly; he tried to stand two or three times, but unable to rise while clutching the heavy oar four times his length, ended up swallowing seawater. Bosun, even in that critical moment, spread his hands octopus-like in all directions, trying to seize anything touchable to keep his belongings from washing away, only to be rolled about in spinning circles. And he wound up clutching a single boat plank and Western-style umbrella tightly in his hands.

If the laborers hadn’t helped, the sampan would have naturally been swept away, and both Bosun and Mikami could have died. They said they couldn’t stand on their feet. That was only to be expected. After all, no matter how large a man might be, none could match the sea’s depth. In other words, they had tried stretching out their legs while lying flat. The two men—clutching the oar, boat plank, and umbrella tightly—were hauled up by the laborers.

Bosun’s belongings—a bundle containing one futon and one blanket—were secured. And the sailcloth bag was washed away. And then, everything that remained was thoroughly and completely soaked. It rendered almost everything as useless as a completely soaked blotting paper. From the bridge, when viewed through a telescope, one could even see the luggage being washed away. “This is exhilarating! This is hilarious! WAH-HA-HA-HA-HA! WAH-HA-HA-HA-HA-HA! Unbelievable! WAH-HA-HA-HA-HA! Look at that!” “They’re clutching that boat plank like it’s their treasured child! WAH-HA-HA-HA-HA!” The Captain laughed maniacally, staggering about as if he might collapse. To an uninvolved onlooker, it must have been quite a comical scene indeed. The Chief Mate also laughed.

Under the awning on deck too, they saw the grain-like figures atop the sand dunes begin to stir. What was that? They searched for the sampan’s whereabouts but found nothing. Before long, they spotted the Captain and Chief Mate on the bridge doubled over in laughter. Then the off-duty quartermaster descended from the bridge and announced that Bosun’s sampan had been caught in a swirling wave and capsized—though the laborers had managed to save their lives.

They clambered onto the awning's pillars and rails, clinging as they tried to watch it. However, obstructed by waves, they couldn't see anything. They climbed back down and lay sprawled out while discussing them. When evening came, Mikami returned alongside Bosun—both wearing sullen expressions—and reported every detail to the Captain. Bosun attempted to demand compensation from the Captain but ultimately wasn't even permitted to climb up to the deck. He could no longer set foot on the Manshūmaru's deck at all. And everything had been swept away by the waves!

Mikami once again saw Bosun off and returned when night fell. Bosun returned to Yokohama and existed only barely, like a single screw in a mountain of scrap iron. He became a canvas sewing worker and was earning seventy sen a day. This was the Captain’s great exploit, and this was the “just” retribution that Bosun had to receive!

36

I walked with a staggering gait like a drunkard, repeating the same thing tediously over and over. But this was because I was a sailor, not a novelist. Truly, such things—or rather, the act of writing—is extremely difficult!

Yasui thought his wounds and the illness that followed would finally heal with this—This will finally cure everything! That was because they were now going to the public hospital in Muroran. To get there, he would surely see the sea, see houses, see trees, and also be able to see the townspeople and all sorts of other things! That’s right—he had spent about a week doing nothing but staring at the bottom board of the upper berth above his head.

In such situations, people probably found everything they saw nostalgic—even a drunkard who might pick a fight with them. It was the same as the heart of a pardoned prisoner.

Fujiwara and Hata were preparing to take him. As they prepared, Hata Yoshio—a brisk twenty-five-year-old youth—uttered a heartrending joke. “At the hospital, there are nurses—pale-skinned, innocent ones. Not exactly beauties, but delightfully cute…” “What’s this? Can’t let that pass. Have you ever actually been to a hospital?” Since this was uncharacteristic talk from Hata, Fujiwara pressed sharply.

“It’s their eyes!” “Eyes, you see—eyes that don’t reflect a speck of filth, clear as an undiscovered virgin lake in the mountains! Kind eyes!” “That woman treats every patient like a sibling—with completely natural kindness!” Hata said this as if describing his own lover while slipping his arms into work clothes soiled from over ten toilet-cleaning shifts. “Doesn’t suit you.” “Hata—no matter how you contrive it, there’s no link between shit-caked clothes and some pure-eyed maiden,” Fujiwara mocked.

Even the apprentice inadvertently smiled. The sailors also laughed. “Now, hold on—don’t jump the gun.” “It’s true, you know.” “I’m already twenty-five.” “I know all about romance and love.” “At that time, if I were to meet such a maiden at the hospital…” “I’m wondering if she’d even come near these work clothes reeking of shit—ha ha ha ha!” He laughed. Within that smile lay an utterly pure expression—like a virgin forest cradled within a virgin lake.

"But you yourself said it, didn't you? That these greens are top-notch for warding off women's troubles. If that's true, then of course that girl's no exception," Ogura said. "Pessimism, pessimism—me bringing up women wasn't such a bright idea. Even my own sister probably wouldn't want to marry a filthy laborer like me." He laughed bitterly. "Ha ha ha ha ha!" "You're absolutely right, Hata," Fujiwara said as if he could no longer hold back his feelings.

The preparations—that is, putting hands and feet through where they should go, fastening buttons, shoes, and a hat into their proper places—were complete. Truly, Hata was a "charm against women's troubles." Even novice beggars had a more impressive appearance than he did. As for his hair, it was indistinguishable from that of a seasoned beggar.

Hata carried the Boy Chief on his back. The sailors gently placed the Boy Chief onto his back. “I’m sorry,” said the Boy Chief in a tearful, nasal voice choked with emotion.

The three of them departed on four legs. Even carrying a child on one’s back made his shoulders ache terribly and was heavy. In the Boy Chief’s case, it was excruciatingly heavy. To make matters worse, his chest ached, and worse still, his shattered left leg would dangle limply and drag through the snow. The Boy Chief tried to lift his leg, focusing all his attention on his left foot to keep it from dragging, but it was futile. Just as the Boy Chief’s leg sank lower, Hata’s hand too began to droop.

The intervals at which Hata jostled the Boy Chief up had decreased from every twenty steps to ten, and now he had to do it with every step. The Boy Chief lost all color from the pain and cold, but he endured it nonetheless.

They entered the watchman’s hut located about thirty-six meters away from the pier. And Hata, who had lowered the Boy Chief onto the bench, wiped the sweat from his forehead. “You’ve done well,” Fujiwara said.

The Boy Chief’s heart pounded with exhaustion, cold sweat beading on his forehead, but he simply couldn’t bring himself to speak. He simply let out a small, pained sigh. The male and female laborers resting in the watchman’s hut opened one side of the stove they had been gathered around and offered it to the three of them. And they offered words of sympathy and pity for the Boy Chief’s injury. “Our bodies are our capital, you know—we’ve got to take care of them,” they said to one another. “Oh, how pitiful… He’s still just a child, you know,” they said.

The Boy Chief’s left leg had swollen perfectly round with white cotton cloth like a bayonet’s tip. The swollen tip grew damp from melted snowflakes warmed by the stove. Hearing these strangers’ comforting words there, the Boy Chief couldn’t suppress his tears. An elderly woman—his mother’s age, likely enduring that brutal labor—stood by the stove leaning on a shovel like a cane. He felt ashamed. Though unclear why, this shame must have come from being injured and carried hospital-bound before others. Most there were elderly folk who seemed barely able to heft those massive shovels. All either past forty or mere fifteen-year-olds—four or five girls among them—where were those in their working prime? The thought pressed unavoidably upon them.

Those in their prime were risking their lives digging coal thousands of *shaku* underground in the Yūbari Coal Mines! Moreover, their sons and daughters had gone off to work as migrant laborers there. And if they did return, they came back either as cripples or broken-down invalids—and many returned as corpses.

“Will I too have to return home a cripple?” The Boy Chief’s heart was gnawed by a bleak loneliness like coal turning to ash. “Alright, shall we go? I’ll carry him this time,” Fujiwara said. The laborers also helped out, and the Boy Chief was transferred to Fujiwara’s back. The three of them departed once more on four legs, trudging along the edge of the horseshoe-shaped coastal cliff. Though Fujiwara was tall, the snow lay two feet deep. The trampled path narrowed. The Boy Chief had to drag his leg through the roadside snowbanks as if etching signal marks with his foot.

The three of them walked pressed close together in such profound silence that one might have thought they could at least occasionally exchange a word rather than remain so quiet. The three themselves wanted to rebel against that unpleasant, painful silence somehow, but they simply lacked the energy to speak. It seemed like some sort of government office procedure—something unbearably troublesome. The path was the same one Fujiwara and Hata had walked the previous night, yet now it stretched endlessly ahead as though the road itself were sliding away into the distance.

However, they soon arrived at the second hut. That place was at the innermost part of the port, forming the apex of a horseshoe shape. After walking some distance from the hut, they turned left away from the coast, passed through a tunnel built between coal ridges, then crossed a plain crisscrossed with dozens of rails near Muroran Station’s engine shed, and finally emerged into the town. Their group caught their breath at the second hut.

There too, many laborers had gathered around a stove glowing bright red. Once again, the three of them were given space by the laborers there and repeated the same routine as before. With each rest, they got a little wetter. Eventually, the group passed through the plain of rails and emerged into the town. There, they wanted to hire a rickshaw or sled for the Boy Chief, but no such things existed. Hata and Fujiwara, taking turns sweating profusely as they climbed up the slope, ascended to the higher part of the city—a little further up, from the peninsula’s narrowest point where the ocean became visible. There was a public hospital there.

37

At the reception desk, they bought an examination ticket and waited their turn in the surgical waiting room. It felt like landing in a foreign country where they didn’t speak the language—everything felt unfamiliar. Life aboard ship had gradually turned them into virtual invalids on land. Nurses in white uniforms moved about. Some were even beautiful. Yet nowhere could they find the kind of ethereal woman Hata had fantasized about. Instead of paint fumes, they smelled antiseptic odors. In place of bleak industrial sounds came clear feminine voices and the rustle of nursing uniforms. Through the medicinal air trailed a faint fragrance of face lotion from the nurses’ complexions, lingering like strands of spider silk.

On the chairs sat two or three people waiting—some with their heads fully bandaged, others with arms slung from their shoulders. Soon, when “Yasui-san” was called, the Boy Chief entered the examination room supported by two men. “What happened?” The doctor asked. The Boy Chief tersely explained how he’d been injured and where it hurt. A steam radiator hissed white vapor. Lying on the sickbed, he underwent a meticulous examination. His leg was cut open anew with a knife; nerves were tugged with tweezers; blood vessels were pulled out and bound with thread.

“Why did you leave it untreated for so long? If this were summer, we might’ve had to amputate from around here,” he said, pointing near the knee. “The captain absolutely refuses to let us get him treated. That’s why we brought him here ourselves,” Fujiwara answered. “I suppose you had another fight with the captain like always. Happens all the time on ships. You probably pushed back hard too, didn’t you?” The young doctor said with a laugh, his kind eyes glinting behind thick glasses.

“It’s not like that. The situation is completely beyond reason,” Fujiwara said, briefly explaining the violent escalation and the Yokohama situation. The doctor listened while nodding deeply, but— “As for the leg, I think in about a week we’ll be able to remove the stitches, but you’ll need to have the chest contusion examined by internal medicine once. That area’s a bit tricky for surgery, you see,” he said. “So we need to get his chest examined by internal medicine?” Hata asked.

“Yes, that would be better.” “You absolutely must not move the leg.” “Please come again within five days or a week.”

“Yes,” Fujiwara answered, and the two of them, carrying the Boy Chief, headed toward internal medicine. They would never make it back within a week—this realization troubled everyone and left them at a loss. But they all thought—as if by unspoken agreement—they’d worry about that after finishing with internal medicine. It felt like avoiding touching an open wound. The internal medicine doctor asked, “The fever tends to spike in the evening, doesn’t it?” Yet aboard ship—whether one existed in the stern or not—they’d never laid eyes on anything resembling a thermometer. So while the fever was undeniably present, whether it ran too high or too low remained utterly beyond their reckoning.

“We haven’t measured it—truth is, there’s no thermometer aboard,” Fujiwara answered. “Don’t you feel unwell or get chills come evening?” asked the doctor. “Yes—the wounds ache all day, but evenings bring this...fogginess,” Yasui replied. “Strange dreams too—nightmares. And without fail, evening chills.” The doctor tilted his head while listening to his breathing through the stethoscope pressed against his back.

“Can he be hospitalized? It would be better for him to be admitted, though...” The doctor directed his question toward Fujiwara. “What is the illness? Even if hospitalization were possible—which I doubt—unless the ship covers the expenses, we couldn’t possibly pay the fees ourselves.” Fujiwara laid bare the truth. “The illness originates from the contusion after all.” “Areas like the leg, being made up of bone and muscle from within, are straightforward. But these parts,” he said, indicating the chest, “contain complex internal structures.” He uttered an elaborate medical term.

"So if we confirm the illness originated from his injury, will they discharge him from the ship?" "I'll write you a medical certificate," said the doctor, preparing and handing over the document. "Thank you. We'll discuss this after returning to the ship."

The three expressed their thanks, and the Boy Chief was carried out by Hata. They thought that even a hundred medical certificates would be useless, but at any rate, it was one powerful ally. Now, medical certificates held more critical significance than actual injuries or diseases. This was especially true in cases of injuries and illnesses among the laboring class. Factory doctors often served only the role of writing medical certificates based on the capitalists' diagnosis.

Capitalists were not shocked by laborers severed by machinery, those crushed in conveyor belts, or those fallen into drying furnaces and charred like yakitori. They were only shocked by the medical certificates of those injuries. The mine owner was never shocked when five hundred male and female workers were steamed alive inside his own mine during a gas explosion. He worried whether any mining sections remained unburned when they unsealed the mine entrance three or five years later!

The same applied to steamships. The humans who sank alongside them meant nothing—yet the ship’s hull itself became the capitalists’ great and eternal lament.

The Captain, too, had no "reason" to be surprised by the Boy Chief’s injury itself. But the three of them clung to the vain hope that this medical certificate might, at least to some extent, provide some kind of impetus.

Elementary school children pulled small sleds loaded with books and lunchboxes, laughing and shouting as they filed out of the school on the hill and headed home. When the road formed a steep slope, the children would place both feet together on the sled—too small even for them—and slide headlong down toward the town below, failing to make the turn and plunging into general storefronts or colliding with their wooden planks. Among them were also children who managed to turn well enough but collided into a mountain of swept snow, scattering smoke-like powdery snow.

This was unbearably delightful for the Boy Chief. A pleasant distraction. Countless versions of his three- or four-years-younger self slid and tumbled across the snow. He forgot about his legs—forgot even what he carried. Hata dripped sweat beneath the boy’s weight. “Mr. Hata, the sweets shop’s still quite a detour.” The Boy Chief suddenly craved sweets—specifically kintsuba bean cakes. Better yet, he wanted just the red bean paste inside premium steamed confections. When he ate sweets, they seemed to course through his veins and form new skin over his wounded legs—such was his starvation for sugar. Partly he wanted to indulge Hata’s “Won’t feel right ashore without at least one rice cracker” declaration; partly he wanted rest; but chiefly, he sought any excuse to delay their ship’s return by even a minute—to linger longer in land’s brightness. Clean air, defined shapes, human bustle, every beautiful thing—he yearned to stay with them just a moment more.

"That’s one hell of an idea!" Hata had already been steering their course that way with exactly that intention.

Tōyōken once again welcomed the most extraordinary guests that day. Because the Boy Chief’s legs were immobile, the three were shown to a Japanese-style room. Truly, how much true love Hata had devoted to sweets was something I could not adequately express. He was more overwhelmed by sweets than a true alcohol lover ever was by liquor. It was "pathological". However, generally speaking, sailors had a "pathological" desire for anything and everything. In terms of quantity, Yasui and Fujiwara would at times have surpassed even Hata.

The three of them, seated around a brazier filled with charcoal, picked at sweets. Such a thing was something the Boy Chief had never experienced before.

Laborers who had been leading a wretched life would be thrown into prison for some trivial crime. There, he was made to eat pork and fish meat that he had never eaten before. The labor there was easier than what had tormented him until now. From barren lands devoid of industry, deep within mountain valleys, there were prisoners over forty years of age who had been captured—among them, though slightly feebleminded, some would say such things. And he appeared not to mind spending his twilight years in prison.

In 1863, based on the results of an investigation by the British government into the provisions and labor conditions of prisoners sentenced to legal punishment and penal servitude, Marx proved that inmates in Portland Prison received better nutrition than agricultural workers or typesetters. (Capital, Vol. 1, Part 3, p. 238) In 1855 in Belgium, Monsieur Ducpétiaux wrote in his book that standard laborers—not considered destitute—had 13 centimes less nutritional intake than prisoners in that country. (Capital, Vol. 1, Part 3, p. 224)

In this world, there were those whose lives—in terms of food and labor, indeed in every aspect—were harsher than prison. The Boy Chief, having been injured and received condolence money, experienced for the first time such a leisurely mood—eating exquisitely delicious sweets whose names he didn't know, drinking tea from a tray lined with tea utensils set over buried charcoal embers. Wasn't this akin to the pitiful laborer who, upon entering prison for the first time, finally tasted "pork"?

――I must clarify to readers that none of the above should lead them to conclude prisons are good places—for the existence of worse conditions than prison cannot serve as a condition for considering prisons good.―― The Boy Chief became able to divert his attention from his legs and chest for a short while. He—in other words—became able to think about other things too. This was because the surgeries and the scent of medicine comforted him.

“When you’re on a ship, you can’t eat things like this at all,” he said, biting off bits of the speckled adzuki beans with his teeth. “Truly, the sweets at this shop are delicious.” “Even in Yokohama, there aren’t many like this.” Hata played the connoisseur. “When it comes to appraising sweets, Hata has bourgeois tastes.” Fujiwara laughed. The three ate sweets until their chests burned. During that time, their fatigue was alleviated. And for a while, there were moments when they forgot about the ship and all unpleasant things. But Fujiwara’s mind could hardly forget when the strike should be initiated.

He was eating sweets while thinking of the motto: "Until all people obtain bread, no one should have sweets." This phrase, this motto—how much had it educated Fujiwara? This simple, clear motto—with what familiar resonance would it spread swiftly among laborers across the world, from mouth to mouth, from village to city! And now, this phrase has far surpassed the number of people who utter “Amen.” There, the truth—burning with newfound inspiration—shone like a torch.

Fujiwara paid the bill. “I’m sorry. I was supposed to treat you as thanks,” the Boy Chief said with genuine remorse while being carried on Fujiwara’s back. The Boy Chief’s pure white bandage was nonetheless beginning to seep blood. “Better than pus coming out, right?” the Boy Chief found the energy to laugh.

However, by the time they returned to the ship, they were utterly exhausted. The Boy Chief’s nerves were once again frayed because of his dragging leg. It resembled the heart of a prisoner in a cell awakening from a beautiful dream.

Everything returned once more to the narrow, low, noisy, filthy, dark life of the ship’s cabin!

38

The *Manshū Maru* would return to Yokohama just in time for New Year’s. Therefore, the ship’s hull had to be painted. The ship’s side had already been painted. Next, the mast had to be painted.

Soaping down the mast and painting it—this work was manageable in summer, but since New Year preparations were inevitably in winter, it proved difficult. The soapy water froze into something resembling yogurt, the brush froze too—it was utterly unmanageable.

Among these, the most troublesome thing was the freezing of the body.

The cold wind howled around the telegraph poles on a winter day; on that blizzard morning, snow had been blown against one side of a pole and frozen there, making it look as though that surface was catching sunlight. With height and girth several times that of a telegraph pole, the mast stood exposed to the wind out at sea, with nothing to block it.

The work of dealing with the mast was both dangerous and cold.

The work was started from the first mast. They would tie their own bodies to a rope, secure a block to the top of the mast, thread the rope through it, and hold one end themselves. While painting, they gradually extended the rope; extending it to paint, painting to extend it, they descended lower and lower. Our work of painting was quite manageable in summer. That was because the paint flowed smoothly. But in this case, no matter how much oil was used to thin the paint, it remained far thicker than in summer. Hata fastened a thick, hard, viscous paint can to his waistband and began painting from the top of the mast.

Nishizawa was painting the opposite side.

The elevated pier was visible four to five *ken* below from the top of the mast.

“The pier seems high, but it’s lower than the mast,” Hata said to Nishizawa. “That’s right, but how about you? The cold—I don’t feel a thing in my hands.” The two were painting, gripping their paintbrushes as a child would grasp chopsticks. The rope suspending them swayed in the wind. They had to work at a spot neither too close nor too far from the mast, moving their legs stiffly like puppets performing mechanical exercises. At times, the two laborers collided on the same side of the mast.

“Hey! This is my side!” “Don’t be ridiculous.”

There, the two gazed sideways. If the pier was on the left, then Nishizawa was correct. Nishizawa faced from the bow toward the stern and painted the bow section.

Even the rope suspending them felt frozen solid. They couldn’t help but find it strange they hadn’t stiffened like dried cod. “What’s the point dolling up this old tub flat as a hand fan?” “Hell, the Captain’s got queer tastes! Only the *Manshū Maru*’s skipper could dream up painting masts in Muroran for New Year’s—real stroke of genius!” Nishizawa kept slapping paint recklessly, shivering so hard his teeth chattered, swinging his brush like a blind man thrashing a cane in his rush to get down.

“You think that bastard wants to see me freeze stuck to the mast, don’t you?” “Yeah, I’m sure that bastard’s scheme is exactly that.” Hata was also shivering. “Of course! A human freezing to the mast’s way more unusual than a goldfish freezing solid.” Nishizawa replied. The large mast swayed considerably at its higher sections. It was the razor-sharp cold wind, like a Japanese sword honed to perfection, that shook it.

“Carrying paint cans at around twenty and climbing masts—must be our parents’ punishment.” Nishizawa bellowed a parody of a miner’s song. “Shu-shu—these days, we can’t even swing a five-sen bat! Shu-shu-shu!” sang Hata. “What’s with that sound? Like a stray pup whimpering.” Nishizawa teased him. “Yours sounds like you’re hammering a paint can.” Hata retorted. And he looked down.

“Hey, there’s still a hell of a lot left. Don’t you know any handy tricks we could use?” Hata grumbled. “There’s a real nice one.” Nishizawa said. “Hah! Why don’t you just go down and warm your ass by the stove!” “There’s an even better way. “Jump into the sea from the mast’s top! “Do that and any incurable disease, any shitty job—they’d all be done with in one shot!” “Damn right.”

They were almost unconsciously rubbing the mast. Like goldfish freezing in water, they were on the verge of freezing in the midair.

Nishizawa and Hata were ordered to paint the mast as a "yarishimai" job. “Yarishimai,” as the characters suggest, referred to work that, once finished, would mark the end of the day’s labor. In other words, it meant contracting out the work.

It was usually an inconvenient arrangement. This was because those assigning the work would take jobs that couldn’t be completed within an ordinary day’s schedule—tasks that were urgent besides—and designate them as “yarishimai.” Then, those assigned the task would work frantically like dogs with their tails tied by strings—spinning around and leaping in a crazed attempt to escape the labor. “It’s yarishimai! Finish by two!” The Second Mate twisted his face into the grotesque shape of an unripe pumpkin and, with those words, retreated to his quarters. Then the work would surely be finished by five o’clock. They worked an extra hour beyond usual and put in over twice the effort!

They were grating themselves down with the *yarishimai* “wasabi grater”!

That was akin to contract work on land or so-called "seibun" jobs. It was the same as regular work. In *yarishimai* work, when time ran over, it was because the laborers "lacked the skill." Even from their fellow workers' perspective, that was considered 'sloppy'! From their own perspective, it was "their own doing." And from the capitalists' perspective, it was that "This is exactly why this system is ideal." And so, "we turn a profit."

They had grown cold to the very marrow of their bones, and only in the evening, after the other sailors had finished eating, did they finally complete that *yarishimai* task. It was justified for them to say so. “It’s so hard!”

39

All in all, everything proceeded smoothly. From the elevated pier, coal was disgorged far more than expected. It became a black avalanche and literally rushed into the ship's hold. Under that avalanche, the laborers used their shovels to scrape the falling coal toward the corners again and again. When the outflow from the overhead funnel grew too fast and voluminous, even dozens of laborers' shovels couldn't keep up; coal blocked the ship's hatchway, sealing the workers into whatever open spaces remained at the hold's four corners.

To save themselves from the suffering and darkness, they scraped the coal toward the corners with all their strength. The sounds of shovels, the crunching of coal, and their voices calling out—when walking on the deck, a newcomer would be unable to tell where these noises were coming from; combined with their eerily gloomy resonance, as if emanating from the underworld itself, it was enough to startle anyone. And the coal piled mountainously high at the hatch was stacked so precariously into the dumbler that one couldn’t help but worry whether the laborers inside would be able to climb back up.

The laborers were sometimes sealed in with coal for half a day, working in the dark like tunnel workers sealed in tunnels. When they came out, as if their entire bodies were dolls made of lungs, they would take deep breath after deep breath, insatiably. And they would receive from the foreman—one by one—large, well-formed, equilateral triangular rice balls sprinkled with sesame salt, so thick they could rival a human head, unlike anything seen in any other port, which they would bring back to their quarters and eat.

Even Mikami—renowned as the biggest eater among the sailors—couldn’t finish a single one. They contained nothing but sesame salt—no side dishes at all. Once the laborers received one of those rice balls for dinner, they were forced to continue their overtime labor in that pit until dawn, like denizens of the underworld. The freight rate for coal stood at five yen per ton between Muroran and Hama at that time. Consequently, coal was loaded even into the sailors’ quarters. Sailors earned monthly wages of eight to sixteen yen, while stevedores and day laborers received eighty sen in daily pay. Lured by those gargantuan rice balls, they would get just one yen and thirty sen for twenty-four hours of work! And the freight rate for coal was five yen per ton!

Every conceivable gap was filled with coal; the insurance mark, perpetually washed by waves, remained unseen. And provisions were loaded precisely for the planned voyage duration. For shipowners and shareholders, it was a golden age. For sailors and laborers too—it was a golden age of overwork. The steamship resembled one of those spring-wound toys. While wound tight, it ticked without rest—thus sailors and captain alike became cogs in its mechanism. The Captain likely vented this mechanical frenzy upon the stokers—what wretched logic!

Under the coal avalanche crashing down from the pier with a roar, the laborers worked desperately, single-mindedly—not for their wages, but to save themselves from that avalanche. And because of this, their labor could not be sustained for more than twenty days a month—no matter how robust one’s physique. And they breathed pulverized coal.

But it was good. Everything was unclear. Everything remained unknown. Toiling like draft horses under dark clouds was considered a good thing. And for the capitalists too, this was an exceedingly good thing. And at that time, the European War was indeed being waged. That was the time! That was the time when the wealth of our Japanese Empire came to rival that of the world powers!

That was the time! That was when Japan grew rich. That was the time—the time when Japan’s capitalists grew rich! In exchange, the laborers had completely wrecked their bodies through overwork! Even though dinner on the ship had long since ended, the hatch that had been blocked around noon still hadn’t opened. Beneath the deck—under the tables, under the bosun’s bunk—a strange clattering reverberated incessantly from all directions. And at times, groaning human voices could be heard. And when those too passed seven o’clock, a hole finally opened. It gave the laborers the same joy as a stubborn abscess bursting open and draining completely. Like people who had reached a mountain summit, they came up, using their shovels as staffs and stepping firmly on the coal.

And as an exception, they managed to get monstrously thick rice balls. Even as they endured suffocating agony through this drudgery like ground bees within the dumbler, there were those among them who even came to envy their own plight.

Those were the laborers on the elevated pier. Since it stood as high as rivaling the ship's mast, the wind struck them as if inside a blower's pipe. They removed the lid at the bottom of the coal car. The coal fell onto the funnel built on the pier. Then with a thunderous roar, it avalanched into the ship's dumbler. The sections where they worked were all iron. And that iron was like a soldering iron—touching it would tear flesh. They wore large canvas bags on their feet. They also wore red and gray work clothes stuffed with cotton and wool between layers of blankets—their only cold-weather gear outside those dizzying, extreme work hours. All of them moved their hands inside leather gloves resembling archery mitts of the sort Minamoto no Tametomo might have worn.

Just as Hokkaido’s cold wind meticulously tightened apple skins and dyed their surfaces red, the laborers too thickened their garments and turned their cheeks to the crimson of a drunkard’s nose.

But just as a high-speed steel cutter sliced through cast metal as easily as one might shave daikon with a knife, so too did Hokkaido’s frigid wind relentlessly steal the laborers’ body heat. Working on the pier had an effect opposite to—yet perfectly matched with—placing ice into flames. By the time they finished their labor and headed back, their bodies had stiffened so much that climbing onto the empty coal cars became difficult. One of them was saying.

“Well, it’s like being frozen alive,” he said. However, laborers could not fear death if they were to survive.

40

Fujiwara lay on his stomach inside his bunk, scrawling something on a scrap of paper. As if making excerpts from a book, he had two or three volumes stacked beside him. He smoked furiously, puffing with such reckless speed that he might as well have been clamping two cigarettes between his lips at once. His solitary effort sufficed to fill the entire space with smoke. The dumbler stood nearly packed full with coal. The ship appeared set to depart as scheduled tomorrow morning and return to Yokohama for New Year's celebrations. Spending New Year's in Yokohama represented the collective hope of every sailor aboard. "There was no helping it in Muroran."

In Yokohama, the Captain, the Chief Engineer—every last one of them—had households. It was only natural, as a matter of human sentiment, that they would want to welcome the New Year with their own households. The Manshū Maru was scheduled to return to Yokohama around 10 AM on the 31st, or perhaps even later. Therefore, that schedule could not be extended even by an hour.

The Captain was supposed to return to Muroran on the first train first thing in the morning, parting from his lover at the Noboribetsu hot springs. The moment the Captain finished boarding the ship, his figure would appear on the bridge. There, he would give the command to heave up the anchor: "Heave ho!" Until then, things would remain exactly as they had been. But after that, things would change. They believed that the "Yokohama New Year" was already within reach. They would have to realize that this security had been severely shaken—and moreover, that everything else had completely derailed from their plans and run aground.

And the reason for all this was that the sailors had submitted their demands and were in negotiations; therefore, they were not working. That was why the ship wasn’t moving! The fact that the ship wasn’t moving would become known throughout the entire ship. Our demands would likely be scrutinized by the engine laborers as well. These demand clauses would likely impart some kind of impulse to them as well. And for that reason, these demand clauses had to be carefully considered and properly formulated!

Fujiwara was thinking these thoughts through the haze of cigarette smoke. He gazed at the scrap of paper. On it were written phrases that appeared to be a draft of demands. The establishment of working hours, wage increases, public holidays, suspension of work the day following departure and arrival, regulations and enforcement of compensation for work-related injuries and illnesses, prohibition of nighttime sampan use—all had been scrawled haphazardly. He struggled now to shape these clauses into a formal demand letter. “Tch!” Fujiwara clicked his tongue. He brushed cigarette ash violently onto the book’s cover. The fact that we even have to demand such things at this point...

He put the scrap of paper into his pocket and got down from the bunk. Then he asked Hata, “How’s Mr. Ogura’s situation looking?”

“Well, I haven’t heard anything about that yet.” Hata was also worried.

“Is Ogura on duty now?” “Hard to say.” Hata went to the entrance and looked at the bridge. Ogura was pacing back and forth across the bridge. “He’s there. Let’s discuss it in the chart room.” Hata whispered to the Storekeeper. The Storekeeper nodded. “Then I’ll go check how things stand, so you wait up on the engine.”

Hata casually dashed out just like that. Fujiwara went further inside once and sat down on a bench there. And he lit a cigarette. After a while, as if he had suddenly remembered something forgotten, he stood up and headed out toward the deck.

Fortunately, the Mates had all gone off somewhere to bid farewell to their last night before tomorrow morning’s departure.

The three of them gathered in the chart room. “We need to get Mr. Nishizawa to come,” Ogura said. “Right now, we’re letting him take the lead with talk about visiting brothels, so I think it’d be bad if we stood out,” Fujiwara replied.

“That guy’s completely hopeless.” “When it comes to brothel talk, he just gets obsessed. He needs to get serious when it counts—it’s a real problem.” Hata seethed with frustration. “But no—almost everyone else has nothing to offer beyond that. Yet that man possesses something extra. We must show absolute tolerance toward our allies.” “If we don’t, our front will collapse on its own.” Fujiwara placated them.

“And what about the Quartermaster? Have you still not managed to get him to talk?” Fujiwara asked Ogura. “He still hasn’t talked. I’m stuck because I don’t know where to start—the conversation just won’t come together properly. So, right when we’re about to submit the demand letter, if we show it to him and ask for his opinion— And if there are any submission requests to be made in your capacity as Quartermaster, then we could add those and submit them.” Ogura answered.

“That’s right. That would be better, right?” Fujiwara agreed. “That way would actually be better for keeping things secret.” Hata also agreed. “Then I’ll go bring Mr. Nishizawa. And if we don’t decide now, it’ll end up being tomorrow’s problem, won’t it?” Hata felt as if he were being driven onward, his mind in a hurry.

“Wait,” Ogura stopped him with a hand gesture. “I’ll be off duty in fifteen minutes. How about we gather at Tomos’ warehouse once I’m off?” The clock showed a quarter to eight.

“Right, let’s do that.” “If each of us makes it look like we’re just briefly going ashore, then we can head out.” “Alright, let’s do that.” Thereupon, the two sailors went down. After returning to the front, Hata told Nishizawa there would be a discussion at Tomo’s warehouse once the eight o’clock bell rang, and asked him to slip away unnoticed. Nishizawa nodded. Stoki sat down on the bench with the look of an audience member and, as usual, continued smoking his cigarette.

41 Eight o'clock rang. By that time, Fujiwara was already gone. Hata sat beside the apprentice and talked. "Well then, I'll stock up on sweets till New Year's. Won't forget your present, so wait for me, eh? Same old Tōyōken style, hahahaha!" With that, Hata turned Tomo's warehouse into Tōyōken.

“Huh?” Nishizawa let out a shrill cry. “Hata! Take me along sometimes too, will you?”

Thereupon, the two of them made their way together to the warehouse. Fujiwara sat atop the coiled hawsers like Tsunashiki Tenjin—a deity statue seated on ropes—clutching a lantern. Before long, Ogura also arrived.

And so, everything was mobilized—that was the situation. “Given that we’re engaged in dangerous labor where we could be swept away by waves at any moment, crushed by a winch, or killed who-knows-where—a situation where injuries are left untreated and deaths are ignored like with the apprentice—we can’t feel secure or settled at all.” “Therefore, I think we should establish work-related illness and injury compensation regulations on this ship, and use them to provide support.” “I want to discuss this with all of you.” “And since merely asking them to create such regulations would likely result in ineffective ones, I propose we form a committee with two members from our side and one from theirs to establish these assistance rules—what do you think?” Fujiwara said.

“That’s absolutely necessary,” Nishizawa said. “However, regarding the regulations—will our side’s will truly be carried out through the committee? I have doubts about that point,” Hata said.

“Right, that’s why I set the ratio as two from our side and one from theirs,” Fujiwara answered. “In form that’s how it’d be—but wouldn’t that committee actually end up with our two being controlled by their one? If our two are to avoid getting controlled, I think we’d have to call a strike over those conditions alone. And that’d mean double the work,” Hata said.

“Hmm… Then what should we do?” Ogura said. “Exactly. Our committee members would just be puppets anyway.” Fujiwara agreed. “So how should we handle this in the end?” “My idea is we draft everything ourselves and only make them choose between approving or rejecting it.” “Otherwise, since this battle will be decided in that critical moment before departure, postponing it until after we sail means certain defeat.” “That’s why we must make all conditions absolutely clear—either they accept or reject them outright—and strike that decisive blow right at departure time. That’s our best approach.” This was Hata’s plan.

“Yes, that method sounds good. They say there’s not a single sailor on shore leave in Muroran right now.” “I heard two men who’d been on leave until a few days ago hitched a ride back ashore on the *Jinimaru*.” “They say no ships are hiring in a dump like Muroran anyway.” Ogura said. “So even if there’s just four or five of us, I reckon we can win if we time it right.” “Then let’s draft those demands right here.” Nishizawa said.

“Since the draft has been entirely entrusted to Fujiwara-kun, let’s proceed with drafting based on that, shall we?” Hata said. There, based on Fujiwara’s draft, new demands were painstakingly drawn up atop the coiled ropes until around eleven o’clock that night. They were: 1. Working hours shall be set at eight hours. (Currently over twelve hours with no upper limit) For any labor performed beyond eight hours when necessary, double the regular hourly wage shall be paid for each additional hour.

2. Increase in labor wages—For all lower-ranking crew members such as stokers, helmsmen, and carpenters, a twenty percent increase in monthly payments shall be implemented via the following method. Method: Take twenty percent of the total monthly income of all lower-ranking (What do they mean by *lower-ranking*?!) crew members, distribute it evenly among their headcount, and add this to the existing wages. 3. Sunday shall be strictly observed as an official day off. 4. When entering or leaving port on an official day off, the following day shall be set as a day off. 5. Work orders shall be issued by a single individual, and measures shall be taken to prevent multiple orders from being issued simultaneously by several mates.

6. We refuse to allow sailors to be used for the captain’s personal errands involving a sampan to go ashore late at night when arriving in Yokohama. 7. For work-related injuries and illnesses, this ship shall bear all expenses until full recovery and continue paying monthly salaries. The above. Such were the demands. That document was taken by Ogura back to the helm room to be neatly transcribed, then handed over to Hata. The negotiation procedure was decided as follows: early tomorrow morning, before beginning departure preparations, we would hand over [the demands] to the Chief Mate and remain in our cabins until all our demands were accepted.

The three demands—working hours, wage increases, and work-related injury and illness benefits—completely aligned with the stokers' interests. And those three were the most crucial among the demand clauses. “Therefore, we can’t just push these demands on the stokers without their consent.” “Of course.” Thus Ogura reported to the stokers (*fayaman*) and coal carriers (*colliermen*), while Fujiwara approached the oilers (*oilmen*). It was settled that the sailors would present these demands and fight—requesting that if they could form a united front together, nothing would be better, but if not, they’d ask for support instead. However, this had to coincide exactly with our demands being delivered to the Chief Mate. The reason was that these were demands so vital to sailors that they had to execute the plan themselves—for some stokers, they might not be as pressing—and what we feared even more were spies. Against spies, we absolutely had to stay vigilant. They’re more terrifying than plague bacteria. Since spies are never where you’d expect them—like never finding a loach under the same willow twice—we had to be doubly careful. Therefore, though it might seem slightly delayed, it was also decided that proceeding tomorrow morning would be best—that it absolutely must be tomorrow morning.

And one more critical matter was decided. That is, taking this submission of demands as an opportunity—whether it succeeds or fails—since we have at least succeeded in submitting them, let us commemorate this by joining the Seamen’s Union—and if there isn’t one, we’ll create it. They had vaguely heard, if memory served, that it had been established very recently. It was decided that upon returning to port, they would immediately investigate and, if a union existed, join without delay.

Regarding the regulations for work-related injury and illness benefits, it was of course decided they would be implemented immediately; however, it was also decided that during negotiations, they were not to forget to ensure the Bosun’s allowance would be handled according to these newly established regulations—this too was settled as agreed.

What did it mean that they—in making these necessary demands of theirs—had to first keep it all secret, as if they were plotting some improper, forbidden act, and even devise a contingency plan for when it failed?

What that might signify was none of my business. Still, I knew that whenever they made even the most basic demands for what should naturally be theirs as human beings, such attempts were always carefully kept secret by habit. No one wanted to fall into hell. Who had conditioned humans to act so furtively?

At this very moment, the Captain, having received a report from the Chief Mate that the mast had been cleaned, the sides painted, and the ship fully loaded in good order, was drinking sake with her. She said something to the effect of, “This is our farewell for the year, but we’ll meet again soon next year, won’t we?”

“I do love your beauty, but that very thing also makes me worry,” he said, taking a sip from his sake cup. It was inside a kotatsu draped with blazing crimson futons in a room at a Noboribetsu hot spring inn.

At that moment, the Bosun was groaning in his bunk—one side of which doubled as the ship’s iron wall—from wounds of ambiguous origin, neither distinctly maritime nor terrestrial, and from illness. The sailors were mid-discussion about demands to loosen the chains that bound them all too tightly. Viscount Mita served as president of both this steamship company and its coal mine. What he was doing at that moment remained unseen, concealed beyond the clouds.

42

Dawn broke. The wind was howling. The gray sky had blended indiscriminately with everything—whether mountains, plains, or horizon—as if from nowhere. Powder-like gray snow was scattering wildly through the air. But it wasn’t a major snowstorm. It wasn’t that distinctive type where you couldn’t open your eyes or nose. It was imagined that once past Daikoku Island, the wind would surely not be blowing as fiercely as it had during the previous voyage.

The hatch remained gaping open. It looked like the area around a child's mouth smeared with crumbs from puffed rice snacks. The entire deck was strewn with coal. Each fragment clung frozen to the deck like casting nodules. The Bosun went to the Chief Mate's quarters to ask about work procedures. Right behind him followed Storekeeper Fujiwara, carrying the neatly copied list of demands.

Ogura went to the stokers’ quarters as soon as he got up.

The sailors felt as though this was a morning vastly different from any usual morning. Wasn’t this truly a morning unlike any other?

The Bosun entered the Chief Mate’s room. And when he tried to close the door behind him, the Storekeeper had already slipped his entire body inside. Then the door was closed from behind by the Storekeeper.

“Good morning,” said the Bosun. “Yeah, right…”

When the Chief Mate was about to issue work orders, the Storekeeper immediately placed the list of demands on his desk. “The entire crew of sailors demands everything as outlined in this demand letter, so please comply with our demands.” “And please stamp this demand letter.” “In other words, that would signify approval of the demands.” The Bosun stood there like a frozen rod. The Chief Mate was much more shocked than if he had run aground on a reef.

That was impossible. Running aground was possible, but sailors submitting a demand letter?! He became enraged. “What the hell? Demands?! What kind of demands?! A demand to stop sailing?!” the Chief Mate shouted. The Bosun shrank back. He wanted to say, “I don’t know,” but—there stood Stoki—oh, this was troublesome. He was literally brought to a standstill.

Stoki remained unfazed; "They've begun," he thought.

“These are the demands exactly as written there. If you have any questions, I will answer them.” Stoki remained irritatingly composed.

“No demands can be made now. Not until we return to Yokohama!” The Chief Mate realized the situation was neither as simple as he’d imagined nor likely to unfold as he’d expected. “We believe we won’t work unless these matters are settled in Muroran. These demands scarcely exceed—if they even reach—the minimum standards established by maritime law, and the other issues are routine matters. To present demands this belatedly would demonstrate our unworldly foolishness while shaming the Manju Maru. Yet for us, this remains an utterly pressing concern. To you all, this must seem an insignificant matter unworthy of consideration. But for us, it is critically important. We hope you’ll review this and grant your approval.”

Stoki said this with feigned seriousness, as though he were an elementary school student being made to read aloud. The Bosun was fidgeting. There was no way for him to escape— “In any case, I can’t give you any response right now. After the Captain returns, I’ll consult him and give a response. But Stoki—you’d better drop this nonsense, I’m telling you for your own good. You’re thirty-three already—old enough to know better. Quit this altogether. The Captain ain’t gonna say yes, I tell ya. Then you lot’ll end up slapped with a suspension order for a year or three! How ’bout it—go back out there and talk sense into those sailors, eh?”

The Chief Mate changed his course. “I cannot comply with that. “We do not put forward demands that can be dismissed or are trivial. “These are all matters of vital importance to our lives and livelihoods. “We do not engage in such actions as jokes or half-hearted attempts to relieve boredom. “We know that if we were now afraid of something like a sailing suspension, we wouldn’t be able to make such demands. “In short, we have made an agreement that if these demands are not accepted, we will not take on any work. “I have merely come here as a messenger to submit this demand letter and provide its explanation.” Stoki did not take the bait of the Chief Mate’s tactics.

“If you insist on refusing, then I’ll just have to hand it to the Captain myself. But that won’t be approved—and you’re planning to trample all over my authority too, huh?” The Chief Mate had wanted to submit it himself. “That’s right! Please pass it to the Captain. And then, I find it strange that you talk about whether to crush your face or not. Not that such things particularly matter, but to avoid any misunderstanding, I’ll state this clearly: we initially submitted this demand letter to you. So then, since I can’t make the decision, you’ll tell me to take it to the Captain, won’t you? So if I ask you to pass it to the Captain, you’ll say ‘You’re undermining my authority,’ won’t you?”

“Isn’t that right? You’re not listening to what I say!” The Chief Mate thrust forward aggressively. “If you claim to lack decision-making authority over our demands, doesn’t that mean you actually hold the right to crush them? And crushing them amounts to rejection, does it not? To possess only the right of refusal without any power of approval—even if that’s fashionable these days—isn’t that logically unsound?” “Therefore, we no longer make any demands of you.” “We merely ask that you relay this document.” Stoki spoke with unshakable seriousness, his measured tone suggesting he was merely discussing mundane logistics.

That had utterly destroyed the Chief Mate’s authority. He didn’t say a word. “I’ll hand it over when the Captain returns.” “Please do.” Stoki said. The carpenter went up to the forecastle (the main deck) and was adjusting the windlass with clank-clank sounds and oiling it.

The Bosun stood rigidly in the Chief Mate’s cabin, paralyzed by awkwardness. “What’s wrong? “Bosun—you didn’t know about this?” The Chief Mate jabbed his finger at the demand letter on the desk. “They move quickly, it seems.” “I truly had no idea whatsoever.” The Bosun answered as if suddenly revived. He’d been dying to speak—to say anything at all—for what felt like ages.

“You not knowing anything is unacceptable! This responsibility falls on you!” “What exactly do you intend to do?” “And if today’s departure gets delayed, we won’t make it back to Yokohama by New Year’s!” “If that happens, the Captain might order every last one of you ashore—so what’s your plan?” The Chief Mate abruptly conceived the strategy of dismantling the Bosun’s resolve. “I… well, it’s been quite a predicament. Even during boiler unloading, I barely managed to pacify them into working… In any case, I’ve been utterly negligent myself, so I’ll go out there and attempt to persuade them to work as much as possible…” He tried to hurriedly depart from the spot, as though acting on some conviction.

43

The Captain had returned.

The Bosun was about to go plead with the sailors not to “act recklessly” when the boy appeared at the Chief Mate’s cabin. “Chief Mate, standby has been called.” “The Captain has now gone up to the bridge.” With that, the boy left. What in the world was this? “This is unmanageable.” The Bosun and the Chief Mate stood facing each other there, looking as if they were about to come to blows.

“Anyway, you get to the deck and stand by! Find some way to trick those sailors into working!” “I’ll be right there too.” After finally saying that, the Chief Mate hurriedly took off his hat.

The Bosun dashed out to the deck like a cat being chased. The Chief Mate dashed up to the bridge. In his right hand, he was clutching the demand letter. The Captain had called for standby, but because the Chief Mate did not appear on the foxhole, the sense of happiness he had maintained since before parting with her was on the verge of exploding. He smiled faintly as the Chief Mate came up.

“Well then, let’s get started,” the Captain said. Seeing the Chief Mate standing breathlessly before him, he realized this was no trivial matter. His eyes fixed on the scrap of paper. “The sailors have submitted a demand letter,” “with two helmsmen among them.” The Chief Mate managed to utter only this much. He held out the demand letter before the Captain. At the sailors’ entrance, they had carried a one-shaku-wide bench to the three-shaku doorway. Fujiwara sat closest to the entrance, with Hata, Ogura, and Nishizawa behind him—forming a token picket line. Fujiwara watched from the main entrance as the Captain and Chief Mate discussed the demand letter.

The Captain did not even try to look at the Chief Mate’s demand letter. Such a thing—if the Chief Mate were to tear it up—would bring about a peaceful resolution, or so the Captain would have it. And yet, the Chief had brought even such trivial matters to me. “Go ahead and tear that thing up!” “That thing—it’s all because you’re cowering like this that things have gone wrong!” “Tell them I’ll hear everything once we’re back in Yokohama!” The Captain measured the Chief Mate from head to toe as if he were a shaku measure.

“I did try it.” “But they insist they won’t work unless this gets accepted.” “They’re saying they won’t work even if it takes till next spring.” “And since you hold the authority to decide, they say you just need to pass it to him—that’s all.” “I kept it because I figured it’d come out eventually anyway.” Even the Chief Mate couldn’t help thinking when scolded by the Captain: *What’s this bastard’s problem? I’ll have my captain’s license in another year too!* “Strutting about as captain of some fan-shaped tub that looks like a rickety boat...” “Hmph—‘Bosun’ would suit you better,” he fumed. But these were just thoughts—there was nothing he could do.

“Let me see what kind of drivel is written here.” The Captain took the demand letter.

“There! He’s taken it!” Fujiwara uttered in a low, forceful voice. “Hmph, hmph.” The Captain snorted out his utter contempt through flared nostrils. But when he reached the sixth clause—the stipulation against rowing the sampan for the Captain’s “personal use”—he ceased his derisive snorting. This concerned him directly. It was a grave matter indeed.

“Call the sailors!” The Captain could not ignore this. If he ignored them, the ship wouldn’t move, they wouldn’t be able to spend New Year’s in Yokohama, and moreover, it was utterly outrageous that they had dared to complain about his sampan.

The Captain, having issued the standby order, entered the salon and stood ready to berate the sailors there. He had the Chief Mate bring the seamen’s handbooks and piled them up on the table. Pitifully, the Bosun and carpenter were freezing in the foxhole, their snot frozen solid. The Engineer entered the engine room, placed his hands on the handle, and waited.

The steam kept rising. The safety valve was on the verge of blowing.

At the salon table, the Mates lined up on both sides of the Captain. Chief, Second, Third. The boy rushed to the front. “The Captain says all sailors, the Bosun, the Carpenter, and the Quartermaster—every last one of you—are to come to the salon.” “At once!” Like smoke, he flew away again. There, the sailors departed. *He’s planning to take a high-handed approach*, Fujiwara thought. Hata, Ogura, and Nishizawa each harbored a distinct combat resolve.

The Bosun and the carpenter also began to turn pale. At this time, even in Fayaman, the demands that Ogura had brought and shown became an issue, and a fierce debate between pro-strike and anti-strike factions was underway. However, as a whole, the concept of class struggle had not yet clearly taken root in their minds. Therefore, while that was appropriate, a “sense” that the direct stimulus or impulse had not yet arrived hindered them from standing together with the sailors. However, even if they did not take a stand, they were wavering. That bore an air of not being something they would refuse to take a stand on.

When the sailors passed in front of their entrance, they raised a shout.

It resounded all the way to the salon. These events were the first since the Manshū Maru had been built and taken to sea. The sailors passed by with smiles, greeting the stokers as they went. It was like the first roar of a lion that had awakened.

Somehow, it was different from usual. Even though the standby order had been issued, the ship’s hull didn’t budge an inch. The stokers at the boiler fronts and coal passers from the coal bunkers emerged onto the deck, raising their heads like wriggling larvae. The oilman peered out from the engine room.

Negotiations commenced in the salon. Of course, the Captain had intended to crush them with a single blow and not had the slightest intention of engaging in negotiations. However, by some twist—whether through momentum or imperceptible shifts—they entered into a state of negotiation.

44 “Who wrote this?!” “This—!” “And this demand letter?!” The Captain severed his shout with these words. “I wrote it.” The helmsman Ogura answered. “You?” The Captain was so shocked he half-rose from his swivel chair. Ogura was, among quartermasters, the most obedient youth he had ever cherished—intelligent, competent at work, and moreover a handsome, straightforward man.

“Someone made you write this, didn’t they? You couldn’t have written this yourself! Who drafted this document?” He glared at Stoki. “I drafted it.” Stoki answered this time. “I thought so. I knew it was you. You’re a lazy bastard through and through. You egged Ogura and the others into presenting this thing.” He interrogated them like a judge. “I consider such matters entirely peripheral. We became sailors to feed ourselves. Yet even when injured doing ship work, if we’re denied treatment, it amounts to discarding our lives. Granted, one might say risking lives is natural aboard ships. But we cannot accept being the only ones expected to sell our lives cheaply.”

Fujiwara fired the first flare. “Then why don’t you just go ahead and disembark?” “Who ever asked you—when did anyone ever beg you—‘Please don’t disembark; stay aboard!’?” “Think carefully—which of us was it that begged?”

The Captain said. “No matter where we go, there’s no decent place for us.” “Therefore, we have no choice but to adopt methods to improve our own ‘current’ lives.” “Even if we were to say that this ship alone is unfairly treated and disembark, it would be no different on other ships or ashore.” “Therefore, we’re simply trying to live under better conditions where we are now.” He answered calmly.

“So there’s no decent place for us no matter where we go?” “Hah! And whose responsibility is that, anyway?” “You’re trying to say it’s my responsibility, aren’t you?” “Didn’t I just say it? Who asked you to board in the first place?” “And if you wanted a life with ‘better conditions,’ why didn’t you study harder and climb your way up?” “Shifting the blame for your own mistakes onto others is just too brazen!” The Captain thought about thoroughly squeezing every last drop of fat out of this bastard. And then cast him out! .

“Thank you for your advice, but I thought that if too many people studied and climbed upward, there’d soon be no one left to work as sailors.” He nearly laughed aloud but caught himself in time. “You idiot! “Are you mocking me?!” “You idiot! “No matter how much you study, a fool stays a fool. “You’ll never rise above being a sailor. “So if you’ve got the skills, why not just become captain or chief engineer without hesitation?”

The Captain had unwittingly become Stoki’s interlocutor. “Even if we study, we believe we likely cannot become even bosuns, let alone captain.” “That is precisely why we wish to continue working under slightly improved conditions in our current positions.” “We have absolutely no intention of becoming ship owners or captains to gain wealth or rights.” “We demand a life as ordinary laborers and as ordinary human beings.” “As human beings, we do not consider the Captain to be more special than laborers.” “We now consider what is referred to as class to be nothing more than a division of labor.” “And yet, nowadays, when we take on certain jobs, it even becomes akin to blaspheming humanity.” “We believe that the idea of humans considering it a mark of greatness to oppress, trample upon, and exploit other humans is a notion from half a century ago.” “We see ourselves as precious contributors to a part of human life.” “But you think of us as capitalists.” Stoki gradually infused the discussion with fervor and sincerity.

“You think we’re capitalists? “You lot?” “Ha ha ha ha ha!” Finally, even the Captain burst out laughing at Stoki’s outrageous words. “What fearsome capitalists we are!” “Ha ha ha ha ha! You’re just fleas and bedbugs!” The Mates all laughed. The sailors found being called capitalists an unusual term. “If you don’t consider us capitalists, then you must think of us as slaves.” “The only thing we can sell is our labor.” “In other words, it’s just our ‘bodies’.” “But if even that is considered not ours, then we would be considered slaves, I suppose.” “But if we are slaves, why don’t you value the lives of those slaves?” “Aren’t slaves your property?” “The reason our lives have become utterly insignificant to you is because we have changed from slaves into capitalists—that is, wage slaves.” “That’s because there’s an endless supply of new, good commodities that can replace us.”

“Moreover, we no longer wish to remain any kind of slave forever. At any opportunity, we are prepared to sever the iron chains that bind us. We are trying to live as human beings. And then you bring up that point—how about that! We’re the flea-and-bedbug capitalists! Well, if our demands are met, good. If not, we’ll simply have to show you exactly how much power we possess.”

Stoki delivered his final words with forceful conviction.

“Hunh. That’s fine too.” “But what of it?” “Hata, you didn’t willingly put your seal on this demand letter yourself, did you?” “Someone must’ve incited you.” The Captain shifted tactics. “I became a sailor to find seeds for strikes on every ship.” “From my first day aboard, I thought even lacking a bathhouse could justify a strike.”

Hata Yoshio, the toilet cleaner, had suffered more than anyone from the absence of a bathhouse. Moreover, he was young and had breathed in the air of a new society. The Captain had never imagined that this innocent youth—who polished his toilet’s metal fixtures more meticulously than those in his own quarters, this fastidious and loyal young man—could be a “radical.” “And now this bastard goes around ‘discovering strikes’ and spouts such nonsense!” “It’s like these rats are partisans!”

The Captain saw with surprise that the sailors had solidified their unity. He realized this was neither a spontaneous outburst nor an impulsive act, but something carefully planned. At that moment, another shout erupted from the stokehold. It reverberated through the salon. The departure time kept getting delayed! New Year's Day kept drawing nearer!

The Captain was growing irritated.

“Nishizawa! What about you?” “Uno—that stamped helmsman—Ogura! You bastards agreed and stamped it too!” “Chief Mate!” “Get to Boren immediately! Four sailors, two quartermasters, one bosun—finally even the bosun gets his comeuppance! Tell them it’s their chance for the *Manshū Maru*! Order these bastards suspended from boarding and hire those replacements! Get moving now before we delay departure any further!” He ordered the Chief Mate.

The sailors had known this outcome since yesterday! In all of Muroran's Boren pawnshops—which included semi-professionals, making barely three in total—there were only two owners who had once been sailors and one Okuriurou vendor! They were running a single shop on land! No matter what happened, they had no intention of boarding ships to try sustaining their families on thirteen or eighteen yen. Strike-breakers were unfortunately unavailable. "We're well aware of that," Fujiwara wanted to retort. Hata was already growing restless.

The Bosun was surprised. The profession and the twenty percent monthly interest—though in reality ten percent of that was skimmed off by the Chief Mate (or perhaps the Captain)—came to nothing. Moreover, what had he even done! Had he not been nothing but a loyal watchdog? What fault had he committed despite his merits? Had he not already even rescued the Chief Mate in a moment of crisis?

"However, the Captain must have some deeper plan here. Once he says that in front of everyone, the Bosun probably intends to make it seem like there's no replacement—or something along those lines. Otherwise, the Captain wouldn't have had any reason to fire me—if it weren't for me, he never could've gotten that mistress so cheaply in the first place."

Poor Bosun—like a cowardly dog, he was half in doubt, sounding out his master’s mind. But Bosun, just as you think about yourself, others never give you a second thought. Even at the very moment you’re starving to death, others are busy thinking about their mistresses and geishas! Other people don’t give a damn about anyone else’s circumstances. Other people are those who use you—do you understand, Bosun!

But replacements did exist—and weren’t limited to the Bosun alone. In all of Muroran, there wasn’t a single replacement for an apprentice sailor. The Chief Mate had just enough capacity to turn his attention to this matter. “Captain,” he called in a low voice from behind the Captain’s swivel chair.

“Wait,” he stepped back. “What is it?” “Hmm. Ah, right. Then to the cabin.” The Captain said to the Chief Mate. The Chief Mate disappeared into the door of the captain’s cabin.

“You lot, wait here!” Having said this to the sailors, the Captain followed the Chief Mate into his own cabin.

The Captain was a man who would dare erase the character for "impossible" from that dictionary. Therefore, the Chief had wanted to tell him it was "impossible" to immediately procure that many laborers in Muroran. But the Captain remained an utterly unmanageable tyrant. This was a tyrant that felt like shriveled lettuce leaves.

“Captain, there’s only one Boren in Muroran, but…” He said in a tentative tone, “Since it’s just before New Year, I don’t think there are any idlers around, but…” The Chief Mate broached the subject.

“If there are none in Muroran, we’ll call for them from Otaru or Hakodate.” “Hmm, but then our return to Yokohama would be significantly delayed, wouldn’t it.” “But there must be five or ten sailors available in Muroran.” “Have you checked into that?” The Captain asked. “Actually, I did inquire as soon as we docked, but…” “Until two or three days ago, there were three or four people on break, but they said they took the opportunity to go to Yokohama.” “So since it hasn’t even been a week since then, I don’t think there’s any chance at all.” “Otherwise, I too had thought the Storekeeper needed to be dealt with quickly—if there had been a replacement, I would’ve intended to have him disembarked there.” “If he weren’t here, the rest would just be riding along on his coattails, so to speak.” “How about we just disembark that guy and handle the rest bit by bit… Otherwise, our Yokohama New Year will be ruined.”

The Chief Mate had also been searching for Boren!

“Hmm, right…! I want to spend New Year in Yokohama too. If it weren’t for that, I wouldn’t care if we dropped anchor for ten or twenty days. So as an emergency measure, how about we just disembark Stoki?” The Captain agreed. “I think that’s best.” “But there’s the method.” “The question is how to do it—whether to do it in front of everyone or call him alone.” “And if all the sailors side with that guy, I think we’d have no choice but to drive out twenty or thirty of them.” The Chief thought it didn’t matter how—as long as he would just “disappear” from this ship.

“Right!” “In any case, we’re racing against time at this point.” “No matter how good the method, it can’t afford delay.” “Then I’ll order that bastard Stoki to disembark.” The Captain said. “But really—what insufferable bastards they are!” “If only this were Yokohama…” The Captain bitterly regretted again and again that this wasn’t Yokohama. Even killing those bastards wouldn’t satisfy me—yet depending on circumstances, we might have to pay them money instead of just disembarking them?! There was indeed reason for his bitter resentment.

“In any case, the timing is bad.” “By the way, I’m concerned Stoki might report the unresolved bosun hiring and injury case to the Maritime Bureau.” “If that happens, it’ll be quite troublesome—we need to cover it up as neatly as possible.” The Chief Mate said while attempting to leave. “But damn it all! Not even letting us suspend them—I’d rather toss them in prison!” “They’ve been properly caught by the Public Security Police, you know.” “Those damn bastards?!”

That the Captain was indignant was, needless to say, a "perfectly reasonable" matter.

The two men continued whispering furtively about something. To write down each and every one of those conversations was such a tedious and unbearable task that it couldn’t be endured.

Let’s move forward. Hurry, hurry.

45

The Captain and the Chief Mate went out to the salon.

But wait—what was this? At the salon entrance, stokers blackened with soot had gathered and were peering inside. Someone whistled. Someone started stomping their feet. When the Captain and Chief Mate entered the salon, the stokers shifted from rallying the sailors to directing their demonstration against the Captain and Chief Mate. Whistles blared incessantly. Feet stamped in rhythm, pounding in unison. "What the hell?! Peeking in from there? Get over here!" The Captain roared.

“What the hell are you saying?! (six characters illegible)!” Someone shouted from behind.

He thought this needed to be settled quickly. The Captain shot a fearsome glance toward the entrance before settling into his chair.

“What do you think? Since I can’t answer this immediately, let’s postpone it until we reach Yokohama.” He broached the topic.

“Captain, that won’t do. We know our demands can be met precisely because we’re in Muroran. If we go all the way to Yokohama, there’s an industrial reserve army they could discard us for. If our demands aren’t accepted here, we won’t work. And whatever you may think of this—I’ll have you know that even dismissing me alone won’t settle things. Haven’t you seen how agitated the engine department’s become, even without us consulting them? This demand is embarrassingly compromising—a timid, outdated request. If this isn’t accepted, it means declaring ‘You slaves belong to us.’”

“You all receive four hundred yen per month in salary alone”—he had struggled to uncover this figure—“and your wartime profit special bonus amounts to forty-five months’ worth annually. At present, we cannot consider it acceptable that we risk our lives working for monthly salaries of thirteen to eighteen yen. While you all remain absorbed in your ample purses, we’ve effectively suffered drastic pay cuts with prices rising three times faster than our wages. Moreover, our working hours stretch in direct proportion to the ship’s busyness—they drive us relentlessly. Fourteen hours a day is literally longer than convicts’ labor. On top of that—no official days off! Injuries go untreated! Deaths get shrugged off! Storm or midnight makes no difference—‘I’m going home, so row my sampan! You lot return before dawn!’ This is what we endure. Well? Aren’t these labor conditions shameful to hear? Even prisons provide far better treatment than this. What’s worse than any prison is the *Manshūmaru*—and when its captain bears the name Yoshinaga Takeshi, I can’t imagine that does your honor any good.”

Fujiwara had done something bold again! The indignation of the Captain and officers had reached its peak. They turned as red as chair cushions and as blue as the sea. In direct proportion to their indignation, the sailors rejoiced. “Damn right!” Finally, Hata shouted. “That’s right!”

Drawn in by Hata's spirited words, the stokers outside the door raised a battle cry in unison. "First of all, we might be capitalists who sell our bodies! But ultimately, we are alive. And more than anything, we still want to keep living! If we didn't want to live, who'd ever board a ship like this, you bastards!" Hata had a mountain of things he still needed to say. There were so many things he needed to say—and because his words wouldn't come out smoothly—Damn it!—he exploded.

“Who’s the bastard?!” “Impudent!” The Captain frantically stood up. From outside the doorway came shouts and the sound of stomping. “We’ll burn it down!” someone shouted.

“I’d like to recount the origins of this ‘We’ll burn it down!’ business, but as you can plainly see, I’m rather occupied at the moment.”

“Isn’t that right?!”

Hata stood up.

“Which one of you disregarded precious human lives?!” “Even the bosun’s mate was born from a father and mother, possessing every human condition no different from you bastards!” “And yet, what have you done?!” “Since the bosun’s mate was injured, have you bastards ever once thought about him?! Who gave you bastards the right to despise human life?!” He had become completely carried away. “If you bastards dare to treat the bosun’s mate with even more of your beastly attitude, I’m prepared to act!” “If you bastards let the bosun’s mate die, I’ll…!” Finally, Hata drew the sheath knife he had at his waist.

“Danger!” Before everyone could shout, he stabbed it into the table with such force that it could pierce through a back. “I can’t behave like a human being toward you bastards!”

The room became deathly quiet. The people outside the door had their eyes wide open, holding their breath as they watched how things would unfold. "You bastards have rights." "On this earth, countless rights exist by trampling over others." "But listen here, Captain—" He struck the table, this time with his fist. "The right to despise humans isn't permitted to anyone!" "Moreover, those who deny others' lives will have their own lives denied!" "Do you understand?!" He stood there stiffly, as if he'd forgotten to sit down. He glared at the Captain with murderous eyes. They looked exactly like the soul of burning fire.

Fujiwara quietly pulled out the knife Hata had stabbed into the table and placed it before his own seat. The Captain needed to retrieve his pistol but found himself unable to rise. For the first time, he perceived a dignity within those lowly humans he'd scarcely acknowledged - a force that could intimidate and pierce even one as superior as himself. This was a laborer possessing nothing: no status, wealth, family or home - merely some greenhorn toilet cleaner. Yet this realization kept the Captain rooted to his chair.

He had once stood up, but midway through, he regretted having sat back down in hesitation. Had the laborer standing before him not directed that seething glare his way, he would never have managed to stand at all.

That was something that wounded his professional, traditional dignity. And like a rooster that, once defeated, can never raise its head again, this experience would thereafter become an oppressive weight pressing down on him forever. It resembled how a patient consumed by delusions of persecution would keep seeing terrifying visions in empty air, spiraling into madness. It had to mirror the fate of those who lean their full trust against a magnificent yet hollow stage prop, only to collapse along with it. He had been propping himself up on this theatrical stage set all along!

“You’re trapped in a massive delusion and don’t even realize it yourself!” “You’re nothing but exploited material too!” “If not that, then you’re just a sycophant!” “Take a hard look at what you truly are from within!” “If you handle the bosun’s mate according to these demands—and let me tell you, these demands are already way too damn accommodating—listen up! If you refuse this, I’m ready to act!” “You should know I’m prepared without me spelling it out.” “Well?!” “Strip away your petty excuses and gilded pretenses—respond to human demands like a human being!”

Hata plopped down onto the chair. And then he took the sheath knife from in front of Fujiwara and put it back into the canvas sheath hanging from his backside. The people let out their first sigh of relief. The fact that he hadn’t rampaged around like a lion and that things had come to a close put everyone at ease. In truth, it made everyone feel things had turned out well enough.

The Captain had directed a mocking attitude toward the Demand Letter, but now pulled it from before the Chief Mate toward himself as if it were something of great value, and began examining it. All that passion and indignation had been woven into this mere scrap of paper! He was now glad he hadn't torn it. If he had dared to tear it apart! "In that case, shall I explain each article in the Demand Letter one by one—if you require it?" Fujiwara said.

“No—no need for explanations.” “You likely grasp most already.” “But I must confer with the mates first. You’ll wait here.” “A brief consultation,” he told Fujiwara, then motioned to the mates—“To my cabin”—before withdrawing into the captain’s quarters. The mates trailed behind. “Hata’s one hell of a man!” Outside the salon, they lavished praise on his actions. “That’s the way!” “Stick with him and us lot’d never sweat so much!”

“That’s right—the strong prevail! We’re being swallowed up,” and so on—the stokers did not try to leave the spot.

The sailors, now that their opponents had left, released from their extreme tension, lit cigarettes and took a break. "How about it, Bosun? They’ve even been ordered up to your replacement, haven’t they?" Hata turned toward the Bosun and said. The Bosun was in a daze, as if he had been struck hard on the head. He had seen men who would suddenly slash at the Captain, but he had never seen anyone so adept with both words and actions. "And besides, he’s still just a kid!" The Bosun was utterly shocked. "No—I had no idea." That was how it should have been.

Hata was a young man with a reputation for neither drinking nor frequenting brothels, keeping to himself and working diligently.

“Honestly, you can’t judge people by their looks!” “Well? What’s your take, Bosun?” This time Fujiwara questioned the dazed bosun.

“Oh, uh… I was just… spacing out.” He was truly dazed. “This is no joke—get yourself together! Everyone’s working up a great sweat here!”

Nishizawa, Ogura, Uno, and Hata—the four of them were busily discussing the negotiation terms. At that moment, onto the table, the Engine Department Boycho brought a scrap of paper and placed it. And declaring “This is from the Engine Department,” he immediately darted away as if fleeing.

Nishizawa opened the scrap of paper and looked at it. SUPPORT THE STRUGGLE / PRAY FOR SUCCESS / ENGINE DEPARTMENT ALL MEMBERS / SAILOR CREW It was written in katakana like a telegram.

They saw it, turned toward the doorway, and raised their hands to signal. “Do it thoroughly! If it comes to a strike, we won’t light the fires!” Someone shouted from outside the doorway. The four showed it to Fujiwara. He did not forget to shout, “Thank you!”

Before long，the mates who had gone to hold a secret meeting in the captain’s quarters returned to the salon． Upon the list of demands were stamps from both the Captain and Chief Mate，meticulously placed side by side． “After discussing with everyone，” said the Captain in a low voice，“we’ve decided to accept your demands．We want you back at work immediately．The apprentice will be hospitalized upon docking in Yokohama—all other conditions will take effect at once．” He tried to frame this as his own willing concession but was too flustered to pull off the act．

“Banzai!” “See our might!” While chanting “Long live the workers!” the stokers outside the door stomped away boisterously. “Then get to work at once,” the Chief Mate ordered. “Y-yes, understood,” the Bosun replied.

“Thank you most sincerely.” Fujiwara said while tucking the demand letter bearing official stamps into his pocket. They went back outside. The sailors had secured victory. Yet an indefinable dissatisfaction clung to some corner of every man’s heart. They’d been harboring a premonition of sorts.

In front of the stokers' quarters, they gave three banzai cheers and welcomed the sailors.

That day's departure nevertheless carried for the sailors the air of "a triumphant general's return voyage to his homeland."

46

That voyage was an unusual voyage. It seemed the sailors were beginning to be treated as human beings. The Mates who issued orders simply commanded them to act based on their assigned division of tasks. Moreover, their tasks were now properly organized, so much so that the sailors could achieve the same results with only two-thirds of the labor and time they had previously required. Whether it was the Captain or any of the other Mates, they now seemed to have lost interest in the "ruffian" lower-ranking sailors except for the mere fact that they were "working miserably." The lower-ranking sailors acting "human" now appeared to have liberated them from the delusion that it wounded their authority.

Vaguely—no, more accurately, it was clear—they were being overly calculating in their deference, extending it not just to sailors but even to stokers. To those ignorant of the truth, it seemed peaceful. And everything was conducted with restraint. "How humble these mates are!" some uninformed observer might have praised—even a laborer—so subdued was the atmosphere. Thus, the sailors too ceased to be 'ruffians'.

They too—as long as they were not prohibited from behaving humanely—behaved splendidly in a human manner when permitted to do so. The sailors—what exactly were these labor wages being rewarded to them? Some knew; many did not. Yet only when their livelihoods were severely threatened would they turn inward through a loyalty akin to comradeship. And though they sometimes succeeded in this, more often they failed. From any decisive standpoint, they had been crushed before even making demands. They acted individually—like Mikami, Hata, Ogura, or Nishizawa—trying to escape labor conditions that increasingly pinned them down like wings in a vise.

Their actions appeared almost contradictory. Quarrels even broke out among them as comrades over this matter. But what drove them to this was the "hard labor" and "destitution" that weighed so oppressively upon them. It was the threads of the capitalist system pulling the strings. They realized that what they had been doing and what Fujiwara had been doing were entirely different things, yet both had aimed for the same goal. They learned there was a proper way to do things.

Until now, they had been comrades who shared meals from the same pot. But now, in addition to that, a sentiment of being comrades belonging to the "class as laborers" had been added. That had strangely yet intensely tightened the bonds between them, making them seem more intimate. From friends made through “whoring” to “prison” their relationships were propelled into bonds of comradeship.

Was this due to Fujiwara’s persuasive urging, or was it his “agitation” at work? Could the power of a single individual have moved so many people? And if so, would those multitudes have been compelled to act even against their own will? Was it not a minor eruption of rebellion—uniformly harbored by laborers under the capitalist economy—just as people gasp under sweltering heat and shiver in bitter cold?

We know that many labor disputes are carried out based on historical materialism and are punished based on historical materialism.

That this small tale too cannot escape its one prescribed trajectory stiffened my pen and made progress difficult. But before the fact that—(eight characters missing)—no *** victory could be obtained, I resigned myself and pressed onward with my pen!

This voyage was the calm before the outbreak of violence and the desolation after its passing.

It was an ordinary occurrence after such events. And that ordinariness was both a sorrowful and an agonizing thing for the working class. It was an outrage. But for the capitalists, it was still not enough to satisfy them, insufficient, and frustrating—yet also somewhat "amusing." But what was this? I had once again gotten too far ahead of myself.

That was after arriving in Yokohama! This voyage—the entry into Yokohama—was held in great anticipation by every sailor’s heart. And even if they departed early, it would still take until around the fourth. On the first day of New Year’s, everyone rests. And uniformly, they—just as soldiers on a forced march under blazing sun uniformly thirst for water—hungered for life on land, life on land even if it meant a flophouse. Moreover, it was New Year's after all. For that reason, their feet were not touching the ground!

The ship would make a splendid entry into port, all dressed up! The ship would anchor for two or three days. Besides our monthly wages, there must be allowances! Let’s go there! Let’s go here! I’ll make a trip all the way to Tokyo! They thought in countless ways. Dostoevsky had said that when prisoners gaze at society’s sky beyond high iron windows or tall red brick walls, they imagine more freedom and happiness there than truly exists—how right he was. In just the same way, the sailors too nurtured an inflated longing for land. They would convince themselves that any happiness could exist if only it were on land, forgetting how they’d once fled to sea when life ashore grew unbearable. Times must’ve changed by now—and maybe back then, I was just doing things wrong. Like ships arriving at night, they let darkness cloak land’s ugly truths while yearning for those dazzling harbor lights. Yet every time they disembarked, land’s life felt impossibly remote. They couldn’t shake the sense that everything and everyone ashore was thrusting them away.

Just as a left-threaded bulb does not fit into a right-threaded socket, it made them specialized and impaired.

The Manshū Maru advanced in an orderly manner to avoid anchoring overnight outside the port. It had passed Shiriya Lighthouse, Kinkasan Lighthouse, off Kamaishi, off Inubōsaki, off Katsuraura, Kannonzaki, and Uraga. Now it proceeded with Honmoku-oki lying quietly off the port side. The sailors stood ready at the forecastle. Snow-laden wind carved their cheeks. Since its needles pierced through any cold-weather gear, the sailors' work clothes might as well have been mosquito nets. They wore raincoats despite neither rain nor snow falling—garments that blocked cold while remaining light. And they kept off the sea spray too.

December 31st, 9:00 AM—Everything had gone perfectly—the *Manshū Maru* entered deep into Yokohama Port and dropped anchor nearly off Kanagawa. As soon as the ship entered the port, a launch from the company immediately began circling it like water spiders, swirling around the vessel. It was December 31st. It was New Year's Eve. That day, all labor should have been at rest. However, at that time, war was raging in Europe. Because of this, a frenzied economic boom had made Japan's bourgeois class dance wildly and ceaselessly, as if infected by dance-crazed microbes or driven mad by their consumption. And that ecstatic dance—along with the resulting austerity imposed on workers—compelled dockworkers to unload coal on that New Year’s Eve. In other words, dockworkers were sent to the *Manshū Maru*, crammed into a barge towed by the launch. The dockworker—known as Gonzo—had come relying on the promise of special wages and an extra cup of *toso* for tomorrow’s New Year’s celebration.

The dockworkers’ barge was moored to the ship. They scrambled up the ropes like monkeys. They simply competed. What they gained from this drove them into overwork, serving only to make the capitalists’ wallets even heavier. But they jumped up in a rush to be first! The *Manshū Maru* appeared to be starting cargo handling. The winch was handled roughly by the dockworkers. With the valve left wide open, it was a single-handle go-ahead-go-stern.

I realized that if I kept writing this way, there would be no end to it. I had still meant to write about how the Captain and Mikami became sworn brothers after sharing the same prostitute in Muroran. But such things were neither particularly strange nor rare. I decided to drop it.

From the launch, a company employee entered the captain’s cabin. There, while drinking coffee, they discussed something.

The Captain had already resolved in Muroran to impose severe penalties on the sailors for their "inconvenient conduct." He briefly explained to the company employee how "the sailors had made unreasonable demands with an insolent attitude." Therefore, it was necessary to make all of them—the sailors—disembark and at the same time have them bound. He also informed them of his intention to report Mikami’s sampan incident. Therefore, he stated, "When you return to the company, I want you to inform the Secretary Section Chief of this matter."

Meanwhile, the Chief Mate boarded a commuter boat as soon as they dropped anchor and headed to the Water Police Station. There, he gave a full account of what had happened in Muroran—though he forgot to mention the Boycho’s involvement—insisting it must have been Fujiwara’s instigation. He particularly emphasized how Hata had pulled out a scalpel and threatened them. Arguing that they would surely resort to violence to force their demands, he requested officers be dispatched to the ship for protection. The Water Police’s launch, loaded with the Chief Mate and five or six burly officers, set out vigorously.

The launch reached the gangway of the Manshū Maru. The Chief Mate guided the police officers to the salon. There, the police officers had to wait for a while “in front of” apples, sweets, and coffee. The sailors were oiling the winch and tidying up various tools. And they worked in a cheerful mood, thinking that they could go ashore that night without having to return until the next morning—that is, until New Year’s morning. Indeed, they were met with a shore leave that would keep them off the ship for some time—but not in the way they had anticipated.

The Captain was now neither the captain in the sampan during the previous voyage nor the man he had been in Muroran before departure. He had become capable of violence. He was now the most blatant tyrant. The boy from the stern who had received the Captain’s orders came forward. He said to the Bosun: “Bosun, pack your belongings and prepare to disembark. The Captain said for Bosun, Fujiwara, Hata, Nishizawa, Ogura, and Uno to come to the salon.” “And then—hey.” He shifted to his own part of the message. “There are fifteen or sixteen officers from the Water Police Station waiting in the salon—they must have brought them because they figured Hata would cause trouble.” “It’d be better if you all made some real noise.” “Tell everyone that, got it?” He returned to the stern.

That matter no longer required any special notification to everyone. When the boy from the stern came, they knew it meant some kind of order, so the sailors stood in front of the Bosun’s room and listened.

"This is bad!" Fujiwara felt. However, he hadn’t expected it to be this thorough. "Now the ship is completely empty! But—!" He endured silently. He already clearly understood the path he would walk. That was a pale, parched, dust-choked road. It was a road like a desert—one that drove humanity to hunger and thirst. Hata also realized. We thought, "So we’re going then." "The path we take—to the right is starvation, to the left is prison." He spat out.

47

They each knew their own fate. And into those trunks they packed every last one of their belongings. They, those who had them, even packed their futons into the trunks. Their trunks still had room to spare. They could have quite easily embarked on a world tour. The life of sailors presents a completely different appearance when viewed from a passenger’s perspective. As for stokers and firemen, from a passenger’s perspective, it is utterly impossible to tell. In cargo ships, there are no passengers. Having no passengers means there is no need to maintain appearances. There isn’t even a bath. They squeeze us dry as much as they want.

They could barely afford to eat and clothe themselves; consequently, the various items that had been packed into the trunks they bought when first boarding the ship had gradually diminished over time, with almost nothing ever being added.

Shouldering trunks filled with empty spaces and little substance, they filed in a line like emigrants and made their way from their quarters to the salon.

The boycho’s grief upon learning of their departure was profound. He clung to Fujiwara and Hata’s hands, seeming to want to say something, but the words that finally emerged were rendered inaudible by violent sobs. But he spoke through his sobs! He had been stripped of everything. It was both the first and the last of those things. Even the only labor power he could sell had been stripped from him because he had sold his labor power.

And now, the people who had protected and cared for him were heading off to where the police were, having been ordered by the Captain to come prepare for disembarkation. What kind of Captain was this?! A bold and resolute man who wouldn’t spare even a single glance for his own life. Through nerves that had developed pathologically since being deprived of freedom, Boycho had intuited something ominous must be lying in wait there. Mr. Fujiwara and the others were already being made to disembark. And with these legs that couldn’t even move—what would become of me under those cruel mates? I’ll be left behind and forgotten! He cried.

Crying—such a thing had never existed on the ship before. The sight of a hot-blooded young man weeping among middle-aged laborers was something that had never been witnessed.

Boycho clenched his teeth and tried to stifle his sobs. He wanted to express his profound gratitude. He wanted to know their plans for what came next. He wanted to learn how and where they might meet again. He wanted to obtain their temporary addresses. I wanted to give them my own address too. There was so much he had wanted to do. All the more for that, his tears overflowed. His choked cry slipped sharply through gritted teeth.

In Fujiwara's nearly ruthless eyes—eyes as immovable as will itself—sorrow flashed heavily and sharply.

Hata also clenched his teeth. And he gripped Boycho’s hand with force. And, “Take care of your body and get well soon,” he said.

Yet he thought—after they left, what would become of Boycho? Who would care for those wounds and illness?—and realized that even the words “get well” had become cruel ones. Leaving them neglected like this, how could injuries and illnesses possibly heal? Who would take responsibility for this! As he thought this, he felt tears welling up despite himself. And his heart only made the flames of his curse burn fiercer still.

“We’ll probably meet again somewhere. Until then, let’s both stay healthy—so take care of yourself. Goodbye.” Fujiwara gave a firm grip and left.

“Please take care of yourself. Goodbye,” Boycho said, and buried his face in the pillow. I’m so lonely. He continued to bury his face in the ceaselessly overflowing tears. The capitalist system ensnares us like a spiderweb. No matter how much we struggle, it just keeps creepily ensnaring us—damn it! Just you wait, you filthy earth-spiders! Fujiwara strode across the deck as he thought.

In the salon, the Captain and his mates below him were lined up in their decorated shore-going attire. A police officer was standing in the back.

“Hmph! Unconsciously bourgeois and their [illegible fourteen characters], [illegible ten characters]!” Fujiwara observed the scene from outside and took it in. Hata felt all the blood in his body rush to his head. He fixed a fiery gaze on the Captain’s face as though gouging out his own heart.

However, the Captain was now fully clad in the armor of “conventional dignity” and stood by with flags and an array of weapons. The group, each throwing their luggage at the salon entrance, went there carrying an equally unpleasant feeling. “Everyone’s here,” the Captain said to the Chief Mate. “Yes, this is everyone.” The Chief Mate answered.

“Then hand them over.” “Bosun, Ogura, Uno, Nishizawa—you four are ordered off this ship. Fujiwara and Hata too—all of you come with me to the Maritime Bureau. Though Fujiwara and Hata don’t need to go there.” “I’ll hand over the logbooks later.” “Those two have business with the police.” That was his decree. He made sure to add: “That’s why I told you back in Muroran—should’ve quit while you could.” “No matter how much you strut around, it won’t work.” “Better to stay quiet.” “If you’d just stayed quiet, you might’ve gotten some pity. But talk big, and when push comes to shove, no one’ll lift a finger for you.”

“You’d better get it through your own heads—we don’t need your damn help. Our paths are different after all! And you better remember what kind of payback’s coming your way!” Hata bellowed.

“That’s Hata, that guy.” “What a violent brute!” The Captain said.

“What?! You damn fool! How can someone who leaves a half-dead man to rot talk about others?! There’s no one more violent than you, you damn extortionist!” Hata bellowed at the Captain.

“Well, go ahead and rage all you want. You’ll just get squeezed dry by the police,” the Captain said.

“Until I get out, you better stay alive and well—I’ll be praying for that.” “And watch yourself—don’t get burned up halfway through.”

But the Captain promptly retreated. The Chief Mate took Bosun, Ogura, Uno, and Nishizawa and went to the Maritime Bureau with two police officers. They were summarily dismissed there. This was December 31st.

Fujiwara and Hata went to the water police station by launch. Until January 4th, the police were on holiday for New Year's. Therefore, Fujiwara and Hata spent New Year's confined in the detention center. From the first workday of the New Year, they underwent judicial investigation. And under the Public Order Police Law, they were transferred to the prosecutor’s office. The prosecutor confined them to the prison’s pre-trial detention cells for interrogation.

They had neither visitors nor care packages. As if they were prisoners sentenced to imprisonment, they gazed at the wooden walls of the cell. From the meal window, the peephole, and all other gaps, a razor-blade-like cold wind hissed through. They waited there for their sentences to be decided.

―END―