Pathway to Japanese Literature

Part One Both hands gripped the wire-meshed window frame—and as his fingertips tensed, the man’s face appeared at the window.

It was shortly before noon. At the H・S Canning Factory, five lines of blade cutters, body attaching machines, rim curlers, can seamers, and leak testers vibrated the concrete-reinforced floor while reverberating deafening noises off the tin-plated ceiling. Multiple belts connecting each machine to the pulleys on steel girders spanning overhead sliced through space at various angles as they rotated with a slack, rhythmic flapping—*slap-slap-slap*, *slap-slap*… In the stifling, dimly lit factory, the empty cans traveling on the conveyor from machine to machine gleamed all the more sharply. The female factory workers sang at the top of their lungs, defying the din of the machinery. And the window remained oblivious.

—Ah! “Tanaka Kinuyo” raised her voice. Due to the factory’s strange custom, no one ever called that female worker—who resembled Tanaka Kinuyo—by her real name. She dashed to the windowsill. A male worker standing before the conveyor belt testing cans followed her with his eyes.—Outside, a man was hauling himself up to the window. The man appeared to be trying to slip a tightly rolled paper into the factory. When he saw her running over, his face suddenly brightened. She took the paper through the wire mesh and pressed her ear against the windowpane.

“Make sure to distribute them to everyone before the supervisor confiscates them.” “I’m counting on you.” The man fell down below the window with a thud. But immediately afterward, his fierce figure could be seen scaling over the wall. When the noon siren wailed, the machinery’s clamor began subsiding as if being sucked away one by one—and suddenly the female workers’ shrill voices rose clamorously to prominence. “What’s this, Kinuyo-chan? A love letter?” “—A sample love letter?” “Damn, this thing’s way too thick, ain’t it?”

The male workers who had been watching that also gathered around. "If you do that, Mr. Denmei will cry, you know." "Oh really? You’ve got some nerve being picky—gotta have bug-eyed guys, huh? What a damn peculiar woman you are!" They burst out laughing. Tanaka Kinuyo handed out the leaflets one by one to everyone. "What the hell—this one’s got even less appeal than usual, doesn’t it?" "It's a union leaflet." Unemployed Workers’ Rally ・Storm City Hall! ・Give us work! ・Municipal livelihood guarantees for unemployed workers!

From the direction of the finishing area, through the low-ceilinged dim trolley path and over the rails, Morimoto and the others emerged while vigorously scrubbing their faces and necks with hand towels. The same leaflets were carelessly stuffed into trouser pockets. “Hey-o!” “Been grinding metal scraps, huh!” When they saw the group, the canning department workers trotted out their usual routine. “What the hell are you talking about?” “You tin pests!” They didn’t lose. “While you’re busy grinding nothing but iron, you’d better watch out or your own bodies’ll get whittled down like bonito flakes!”

The workers of the Canning Department and the Finishing Department were always clashing. One group consisted of skilled workers, while the other were mere machine-tending hands. That was the root of it. Normally this arrangement held, but whenever trouble arose, they'd instinctively form separate factions. Take when some Finishing Department fool couldn't tell "welcome" from "kan'gei." The whole Finishing crew would erupt as if facing catastrophe. They'd grow utterly absorbed in such trifles. Even pooling their collective wits - all equally dull - they'd inevitably hit a wall and founder. Yet they'd sooner cross the road to query necktie-strangled office men than approach the Canning crew.

Searching for jokes that would land a punch and trading them back and forth, they all filed up the stairs to the cafeteria. From above came the sounds of chair legs scraping against the floor and the female workers’ shrill voices, mingling noisily with the smell of roasting salted trout.

That day, about three hundred leaflets from Y’s “United Labor Union” made their way into the “H·S Factory.” Even the foremen in each workplace had leaflets. However, not a single person brought up the leaflets during the meal. When lunch ended and Morimoto descended the stairs late, he saw the earlier leaflets carelessly crumpled, turned into nose-wipes, and discarded in multiple copies on the steps and in corners throughout the factory. —He twisted his face vividly.

II

The H·S Seikan Company fronted the canal. The western part of Y Port had become reclaimed land under the Railway Ministry, where canals had been dug across the area. The canal water lay stagnant, oil and soot floating on its surface. Motorboats and flat-bottomed barges resembling flounders threaded beneath the sluice gate's bridgework, entering and exiting the canal. —The H·S Factory sat in one corner like a gray super-dreadnought hulk. It truly did make one think of a battleship. The cans were set up to be loaded directly from the product warehouse to the canal wharf as they were.

The city's residents called the H·S Factory the "H·S Kingdom" or "Y's Ford." — When leaving work, young workers would take off their work clothes and change into low-collared student uniforms with gold buttons. Middle-aged workers and foremen wore white shirts with neckties fastened. — The “Nearby Sightseeing Guide” on Y Station’s platform stated: “H·S Factory — approximately eighteen chō.”

Y City, due to its status as a port town, had an overwhelming number of transport workers handling land-sea connections—dockworkers and stevedores. Koreans accounted for three-tenths of them. So when people in Y spoke of "laborers," they were referring to those very workers. The majority of them were semi-free laborers, and each and every one of them led a wretched existence. The workers of the H·S Factory therefore disliked being called “laborers.” — To say one worked at the H·S Factory was in itself a point of pride even among the neighbors.

Morimoto approached his workbench but couldn't focus on the task. He knew union leaflets would be distributed today—he was supposed to report at a meeting about the H·S Factory's reactions when they were scattered. But look—who on earth could I report this state of affairs to, you lot? Not one worker took it seriously. Even the ex-cop guards and factory manager ignored it all. A stray horsefly or bee in the factory might've caused more commotion than those leaflets. "Horseflies and leaflets?!" That comparison didn't even hold water—once he reached that point, he couldn't muster any drive left.

The ten-horsepower motor installed in the corner of the workplace emitted a ceaseless, dismal groan while invisibly shaking the floor. A gasoline engine prepared for power outages was installed right beside it.—This place was the heart of the factory. From there, like main arteries, transmission belts hung from the pulley of the main shaft spanning the workplace’s ceiling. And from that base point, they were further connected via belts of varying widths to each machine. That very arrangement evoked the network of human arteries. Punching machines, lathes, drilling machines... emitted sharp clangs as they scraped iron, bored holes, and sent sparks flying.

The factory workers at their stations appeared to be thrashing desperately against the machines they were bound to. Hips braced and thick shoulders set, the force of their entire bodies subtly concentrated into the wrists pressing the chisels' ends. An unpleasantness—as if a furnace were pressed directly against living bone—transmitted straight to their arms. From the blade tip, crumpled iron shavings scattered like water spray. From the forge, the sound of riveting erupted in burst after burst like a machine gun.

Here, unlike the Canning Department’s small, rhythmic clangs with fixed cadence, thick, booming reverberations mingled with thin, piercing clangs—the steam hammer’s thudding blows! The earth-shaking rumble and the high-pitched, strained clang from the iron anvil intertwined... merged into one, and the entire factory thundered with a booming roar. When the forge’s flames blazed up fiercely from the bellows, only one cheek of each worker in the Finishing Department flared crimson for an instant.

The crane—suspended by a creaking wire pulley from two rails running along the ceiling—passed right over the workers' heads with a tremendous noise. It was a massive one—freshly mold-lifted at the casting shop and three times the size of locomotive cars—meant to be installed on a horizontal boring machine to carve the groove for its wire pulley.

―“I’m beggin’ ya!” “Nanbu senbei are cheap!” While dodging out of the way, they yelled upward. ―“First, tighten ’er up!” “Quit yer bitchin’!” “If you lot just finish yer part alone, we’ll have t’scramble!” The factory worker gripping the handle above pretended to spit.

“Damn it all! Damn it all!” The ones below lurched violently sideways.

“From up here, every last one of ’em looks grimy as trash!” Thinking they’d climbed just a bit higher—those pathetic bastards—they started flaunting their bourgeois airs right away. “Weird.” “If they can’t even be bothered to boss you lot around with a chin flick—” Beside the horizontal boring machine, four or five workers and a foreman in a peaked cap stood gathered, watching the crane clank closer with its lopsided wire pulley. “All right!”

The foreman of the migrant workers raised his hand. The worker at the controls - who had been watching the foreman's gestures - forcefully pulled the handle toward himself. When the crane halted, the wire pulley swayed loosely from residual momentum. Each time it moved, the chain screeched with metallic agony. The encircling workers seized the rhythm of its sway and shoved it precisely onto the platform.

Heave-ho! Heave-ho!

The foreman moved his hands in a beckoning gesture. The chain stretched out with a jerky creak. "Heave-ho! Heave-ho!..." Everyone began chanting in unison. The wire pulley was placed with its base on two pulleys, its shaft and flanges tightened against the boring machine's arm, and secured. The crane emitted a clamorous noise and hoisted the chain. With chalk tucked behind their ears, they walked around the installed machine, rubbed it with their fingertips, and made tsk-tsk faces.

From Morimoto’s vantage point, it looked as though ants were swarming around and dragging an unwieldy mass too large for them to handle. Before the astonishingly large iron machine, humans looked as small as filthy iron scraps. He was clamping a broken component of the Canning Department’s rubber coating machine into the vise bench and applying the furnace.—Suppose the footing had been off by a minute. At that moment, the chain would have come loose... And then, that massive wire pulley would have lurched forward without making a single sound. The ribs of four factory workers would have been crushed more easily than the lattice of a shoji screen. Even a difference of just one minute. For a daily wage of less than two yen—a barely livable sum—the factory workers risked their lives without hesitation. Yet these very workers had used the union leaflets as toilet paper!

He rubbed his hands, soiled with machine oil, vigorously against the apron's hem. "Well... good enough." —And he snorted.

III

When the end-of-work siren sounded, the workers rushed out from the workshop to the washroom. The narrow concrete walls reverberated with a clamor like that of a women’s bathhouse. In front of a peeling mirror that only showed patches of their faces, factory workers stripped to the waist sent soap suds and hot water flying. Each time, their fierce shoulders and upper arm muscles bulged up with a gritty creak.

“Bastards! The soap’s bawling—scrub harder in the sink, damn it!” “So you’re angling to get dumped by Tanaka Kinuyo, eh?” “Well look who’s talking, you bastard.” They pressed their butts together to block anyone trying to cut in. “What’s with those pint-sized asses!” “Spread ’em wide, shithead!” “Pardon me for it not being Miss Emi’s backside!” “Face it—yours ain’t worth grabbing nor getting grabbed.” “Ha ha ha…” Afterward, they all slung towels round their necks and waited—some standing stiff as posts, others flipping white cornered soap bars like jugglers.

“You damn bastard—keep quiet and suddenly get all highfalutin! I ain’t no damn post!” The guy who’d been chewed out scrubbed his face raw with soap, “Well now—since when’d you turn into such a proper human bein’? Here I thought you were still just another ‘proper’ Mr. Factory Worker!”

He looked in the wrong direction and retorted.

There was a perfunctory partition separating them from the female factory workers’ washroom just beyond. When [the women] squatted at the sinks, their lower halves became visible from the waist down. The men had grown accustomed to identifying them solely by these partial “getups.” They kept up endless pantomimes of face-washing while watching through the divide. “That third one’s Ayaka-chan from Monnami.” The factory men borrowed exotic names from Y City’s famous cafés and bars to nickname their “chic” coworkers.

“How about that waist action, huh!” “She’s really started filling out lately.” “Hmph!” “It’s all in the hips.”

“Who’s this one here?”

“Oh! They moved.” “They crossed their legs... Damn, that was nice!” “Hey!” Those standing behind noticed this and suddenly thumped the two heads lined up from both sides. “Peeping Toms!” The women said something among themselves and burst out laughing all at once. Then, they too raised their voices on purpose. When they left the washroom, they met at the exit from both sides. When it was time to leave, the women emerged as entirely different people.

“Who are you again?” To the nearly sixty-year-old factory worker with poor eyesight and failing hearing—the one who riveted smokestacks and steam boilers—he truly couldn’t tell them apart.

“Pfft! Grandpa, you’ve lost your spark, haven’t you?” Then he was slapped on the back by a woman.

“Don’t mistake me for a granny, okay?” “Damn bastard!” The company remained silent about the female factory workers becoming “young ladies” after work, becoming café “waitresses,” the factory workers becoming “students,” or becoming “company employees.” Since they could permit that much, they did so—there shouldn’t be any problem with it. Even surveying all of Y City, there was likely no factory that gave its workers such generous treatment—or so the factory director had claimed.

Upon exiting the washroom, they jostled shoulders in the narrow corridor and climbed up to the second-floor changing room. Both sides were scrap warehouses, with boxes piled as high as buildings dozens of stories tall. It was dark there. “Eek!” a woman shouted. When they reached that spot, someone would often play pranks on the women.

“You detestable man!” “Hey, free today…?”

“Today?” “I’ve got plans.” “Really?” “What kinda plans?” “With who?” “Even this counts as proper, y’know.”

“You bastard!”

There, brisk "exchanges" had become routine at any hour. While working, the workers would often write on the cans coming down the conveyor belt to arrange nighttime meetings with women stationed at the next post.

“Bridge, 6” they would write. The man moved only his fingertips as he watched the can pass before the woman stationed behind the machinery. The woman noticed it with a glance, erased it, and then flashed a smile at the man. ―“Six o’clock, the usual bridge”―that was what it meant. There were several such pairs. Morimoto frowned. How many from among these would actually become comrades in their work? When he thought of that, an odd uneasiness rose beneath his chest, leaving him unable to settle.

A notice had been posted at the entrance to the changing room. Morimoto initially thought, "Huh?!" Everyone was putting their arms through their sleeves as they stood before it.

NOTICE As all of you know, today some unknown party has scattered leaflets for an "Unemployed Workers' Rally" at our factory. Needless to say, this recent depression keeps mercilessly casting unemployed people onto the streets—truly a pitiful sight to behold. However, thanks to everyone's diligent efforts, our factory has fortunately remained entirely unaffected by such trivial matters. Should you step outside the factory and look around, you would clearly see that our factory fully deserves its title as "Y's Ford"— —whether regarding working hours or wage levels, we provide everyone with treatment entirely worthy of that name. Therefore, we earnestly implore you to absolutely refrain from thoughtlessly following such propaganda on this occasion.

Above: Factory Director Morimoto felt an inexplicable impatience as he read it, his eyes skipping over characters. Tch! They're really pulling out all the stops! He startled himself—his own muttered words had betrayed a loosening of mental discipline, like removing one's helmet mid-battle. He carelessly slapped the greasy, misshapen hunting cap onto his head.

The narrow street before the factory was packed edge-to-edge with factory workers and female factory workers streaming in one direction. As he merged into the flow, Morimoto felt the bleak chill of solitude. Crossing the iron bridge over the canal brought them to customs offices, wharves, a Water Police Station, steamship companies, and warehouse-lined Hama-dori Avenue. Dockworkers crossed creaking planks to unload barges. Yet here and there stood clusters of laborers—these workers had stacked ceramic lunchboxes placed directly on the ground or slung over their shoulders as they watched others laboring. —“The jobless.” They were dockworkers.

It was the summer dry season, and in the harbor, there wasn’t a single job that resembled real work. Those were the ones planning to storm the city hall. The barges moored to the quay all looked like dead flatfish. Near the pier, a vendor who had piled up apples and summer oranges sat vacantly watching people’s feet.

Those “surplus” dockworkers watched the H·S Factory workers crossing the iron bridge. A vivid look of envy distorted their faces. The H·S factory workers openly displayed an attitude of “We’re not like you lot,” and briskly passed by them. However, this situation had been the case even without the notice posted in front of the changing room.

The dockworkers—these transport laborers—lived lives of desperation under various petty divisions and feudalistic exploitation like the "oyakata system" and "genba system," their earnings docked and backs against the wall; given any provocation, they would frequently initiate strikes. Y City’s "United Labor Union" had made these workers its main constituents. However, it could be said that not a single worker from H·S Factory had joined. Morimoto spotted several familiar faces among those dockworkers. They were people he had met at the union. However, now that he was among these factory workers, he had lost the "audacity" to speak to those people.

IV

Father had not returned. Father, over sixty years old, left home an hour earlier than him in the morning and returned two hours later. He had been going to the land-based dockworkers' "Yamazan worksite." His hearing had grown dull, and a haze had settled over his eyes. Since he could no longer manage phone duties and could only complete half of his assigned work, he was met with overtly disgusted looks from the foreman every day. However, given that he had been employed for over twenty years, even the foreman seemed utterly at a loss about how to handle him.

How painful...! A sharp breath escaped him. In the morning, he still hesitated to leave. "If he'd just pay more attention to the foreman's face than his work, then even... I tell ya!" In the still-dark morning departure, at the top of the stairs, the father in work clothes creaked and stretched his back. Every time he heard that, he felt unbearable pain. But he suddenly realized that someday he would have to make this father of his even more, even more miserable.

The house’s interior had stewed all day in the heat, trapping dampness and the stench of urine; the swollen tatami mats’ surfaces bulged grotesquely against sweat-damp soles, clinging with a sickening stickiness. When he sat down at the desk like another ape, a letter had arrived. The sender was "Nakano Eiichi". It was a female factory worker from the plant. Morimoto had finally found that woman. Using that sole "one" as a foothold, he had to begin building connections among the female factory workers. He had received instructions from Kawata of the union regarding that policy. The letter was brief: “In any case, I have something important to discuss.” “Tomorrow at eight o’clock, I’ll be waiting below Ishi-Kiriyama.” — True to the instruction not to write anything, she had written neither her own name nor Morimoto’s.

When summer's late dusk arrived, a breeze as faintly cool as a handheld fan—unnoticed—began to blow. The tenement residents, wearing nothing but thin white undergarments who had been out in the alleyway, finally retreated into their low houses like bread ovens. A band of children clutching sticks, their kimono fronts hanging open, clattered across the drainage ditch planks as they ran about wildly. The clear sky still retaining the evening glow echoed back their shouts endlessly. ―Starving brats!

Father returned. Father cleared his throat with a gurgle at the entrance. How was it on your end, Father? Hm? He knew Father had always been opposed to things like "Workers’ Rallies" and "Labor Unions." Perhaps that was why Father had managed to keep working for over twenty years. And even now, clinging to his job by a thread—since he wasn’t a day laborer—he probably thought getting dragged into such incomprehensible matters would mean disaster.

“They were making a big show of force in front of the office, huh.” “They’re just rounding up the surplus lot.” “That’s the union’s doing, must be.” Father said with the indifference of someone discussing a newspaper article. This isn’t someone else’s problem, old man. You’ll get fired soon enough. Father didn’t respond and rustled around in the dimly lit entryway. If it was even slightly dark, the eyes clouded with haze would leave Father utterly flustered. Father went around to the back. Right next to the toilet, Father had clumsily built a shelf and arranged about three flowerpots on it. The area was thick with the smell of the toilet, reeking pungently. When Father left the house, he would surely buy cheap pots bargained down from night stalls.

This indulgent old fool! When we can't even eat properly!

Mother would shout each time. In other matters, they might have terrible arguments, but when it came to the flowerpots, Father would always strangely just smirk quietly.—Father treasured them to an absurd degree. When he returned home, he made it a rule to water them himself before entering the house. When he had no choice but to ask someone else and they forgot, Father would get truly angry.—Pathetic—a vent for his servile nature, Morimoto thought with a laugh.

—Due to today’s sweltering heat, they’ve all gone limp. His muttering to himself in the back could be heard.

At the H.S. Factory too, there were a great many older workers who kept small birds, collected various flowerpots while tending to them meticulously, or spent every public holiday tinkering with minor home renovations. One of the workers brought a pot to the factory and placed it beside his workbench. “They say she’s a beauty like a flower.” “Then this here’s a flower like a beauty, ain’t it?” “We’re spending our days gazing at flowers as lovely as beauties, ain’t we?” The flowers placed in the factory writhed under the stench of machine oil, the iron filings and dust, and the roaring din. And there, it was discovered they wouldn’t last even a week.

“Well!” Everyone’s eyes went wide. “And what’s to become of human beings?”

Morimoto, who happened to be there, let slip a joking remark. After he had let it slip, he noticed the greater significance of what he had said. The lathe operator Takebayashi mocked with a derisive laugh. “I’ll swap ’em out at night stalls,” “Workers, y’know—they’re sayin’ we can pick any job we fancy! Ha ha ha ha ha!”

He was an anarchist worker who had acquaintances among newspaper printing plant workers and such.—

Father was saying something from the back door. No voice could be heard; only a moving mouth was visible through the grimy glass.

“You don’t happen to have just fifteen sen, do you?” He looked unwell as he made the request. He thought it was happening again. When he said “Yeah,” Father’s face lit up with childlike joy.

“There was this flowerpot, see… Every time I went to the market, I’d keep my eye on it…!”

V

He waited for it to get dark. The "meeting" had to be kept secret. “I’m off to my activities.” He told the household that.

The tenement residents, unable to stay indoors due to the lingering daytime heat, would leave their houses wide open after finishing dinner and bring benches out front to cool off. The alley reeked of mud ditches. Even so, it felt more bearable than inside the houses. They were mostly naked. They talked loudly with neighbors. A young man and woman crouched in a distant patch of darkness. Only the fan showed white, fluttering faintly visible. Morimoto passed through them exchanging greetings as he reached the main street.—This town housed those who worked at the "factory," those who went to the "port," and day laborers—each group living with separate mindsets toward their respective places.

This area was on the outskirts of Y City. Even if it was the outskirts, it was undeniably part of Y City. However, when the residents of T-town had business taking them to the city center, they would say, "I’m going to Y." As if they were setting off from some distant countryside. Buses, one-yen taxis, and rickshaws all charged the same "surcharge" as for trips outside the city when going as far as T-town. It was dark, damp and clammy, stinking, and soot-stained. It was a workers' town.

Tenement houses resembling crushed bean-jelly were embedded in the sodden wetland with unsteady footing, the floors sinking into the mire.

Morimoto walked through dark spaces. He stopped only when turning corners. The meeting place had been deliberately chosen as a house facing a bustling, well-lit street. The back served as its entrance. As if following predetermined instructions, he walked back and forth twice in front of the house before circling to the rear. When he opened the door, a steep staircase confronted him nose-first. Testing each step with his toes, he climbed the stairs one indentation at a time. The crude staircase bore rust-colored stains at its base like those from a well pulley. He contorted his thick shoulders hunched forward in discomfort. His head jammed against something.

“Who’s there?” Together with a band of light from above, Kawata’s voice descended.

“Mori.” “Ah, good work.” The room was thick with tobacco smoke; stubbed-out cigarette ends and ashes had spilled haphazardly from a small dish onto the tatami mats. It seemed a different discussion had taken place beforehand. Kawata, who had stood up, closed the door behind Morimoto himself. He had cropped his large, mortar-shaped head down to the scalp. His lumbering physique made him resemble a thuggish monk. His blunt manner of speaking might have made people think him arrogant. But that’s precisely why he had a rock-like presence, the union members used to say.

Ishikawa, who had been lying on his back fashioning a cup with a stand from the silver paper of a bat, raised his head when he saw him. Yo!

Ishikawa had previously worked at the “R Foundry Factory,” so Morimoto had known him well for some time. It was through Ishikawa’s introduction that he had come to know Kawata. After Ishikawa had joined the union, Morimoto received various kinds of education in that area from him. Up until then, he had been like any ordinary factory worker—teasing cheap prostitutes, sneering at activists, engaging in petty theft, and getting into fights as he went about his days. He also resolutely quit giving speeches for the youth group.

He had only briefly met the other Suzuki before. He seemed neurotic and had the sharpest face. He always appeared sullen and spoke little, so Morimoto still hadn't grown close to him. Hugging his knees and rocking his body, he opened the window to let out the smoke. Suddenly, a wave-like sound rushed in. Below on the asphalt, people kept tramping endlessly in an unbroken stream. That noise came from their footsteps. Multi-lamp streetlights stretched out their arms from both sides, beneath which night stalls lined up—plant sellers, used bookstores, fountain pen shops, fruit vendors, Chinese peddlers, university caps... The people flowed along both sides like two broad currents moving in opposite directions. No matter how long one watched, there was no break in the flow.

There sure were a lot of idle people.

“Suzuki-kun! Showing your face out there could get you caught.” Kawata had been aligning serial numbers on mimeographed leaflets when he looked up sharply. Was visibility truly so risky? “Ha ha ha! Like riding through enemy territory on an armored train,” he barked suddenly through clenched teeth. Morimoto cracked his knuckles against his thigh—alright then... Time to move.

Four people sat around the ashtray. “Since we’ve only met Mr. Morimoto twice so far... perhaps he doesn’t fully grasp our stance yet…” Kawata furrowed his brows and hurriedly smoked his Bat. “To put it bluntly, I think it goes like this… It can be said that Japan’s leftist movement up until now has been quite active. Especially in Japan, capitalist development had lagged behind in every field. Due to factors like war and various other circumstances, it rapidly—developing in about five years what had taken foreign countries ten—closed the gap and advanced. The proletariat too had been manufactured to overflow just as rapidly. On top of that, there was the postwar depression. And so Japan’s movement rebounded from that and surged forward. But the problem lies in this very ‘activeness.’ Why was it so active? This is why. Ever since we had that ‘March 15 Incident,’ that’s when we first clearly understood… To put it bluntly, it came from the fact that we hadn’t taken root in the factories.” “And that ‘large factories’—" “It could be said that we hadn’t even laid a finger on ‘heavy industry factories.’” “Take Y for example—it’s the same there.” “The real strength of the labor unions lies with the port transport workers.” “They are each minutely divided.” “Moreover, they are effectively non-unionized workers and are detached from their workplaces.” “So of course they could be mobilized for every occasion, and at a glance it all looked quite flashy and splendid.” “The fact that Japan’s movement was called ‘active’ stems precisely from this aspect, I think.”

"But organizationally speaking, it amounted to nothing." "They started as scattered fragments, so they ended up scattered fragments again." "The statistics show it clearly—throughout that period, the big factories lay dormant like sleeping cattle." "That’s exactly why factories are so hard to mobilize." "Small workshops being crushed under pressure are one thing—but when you’re dealing with highly developed large factories employing thousands, tens of thousands of workers? It’s no easy task. No easy task... but without organizing these big factories, our movement can’t exist." "To put it plainly—instead of staging a thousand petty disputes around here, try striking just two coal mines: Yūbari and Bibai." "Japan’s key industries would come to a complete halt." "This isn’t some grand ambition—it shows strikes must inevitably move in this direction. We’ve got to stop repeating these showy strikes of the past." So... he’d fully transformed into a lecturer now…

Kawata gave his mortar-shaped head a single stroke. "Well, we can go into details slowly on various occasions." "Anyway, it may sound strange to bring this up now—the reason we paid so many unnecessary sacrifices during the March 15 Incident comes down to this." "That stems from our predecessors running those flashy movements—illegally operating yet unable to break old habits—occasionally surfacing like goldfish." "It was because they hadn't done the submerged work of taking root in factories." "In reality, our work needed to sink deeper into factories until invisible—yet they'd climb podiums declaring 'Comrades!'" "They'd make grand proclamations or run streets distributing leaflets—a fundamental miscalculation." "Japan's movement has finally come to be understood up to this point……"

However, in truth，they still didn't truly grasp it. It was terrifying.

Ishikawa picked up Kawata’s words. While setting up a silver-paper cup in the Bat’s empty box, he turned his usual vague smile amiably toward Morimoto. “It’s like the rudder on a rundown ship—you turn the wheel, and even after an hour passes, it finally starts responding.” “There’s the practical inertia from our past misguided movements, but this approach is undeniably strong.” “Moreover, factory work is monotonous—and in fact, the more monotonous it is, the better… Quite a challenge.—”

“That’s true.” “Look—the reason we keep hammering about ‘submerged factory organizations’ every time we open our mouths is this: even if we created a thousand flashy labor unions like Y, a thousand March 15 Incidents would crush every last one flat.” “Then they wouldn’t hold out a second against revolution or uprising either.” “Too grandiose?” “But here’s the reality.” “Lately—with war crisis breathing down our necks—government munitions plants keep swelling their ranks despite the depression.” “Take M City’s S Factory—they’ve ballooned from three thousand to five thousand workers.”

“This is the situation.” “Suppose we create an organization within that factory.” “Of course, far from displaying anything ‘active’ or ‘showy’ on the surface, we must carry it out in absolute secrecy.” “And then war finally breaks out.” “At that moment, the organization will spring into action.” “Launch a strike—oppose munitions production!” “Munitions manufacturing grinds to a halt.” “If that were a place like Osaka—and not just a single factory—the war would grind to a halt, wouldn’t it?” “This is the point I’m making—but if I were to say something like this to anyone in the Y Labor Union, they’d probably tell me it’s a dream—that I’m dreaming.” “But unless we start doing this now without fail, when the time comes, it’ll be impossible to manage—like trying to round up beggars.”

"We're resolved to see this through. For that purpose…"

I messed up too.

Ishikawa said.

“We shouldn’t have left the workplace.” “Right, Kawata!” “But back then, they’d always come to the union—running mimeographs and calling leaflet distribution their only ‘movement.’” That’s how it was. To be honest, staying put in the factory had been unbearable to my conscience back then.

Morimoto interjected for the first time. “However, I think factories are hard to mobilize. When it comes to large factories, they don’t resort to prison-like conditions…” He gave a detailed account of that day’s factory conditions. Kawata and the others listened carefully to each point. “That’s true.”

Kawata said.

“That’s why the factory has always been pushed to the back until now.”

Six

Morimoto drew a map of the "H.S. Factory" at Kawata's instruction. Kawata possessed maps of various other factories across the city as well. He then unfolded a full map of Y City and placed a red mark at the "H.S." location.

“Is the H.S. Factory considerably far from the Water Police Station?” “About four... four blocks, I’d say.”

“Four blocks, huh?” “It’s in a strategically poor location.” Ishikawa raised his head. “The water police here are notoriously ruthless.”

Morimoto gave a full explanation about the factory. Factory A was the can-making department, divided into the body line that produced can bodies and the top line that produced can lids. The body line involved cutting tinplate to form cylindrical bodies, attaching and tightening lids, then checking for air leaks. The machinery included cutting machines, body attaching machines, can rim curling machines, can seaming machines, air inspection machines, and others; the top line had force press machines, wave-pattern cutting machines, and rubber coating machines that wrapped rubber into the grooves of lids. Factory B’s lower floor housed a lacquer workshop where cans were coated with urushi lacquer, but the work was kept secret. The upper floor was a nailing factory that produced boxes for packing cans, manufacturing side panels, end panels, and partitions.—The finished cans and these empty boxes would meet in the packing room on the warehouse’s second floor to be packaged. Factory C became the finishing area where Morimoto and the others worked.

“What about the other auxiliary facilities?”

Kawata asked. “Laboratory.” “They conduct rubber coating tests and lacquer paint research there.” “The people there show deep understanding toward us.” “They say they were fired from some university.” “They’re what you’d call liberals.” “Then there’s something called the drafting room—a place studying things like industrial rationalization.” “Oh? Industrial rationalization?”

Kawata let out a sound in an altered tone. “It’s said that when the ‘H·S Factory’ was first completely converted to a conveyor system, the members here played a key role in overseeing it.” “At that time, since a significant number of people were no longer needed all at once, it finally led to a strike—there was an incident where the workers stormed into the factory at night, violently struck the guards, and utterly destroyed those conveyor belts.” After all, the company had coordinated the workflow so tightly that there wasn’t a minute’s gap between tasks, and the workers in each workshop had been reduced to simply doing their assigned jobs while the cans gradually moving along the conveyor passed in front of them—it was unbearable. “Even rim-curling machines originally had workers assigned to them, but the machinery we use now has been automated, so not a single person is needed anymore.”

“Hmm.” “Right now, the factory uses trolleys to transport tinplate, but if they were to replace those with conveyor systems or something similar, then people would get pushed out from there too, wouldn’t they?” “That’s likely,” Kawata said. “Makes sense.” “It does happen. Bounties have been placed on the people in the drafting room and laboratory.” That’s clever, Kawata thought.

“Those people are always reading magazines they’ve ordered from America filled with photographs of motors and boilers.” “As we advance our various tasks going forward – separate from worker matters – the company’s so-called ‘high-level policy’ becomes absolutely essential too.” “And I want you to consider leveraging those upper-echelon types precisely in that capacity.” Morimoto nodded. “Even regarding factory matters, what we know amounts to barely a sliver.”

He thought that was right... And then...

His eyes flicked over his wristwatch.

“Right…” Seeming tired, Ishikawa stifled a small yawn behind closed lips. “Hmm... And what you might call conflict dynamics within the factory—those must exist.”

“Well… In each and every workplace, there certainly are conflicts.” “The finishing area has skilled workers, and the can-making department’s work is more the sort that even female workers can handle.” “And so… .”

Morimoto said that and put his hand to his head. Kawata thought he was seeing Morimoto's bashful smile for the first time. He had always considered it a square, rugged face, but when Morimoto smiled, the contours softened, revealing a warm gentleness at the corners of his eyes. It was unexpected. "When we try anything... they say 'We're metalworkers,' and... he's their ringleader in that." "Then there's day laborers and dockworkers—they're a bit different from regular factory workers." "As for office staff—you'll find that everywhere, right?" "Most female office workers graduated from girls' schools, so their clothes mark them apart." "If anyone with business passes through the factory floor, the female workers raise an awful racket."

Morimoto laughed out loud, “Even the men—when they see those company men in their crisp suits—well... “However, the company has a regulation that diligent factory workers are made regular employees. “The company seems to be using that quite effectively again. “They took the bold step of making one or two people regular employees a long time ago. “However, that was just a one-off thing, and they haven’t done anything like it since—but apparently that kind of move has an oddly strong effect.”

Kawata was listening more intently than anyone else. Suzuki, however, did not utter a single word until the end. He bit his thumbnail, scratched his head vigorously—yet still lifted his face here and there to listen. Morimoto received further investigation materials from Kawata for the next meeting. "Factory Investigation Form No. 1 and No. 2."

Kawata had been conducting sufficiently detailed investigations of the "important factories" within Y City in this manner. The purpose was to create organizations within those factories and, through their representatives, establish a single "organization" and "liaison" body. “That was the ‘Factory Representatives Council.’” It was with this grand intention that Kawata carried out his work. Even if a problem were to arise in just one factory, through that body, it could immediately and simultaneously be turned into an issue for all factories across Y City. They would submerge this work underground and advance it steadily and relentlessly! That itself would become something capable of withstanding any “suppression”. “On this foundation, we can build unshakable industrially-based labor unions.” —Kawata said this with gleaming eyes.

“Even the bourgeoisie are already doing exactly the same thing. The factory owners are diligently fostering their connections and unity under names like ‘Sansankai’ and ‘Suiyōkai.’”

When he descended the dark staircase by balancing his body between both handrails, Kawata followed down. “You’re an important person.” “You absolutely must not let the police recognize your face.” Morimoto felt Kawata’s breath against his cheek. “I want you to work as a ‘factory cell.’”

His right hand was being gripped tightly in the thick, stagnant darkness beneath the staircase.

He went outside. He was distracted. While picking up the gutter planks in the alley, his feet stumbled many times.

Factory cells! He repeated it. As he kept repeating it, he felt a steady excitement welling up from deep within himself.

Seven

For this meeting, it had been established that participants must never arrive or leave together. Morimoto and Suzuki each returned separately. Even if they cling to me... I intend to keep doing this work. My life might become a target, but...

Kawata, who had been waiting to put distance between himself and those who had left earlier, shook his thick shoulders.

“They say this is how the police are phrasing it now.” “People like me, you, Suzuki—those of us who’ve already been exposed—don’t scare them one bit.” “What they fear now are the ones whose faces remain unknown.” “Those bastards have a way of wording things that perfectly captures the trajectory of our movement.” “That’s why their spy strategies seem to have evolved.” “As for their Special Higher Police division or whatever they call it—in the end, even those bastards themselves appear to have stopped putting much stock in mere front-facing titles anymore.”

“Hunh, they sure are thorough.” “If it were legal activities, that’d be different—but once we sink the movement underground, there’s only so far their spies can reach.” “What’s terrifying,” he said, “is when it’s a comrade who’s the spy.” “Or when someone gets turned midstream.” “Bribery.” “To put it bluntly—” “Hey! I’m counting on you here!”

Ishikawa raised a strained voice.

“Ha ha ha ha! Well, if you’re secretly taking [bribes], then tonight’s plans will leak straight through. The Special Higher Police section and such are like those legal types who swagger around declaring ‘I’m a labor activist’—their capacity to instill fear has its limits. It’s not external—it’s internal.” “Quit saying such ominous things.” Kawata, however, scratched his large-bowled head vigorously and laughed with apparent carefreeness. And then, “It’s true!”

he said. And then he looked at his wristwatch. “I’ll be heading out first today.”

When Kawata exited from there, he walked along the asphalt street in front of Man Department Store, holding a handkerchief in one hand. The clock in the small notions shop—visible if you crouched slightly—showed eight o'clock. He walked back and forth there twice. It was to meet a man smoking Shikishima. It was exactly ten days after the date of the letter he had previously received from that man—8:00 PM. It was the appointed time. While keeping an eye on the front, he bought a three-sen stamp. It was needed as a signal for when they met. Upon exiting the store, he suddenly noticed a suit-clad man approaching from ahead, smoking a Shikishima. He looked at the clothing. He felt a moment of hesitation. However, those eyes were clearly searching for someone. He unconsciously tightened his grip on the handkerchief in his palm.

The man approached. So he too pretended to be nonchalant and started walking in the same direction as the man. He was the first to speak.

Yamada.

Then, the suit-clad man immediately— “Kawamura.” he said. The “Mountain” and “River” made contact. The two men went down along the riverbank where there weren’t many passersby. After walking a short distance, the man— “Is there somewhere we can rest?” he said. “Let’s see…”

Kawata walked along, scanning both sides. And they went up to the second floor of a small restaurant.

When they sat down at the table, the man took out a three-sen stamp from his pocket. The "3" in "3sn" had been erased with ink. Kawata also took out his three-sen stamp from earlier and erased the "sn" part. The two completely confirmed they were "comrades". The man was a Party organizer dispatched from Central. Kawata began discussing conditions in the Y region and numbers of newly recruited Party members there.

Eight Suzuki found it painful to spend even a moment longer with Kawata, Ishikawa, and the others. He wasn't enjoying himself in the slightest. Without exaggeration, he felt separated from everything. And he was always defeated by that emotion. This is utterly un-proletarian! But am I really engaging in the movement through the movement itself, or am I doing it by trusting people? No matter how Kawata and Ishikawa might be toward me, shouldn't that fundamentally be unable to change my feelings toward the movement? I must not change it again. Yes, I understand that. But what is this loneliness that immediately follows? — He already knew he had lost his way.

Theoretically, practically, even emotionally, seeing comrades vigorously overtake his frantically scrambling form brought him pain surpassing torture's endurance. He envied fellow militants who seemed untouched by such doubts. Yet he knew this proletarian movement lacked both the splendid purity it projected outwardly and freedom from squalid infighting—schemes baser than petty merchants' haggling. This plunged him into terrifying disappointment.

“In the movement, you’re senior to Kawata and the others.”

The undertone of those words carried the implication: “Aren’t you even frustrated?” This related to the leaflet distribution incident—the one from when he’d been caught on the 29th. But he knew voicing such things was a standard “tactic” employed by Special Higher Police officers. “You’re surprisingly dense.” “Can’t you tell that even while working together, Kawata and Ishikawa are keeping you out of the loop somehow?”

He turned his face outward in silence.—But against his own will, he distinctly felt the blood draining from his face. “You’re thinking this is just another ‘tactic,’ aren’t you?”

The Special Higher Police Chief smiled thinly at that.

“Well now, to be honest, we often use such ‘tactics’ ourselves.” “But whether this counts as a ‘tactic’—I think you know that truth in your heart better than I do.” “The other day when I spoke with Mr. Ishimoto, he remarked how pitifully you’re always being left behind, Suzuki.” “That they still have the magnanimity to keep working with you in the movement...” “He said it’s a feat we could never manage.”

——…………. “——……Shall I inform you then?” The Special Higher Police Chief tilted his head slightly. Suzuki felt an involuntary terror constrict his body in the pauses between those words. “This is something we seldom disclose—but through certain methods, a testament to our police network that boasts being the world’s finest, we’ve obtained definitive proof that Kawata and his group have already joined the Communist Party.” “Yet you’re not part of it. …It’s precisely because you’re excluded that I can tell you this.” “Whether it’s false or true—you’re the one who knows…”

——………….

——It may sound strange coming from me, but when I realized that fact, I couldn’t tell whether to be glad or distraught.

“When you hear you’re excluded, you’d likely say our rejoicing is natural—your prerogative.” “Then let it be so.” “Ours is a profession that brings no one joy anyway.” “Yet I imagine the bond between ‘comrades’ holds a trust too deep for our kind to glimpse.” “But you’re betrayed by it.” “When I grasped this, I felt—how to put it—a desolate gloom. At a loss for words to you.”

“Don’t talk nonsense!” His chest tightened and rose to his throat. He had to force it out in one go. And he shouted—he fought back a chestful of tears.

The Special Higher Police Chief fiddled with a pencil while staring intently at his face. He fell silent for a moment. "That wasn’t all. In matters like dispute negotiations or the distribution of strike funds they’ve received, there’s no telling how much you’re being cheated. ‘We’ve got solid evidence that Kawata and the others are squandering that money.’ ‘Even so... will you still cling to your honest poverty?’" Whether those were lies or truth, they were precisely targeting the facts he had privately doubted.

Don’t dwell on it, don’t dwell on it—but the more he willed himself not to, the more that very effort warped his mind. He could no longer speak honestly with Kawata. He could not look at Kawata and the others’ faces. He found himself fidgeting so restlessly it was almost comical, his gaze wandering aimlessly. And yet, somewhere within himself, he was exerting razor-sharp nerves on Kawata’s words.

It was not long ago.

The Special Higher Police officer who always visited his lodging approached when spotting him on the street. "You’re quite behind on your lodging fees." He said with a smirk. "So it was you!"

He stopped right there as he was. The detective laughed loudly. “Four or five days prior,” he said, “a man claiming to be Suzuki’s friend came to the lodging house where you were staying and paid off all the overdue rent you’d accumulated up to that point.” “What’s wrong with this sort of thing?” “We’re all in this together.” “It’s not like we’re doing you some grand favor or anything.” Then, “There’s just one thing I’d like to ask,” said the man with a sparse red beard trimmed into a square shape as he glanced around.

The two found Café Monami off the main street. They pushed open the spring-loaded door there and went up to the second floor. The Special Higher Police ordered beer and beefsteak without consulting him. “Let me make this clear—these matters are entirely your own doing, so…”

“Without letting everyone speak,” “I know.” “Don’t get so stiff.” “I’d like to have a proper talk at least once, you know… After all, even we—” he said and snickered.

He thought he was already ruined—a scab. He got so drunk there he was about to collapse. —— During the meeting on the second floor, Kawata had seemed to be in a hurry, but Suzuki left before anyone else. He could no longer endure the pressure of his feelings relentlessly creeping up on him. When he returned to his lodging, they told him someone had left a package of books. When he heard that, he understood what it meant. When he went upstairs and untied it, there was an unfamiliar kōdan book inside. He pinched the spine and shook the pages. Two flatly folded ten-yen bills fell onto the reddish-brown tatami mat.

His face suddenly paled—not because ten-yen bills had fallen out. It was because he had been shaking the book's pages without realizing it until jolting to awareness of his own actions. He grabbed them, went down the stairs, and headed out into the street. But his face remained utterly drained of color.

中　九

“Hey there! Hey there! Ooooh Kii-koo!”

On the second-floor packing area, male and female workers faced each other across the conveyor, packing empty cans into boxes. The packed crates could be loaded directly onto ships moored along the canal wharf via an escalator from the second floor.—Around noon, the cans ran out. It was when they were all filing down the dimly lit staircase while dusting off their bodies with hand towels. From inside the product warehouse with its dark maw agape came a low, hushed call. O-Kimi—adjusting her apron—snorted a laugh through her nose and hastily scanned her surroundings. She stayed silent.

“O-Kimi, quit teasin’ us!” O-Kimi snorted again and sprang into the warehouse.

Ah, it's dark. She affected a deliberately shrill voice and covered her eyes with both hands, pretending she wasn't there—wasn't there at all.

“Over here.” The man’s hand came to rest on her shoulder. “No.” The woman pulled her body back. “What do you mean ‘no’?” “Take your hands off!” ……. O-Kimi twisted her body in refusal while directly feeling the man’s chest. If he’d just take her hand— No. “There.” “Huh?” The woman felt an even stranger excitement and interest in what she was doing. The man forced her hands away and, with his other hand now behind her, tightened his grip around her body. The woman writhed her body in the man’s arms. And, keeping her face tilted upward, she mischievously, deliberately avoided the man’s lips in various ways. The man pressed his lips to the woman’s cheek and forehead.

“No good—someone’s coming!” The man panicked and let out a choked voice. O-Kimi finally burst into laughter. And, as if stretching, she placed her hands on the man’s shoulders……. “You’re good at this, aren’t you.”

The man said. “You bet!” “I’m ending this here before it becomes a habit!”

The man being roughly dragged around at will was comical. With that, O-Kimi flipped around and bounded down the stairs, her cheeks still flushed. However, once noon had passed, O-Kimi abruptly stopped her boisterous antics. As usual during lunchtime in the cafeteria, the female factory workers were noisily claiming their spots with their comrades. O-Kimi was called over by a close female worker friend and sat down beside her there to eat her lunch.

“Hey!” The talkative friend who had deliberately called O-Kimi lowered her voice. “I was shocked!”

The woman had stayed late yesterday cleaning up after work and was coming down from the changing room as the factory grew dim. That landing had precisely become the "Rubber Hut". The friend who had come down without realizing it abruptly stopped there. Because she thought someone was inside the hut. From where the woman had stopped her feet, slightly diagonally below in a small glass window set high into the wall—the faint shadows of a man and a woman were moving.

“But here’s the kicker!” The woman clamped a hand over her mouth and dropped her voice lower. The man kept his back to them while fastening his trouser belt. The woman faced the window, head bowed as she fixed her hair. After securing his belt, the man reached from behind to grip her shoulder. Then he slipped one hand into his pocket. The pocketed hand appeared to fumble for something. “Money!” “He tucked that money right between the folds of her obi for her! Can you believe it?”

——……⁉ “So, who do you think that woman was?” With eyes brimming with mischievous light, she stared fixedly at O-Kimi. “Did you figure out who it was?” “That’s already—! It’s not like that.” ——……? “Yoshi-chan!” “That’s ridiculous!” O-Kimi reflexively snapped back. “Hmph, fine then.” The woman shrugged her shoulders.

O-Kimi fell silent for a moment. “Who was he?” “The man? Since it’s a money business, they probably change every day.” “It could be anyone for all I care.”

Yoshi-chan, whose lips always bore that cold-looking pallor, now that it came to mention, had been supporting a family of four all by herself. O-Kimi remembered that fact—and toward the woman who spoke of it in such a manner, she flew into her characteristic rage.

“But how much do you think our daily wages even are? Fifty sen to seventy or eighty sen. Try calculating how much that comes to per month! —If they were really that lewd, they wouldn’t make them do it for free!”

O-Kimi, having finished her meal, hurled the retort from above as she started to stand. And then she was the first to leave the cafeteria.

“You’re mocking us!”

Ten

In the afternoon, there was to be a "factory tour" by female students, so the male workers were buzzing with excitement. "How strange." "Coveralls and Miss Schoolgirls? What a pair!" "What a perfect match!"

The female factory workers showed overt hostility.

“They must be seething! Whenever those schoolgirls come around, our factory princesses get all worked up.” “How vicious!” “If we’re comparing looks, which side’s uglier?!” “Hey now, don’t pick on them too hard.” “Even ‘Miss University Students’ grace us with visits sometimes, y’know.” He was that type of worker—always dishing out blunt sarcasm. “So what’s supposed to happen?” “‘Miss University Students’ meets ‘Miss Factory Girls’?” “Ha! That’s all the rage these days!” “What—you waiting for Prince Nekhlyudov to come rescue you…?!”

The “Artisan Worker” interjected. “After those schoolgirl tours, strangely enough, our young ladies’ snorts get quieter—better have ’em once in a while.” An elderly worker spoke up like he couldn’t take more. “Quit this ‘eating your own’!” Even Kii-kō stayed silent. “All that talk... dead end’s what!” “Dead end?” Then they all laughed—awkward, avoiding each other’s eyes.

“Y’s Ford” welcomed “factory tours” as free advertising—requiring no ad fees—to promote itself as a fully equipped factory that could hold its head high anywhere. For the H・S Company, which monopolized the canning industry to a considerable degree, maintaining factory facilities and worker treatment at this level did not constitute any particular burden. Moreover, this welcome was extended in anticipation that its effects would further rebound upon the workers themselves.—“Our factory here—” “My company—” The factory workers spoke in such terms. When their factory was criticized by anyone, they would defend it with a vehemence that bordered on the absurd. Employees working at Mitsui carried a certain pride even when facing employees from any other company. Such employees would therefore never do anything to betray Mitsui. The managing director of H・S knew this.

A messenger came. They had sent over a messenger using child laborers.

“They’re here.” “The dames are here.”

“Hey Kii-kō, you hear? The dames are here.” “Well, maybe I’ll go do some reconnaissance too.” A gentle female worker from the same packing section wore a gloomy expression. “Hey Kimi-chan—I hate this. If it’s a girls’ school, there are people I went to elementary school with.” “Who gives a damn!” O-Kimi spoke like a man. “If they come over here, I’ll just go to the bathroom during that time—tell them that. Really, what do they think they’re doing coming to watch us work?”

“What’s so embarrassing about it? We should smack those prissy faces with an empty can or something. They’ve got this place confused with a damn zoo.”

“Hey! Hey!” “What’s so great about that? If they’re putting on airs with money they actually earned, I wouldn’t say a word. What’s the big idea?!” “Well, well—Kii-kō’s gotten mighty high-and-mighty. How ’bout I treat you to some ‘activities’ tonight? You coming? It’s that ‘sword that cuts down men and horses’ Tsukigata Ryūnosuke performs! Touch a man—it cuts him! Touch a horse—it cuts it! C’mon—we’ll take you down! You coming?!” “Even this O-Kimi has prior engagements sometimes.”

"Kii-kō’s gotten sharp as hell lately." O-Kimi had to meet Morimoto tonight about the "work." ——

Numerous footsteps could be heard coming up the stairs. “Here they come!!”

Eleven

That afternoon, Morimoto invited Kasahara and stretched out on the neatly trimmed lawn beside the company.—He had to make use of such opportunities whenever they arose. Kasahara was working as the factory manager’s assistant. He had graduated from a First-Class Commercial School and seemed to have read some of Marx’s works. From there, he could see white-shirted employees playing catch in front of the office. Each time a ball thrown with full force landed in the mitt, it created a pleasant reverberation that pierced through the listless midday air like something slipping through a hollow tube. The female clerk standing nearby clapped her hands and jeered when they missed a catch.

But in the shaded area of the factory, a middle-aged female worker had her breast exposed as she held a nursing infant—carried over by a child—on her raised knee. There were four or five such groups.

Morimoto was gazing at the blue sky. When he lay on his back, the sky turned an even deeper blue. At that moment, something thick and viscous surged up in his chest. Morimoto worked his jaw as if physically chewing on the sensation. “Hey!”

Kasahara, who was beside him, abruptly lifted only his head and looked at Morimoto. “——……?” “Chewing your cud?” What an unpleasant fellow. He grimaced awkwardly. Morimoto learned various things about the company from Kasahara.

The company was now conducting a thorough investigation into "industrial rationalization." However, the real issue wasn't with the industrial rationalization policy itself, but rather with determining how to implement it—specifically, how to execute it without the workers noticing or becoming enraged. This was what they were racking their brains over. At H.S., newly hired workers had to be either parents or siblings of those currently employed… or else they wouldn’t be considered. The Managing Director was contemplating the implementation of company-wide familialism at the factory. But the true meaning lay in creating an invisible "chain of responsibility" so that no worker could act independently of the others. Moreover, beyond the cold, material relationship of wage employment, this could also be seen as the company’s “benevolence” toward its familial system. However, more than anything, it served as a strike deterrent. And now, when attempting to implement the rationalization policy, this would prove useful.

The company did not view the unemployed workers flooding the city or the semi-free laborers forced into subhuman labor right before their eyes—the dockworkers—merely as isolated issues. They had considered that the more severe such problems became, the more subtle effects they would have on H.S.'s factory workers—the "Ford of Y." By insidiously hinting at these "inferior conditions" to just the necessary degree whenever required, they made it impossible for the workers to voice strong demands. Therefore, when push came to shove, H.S. possessed precisely that kind of strategic advantage.

As one condition of rationalization—for instance, when attempting to decisively implement extended working hours—it was perfectly clear this would directly provoke the factory workers' resentment. However, at places like S City's "Hemp Manufacturing Company" producing military supplies and M City's "Steelworks," there had been cases where they easily extended [hours] by proclaiming it was no mere "profit-seeking enterprise" but a vital "national duty." ——“Loopholes exist everywhere.” Therefore, if one skillfully grasped each factory's particularities, things could proceed surprisingly smoothly.—H.S. had been such a case.

This is no idle boast, Our dear female cannery workers

In the frigid skies of Russian Kamchatka, With our very lives, we toil at the cannery We make indispensable cans. Enviable, oh! The young ladies of the cannery Once we leave port and become canned goods, When we return, we enrich the nation and fatten ourselves. We make indispensable cans. This is no boast, The young ladies of the cannery Could we ever slack off for the company’s sake? Could we ever let our guard down for our nation’s sake? Our work at the cost of our lives is not enough.

(From H.S. Company's publication "Can Club.") When such songs and writings were submitted, the company would prominently feature them in Can Club. Moreover, the company even secretly commissioned someone to create them for publication.

H.S. Company exported 58 million cans to Kamchatka, 7.8 million cans to crab cannery ships, and 9.8 million cans to the Kuril Islands, Hokkaido, and Karafuto. In terms of proportion, Kamchatka was overwhelming.

Under the factory manager’s supervision, Kasahara had been made to read materials like Scientific Management Methods and the Taylor System while compiling various statistics—through this, he had gained concrete knowledge of the company’s plans. Not only Japan’s wage levels but those of the entire world had been plotted on graph paper.—Globally speaking, nominal wages had been falling, and when compared against daily necessities’ prices, real wages too had clearly been following a downward trajectory. H.S. alone could not have remained an exception indefinitely. Furthermore, to intensify productivity, they considered whether their current mechanical organization could be further divided into specialized tasks; whether they might replace highly-paid skilled workers with women and girls; whether conveyors could be utilized more extensively; and whether workers still found opportunities for “dawdling” or “catching their breath.” Perhaps they still had free time—how about switching them to piece-rate wages…? While the workers remained engrossed in the factory’s trivial details, management had been advancing their strategies in lockstep with “the world.”

When examining H.S. Factory’s five-year statistics, production output increased while the number of workers decreased. This held two implications. ——First, that workers were being exploited more intensely than ever; second, that an equivalent number were being cast onto the streets as unemployed. With the full installation of conveyors, both "transport workers" and "unskilled laborers" saw marked reductions. The numerical gap between skilled and unskilled workers narrowed significantly, as did their wage disparity. What astonished was how female workers multiplied unnoticed—and from that growth onward, factory-wide wages began imperceptibly declining. The factory manager stated that hiring women offered advantages beyond lower wages—they avoided union affiliations and showed less resistance, making them easier to drive harder.

However, all these things were merely aspects that could be called the thorough implementation of "efficiency improvement" or "factory management methods"—nothing more than a minor inner part of the grand slogan known as "industrial rationalization." —"Industrial rationalization" had its true purpose elsewhere. This was what was referred to by the term “concentration of enterprises.” To reorganize the cluttered small and medium businesses, make the large ones ever larger, and progressively reduce their numbers—that was the intent.

And its ultimate purpose lay in enabling the remaining profitable large enterprises to effortlessly reap the sweet rewards of monopoly. And behind the scenes, it was the banks that actually pulled the strings of this industrial rationalization. For instance, when a bank extended substantial loans to numerous iron and steel industrialists, even from the perspective of its own profits, competition among them was not desirable. Therefore, banks considered it profitable to restrict and ultimately abolish competition between enterprises as much as possible. In such times, banks—out of necessity and by virtue of their power as creditors—devised agreements and mergers among these homogeneous industries to forge them into a unified bloc, thereby operating to steer an economic development stage that should still be in an era of competition into a monopolistic position.—The rationalization policies were clearly serving the interests of big financial capitalists.

Kasahara, who was made to write the monthly "business reports" submitted to Mitsuta Bank, knew exactly what relationship bound "banks and companies" as capital entities—that Mitsuta Bank held all supervisory rights, control, and regulatory authority over H.S. Factory; that complaints frequently came to the company regarding business performance; that the Managing Director paid near-daily visits to Mitsuta Bank; that, to put it hyperbolically, the Managing Director might as well have been a transferred employee from Mitsuta Bank to H.S.... This kind of relationship will likely turn into something interesting... Kasahara had said such a thing. Morimoto had not been looking up at the blue sky at all.

Industrial rationalization further manifested itself in purchasing and sales. Capitalists formed "joint purchasing" and "joint sales" associations and conducted "regulation" of raw material and sales prices. By doing so, they could greatly increase surplus value by sacrificing workers on one hand, while at the same time, since prices were “guaranteed” here, they could secure double profits. Who suffered from being unable to buy cheap goods due to their exclusive price agreements? It was the workers who constituted the majority of the nation’s people.

——Factories that had become unnecessary trash were closed down. Workers were dumped onto the streets with heavy thuds. Those fortunate enough to keep their jobs found themselves squeezed ever more scientifically, without an ounce of waste permitted. This was nobody else's problem.—Through such merciless friction, capitalism advanced toward its stage of vast socialized organization and monopoly. Thus every aspect of industrial rationalization—no matter which single item you examined—ultimately drove capitalism to its final developmental stage while creating conditions ripe for socialist revolution. Yet every last measure also forced its sacrifices upon the workers. As for H.S., soon enough... Ah...

Kasahara narrowed his eyes against the glare and looked at Morimoto. “I don’t think even ‘Y’s Ford’ can stay ‘Ford’ forever.”

Twelve

At the blare of the starting siren, the two jumped up.

Kasahara briskly brushed off his trousers and ran toward the office.

The ground-shaking thud-thud-thud of the air hammer sent tickling tremors through the soles of their feet. At the dimly lit workplace entrance, as Morimoto moved to step inside, he glimpsed through the window the Managing Director leaving for golf and faltered mid-stride. He had made the office boy carry his golf bag. In that instant, he collided with Saeki emerging from within.

“Watch where you’re going!” “You freak!”

Saeki? What the hell was he doing coming over here?—Morimoto thought he was a suspicious bastard.

*What’s this—your eyes like flatfish?* “What’re you on about?” “Look out the window!” Saeki glanced at it briefly and made a disgusted face.

“Look at that getup.” “Isn’t he the Showa-era Flower-Blooming Grandpa?” “Do you really need that ridiculous costume just to play golf?” —Hmph, wonder if... Morimoto responded evasively. The barb had struck Saeki raw. “Actually, Abe Isoo’s coming on a speaking tour this time.” “…Thought we’d have him stop by the factory for an hour after his city lecture.” “The Managing Director’s already on board with it...”

“—Who’s organizing it?” “……Are you all inviting him?” “Don’t be ridiculous—it’s the Managing Director.” “—The Managing Director?!” Morimoto smiled faintly.

“Well now, that’s one hell of a bold move you’re pulling.”

“That’s impressive.” Saeki, not understanding Morimoto’s meaning, spoke with utter seriousness.

Morimoto had heard the rumor that the Managing Director was running for city council from the "Social Democratic Party." It was none other than Saeki who had brought up that matter as well.

At that moment, Morimoto said, “So whose party is this Social Democratic Party anyway? Isn’t it supposed to be ‘the workers’ party’?”

Saeki’s expression changed. And “It’s not the Communist Party.” There had been a time when he’d said that. At the company, to prevent factory workers from flocking to left-wing labor unions, they covertly aided Saeki and others in getting workers within the factory who were seen as somewhat dangerous to join the “General Labor Union.” That was something Morimoto and the others knew. But that strategy had been cleverly concealed by claims that the H·S Managing Director was truly liberal—that he understood the workers, even intentionally letting them join unions. As a result, none of the many factory workers laboring there knew anything about that connection. If the core elements that had been the factory’s backbone were now consolidated under the Social Democratic faction, then no matter what disadvantageous or cruel treatment befell the workers within the “factory,” it would all go unchallenged. It was obvious. Morimoto could sense a significant ulterior motive there. The company was bearing down aggressively on the factory workers with a proactive stance. Wasn’t this some kind of preparation against that? He felt with growing intensity that this critical moment was approaching.

He still did not know the duties of the "factory cell" in concrete terms. However, through his long experience in factory life up to now and within the various mechanisms he had only recently begun to grasp, he felt he could discern his own position.—

“So with this opportunity, I plan to lay the Social Democratic Party’s foundation in the factory too... I’ve already briefed the finishing department.” “Count on it.” With that, Saeki ran off down the cart track. As he went, he reached from behind and grabbed the buttocks of a female worker pushing a tinplate-loaded cart. Morimoto saw it all from his position. The woman yelped! She sprang up and slammed her fist into Saeki’s back. “Nyah-nyah!”

He swayed his hips in a clownish manner and turned the corner.

Saeki had created an organization called the "Central Association" in T District of the workers' neighborhood, structured like a youth group. Seventy percent of its members were H·S factory workers. Since he knew judo, the association had that as half its purpose. There was also a dojo. It seemed to be receiving some assistance from the H·S Company. When a strike occurred somewhere, they would interfere with the dispute "for the sake of the general public's interests." Under the guise of spiritual training and mental discipline, they were clearly cultivating a "violent group" to break strikes. When the company held a "martial arts tournament," those comrades formed its core.

As Morimoto descended to his workplace, he felt the plan and objectives of his own work coming into clear focus before his eyes.

When he returned home that day, the newspaper-wrapped pamphlets Kawata had brought were lying on the desk. It was a forty- to fifty-page pamphlet bound with a gear design. · “Factory Newspaper” · “Factory Cell Tasks and Activities” On the cover, in pencil, was scrawled “Read immediately” by Kawata.

Thirteen

When women began joining, we had to be careful—it could distort the movement," Kawata often warned.

Kawata often said. And when Morimoto met with O-Kimi too, he kept firm hold of that resolve. He had her wait at Ishikiriyama first, then walked and talked as they went.

Puffing out her chest and arching her back, O-Kimi walked with a masculine stride. The female factory workers who stood all day engaged in busy work had forgotten Japan's "womanly" way of walking.—If they were made to work just a bit more rationally, Takebayashi the anarchist had remarked in his characteristic way, factory girls might become the Japanese women who look best in Western-style clothing. At the factory, Morimoto could freely joke with the female workers and engage in playful banter. Yet when alone with her like this, he found himself unable to broach work matters. If he tried to speak even briefly, he stumbled awkwardly. This was entirely different from his familiarity with buying prostitutes. When cutting through an alleyway to cross a brightly lit street, he panicked so comically that O-Kimi later chuckled under her breath.—He dashed across alone first and waited for her in the opposite alley. O-Kimi approached calmly, chest thrust forward and kimono hem flicked briskly—like a Western-dress wearer donning traditional clothes—her eyes alone fixed smiling on Morimoto. Walking shoulder to shoulder,

“Mr. Morimoto, you’re quite gentle, aren’t you?”

“Mr. Morimoto, you’re quite gentle, aren’t you?” O-Kimi said. Morimoto felt sweat bead on his skin. Was this how all men reacted? He couldn’t tell... The thin yukata clung roundly to her sullen frame, revealing every contour. Their shoulders occasionally brushed. He flinched and pulled away. His throat burned. He craved an icy ramune. “Should we rest somewhere and talk?” A short walk brought them to an ice water shop. Glass bead curtains clinked coolly as they swayed. On a miniature hillock, a toy fountain splashed dreamlike sprays. In a crude cement pond, two or three goldfish flashed crimson backs.

“Old man, a cold ramune.” “How about you?” “I’ll have shaved ice.” “Right.” “Old man, and one shaved ice.” When he realized she was the type of woman to briskly make decisions while dragging Morimoto along, he thought it perfectly acceptable to feel thoroughly pleased. He sensed an unexpected “tightness” toward the work he would undertake from now on. “—So, hey…” Making his Adam’s apple bob with gulps, he downed the ramune in one go—and once again the woman took the lead.

“I’ve heard all sorts of things from you along the way, but I think differently. It’s just the company skillfully promoting itself.” “Female workers are still female workers.” “How much do you think we actually make per day?” “That alone tells you everything.” O-Kimi told him about “Yoshi-chan”—a story she’d heard from a friend—without mentioning the name. “My friend calls her reckless.” “But if she were truly reckless, would she even get paid?” “The real problem isn’t some woman trying to feed four mouths—it’s the company that won’t pay more than sixty sen a day. You know that.” “There are girls who quit the factory to become barmaids... or sometimes prostitutes.” “They’re not quitting first and then falling into that life—they leave because the company’s wages can’t keep anyone alive! They quit planning to do it from the start! And then management turns around saying, ‘They became corrupt,’ or ‘If only they’d stayed proper employees!’ Lies! All lies!”

Morimoto looked at the woman in surprise. A woman who spoke the truth—and with such sharpness! This was a female factory worker! “Female factory workers are such wretched creatures. So pitifully enough—all they ever talk about are movie actresses making thousands of yen a month, or waitresses and geishas.” “Is that so?” “And then complaints over daily wages of one or two sen. The ‘Factory Committee’ has never been any use at all, but even that ignores us female workers.”

“Two of us get to attend.” “That’s just observing.” “And even that—standing there like wooden stakes without any right to speak.” ——Hmm. “Won’t you have another shaved ice?” “Mm.” “Since you’re in the finishing department making more than double what we do, you’re treating me.” O-Kimi laughed brightly. Her well-aligned white teeth were clearly visible. Morimoto felt the stiffness in his shoulders gradually easing from O-Kimi’s carefree freedom. O-Kimi often said things like “—it’s just that” “——Such a tone.” She would end sentences with just that or respond with “Right” in conversation. “Yeah.” She spoke in that manner. Just that alone was entirely different from what Morimoto had previously thought about women.—He wondered if these aspects stemmed from life inside the factory, something none of Japan’s women had ever considered before.

“When we leave the company and talk to each other, we really understand.” “Everyone’s scattered. You’re pessimistic just because it’s ‘Ford,’ but I feel like we can make one or two comrades in each department.” “——Women…” O-Kimi stifled a laugh.

Women were such strange creatures. Once they started moving in a set direction, they ended up outdoing men. It might be a form of hysteria. This transformed hysteria might prove useful. Morimoto laughed.

He began explaining in detail the "method" he had heard from Kawata to O-Kimi. Then O-Kimi, with an uncharacteristically cautious and earnest expression, listened to each point intently. “I’ll do it.” “Let’s all encourage each other and make this happen!”

O-Kimi raised her face, one cheek flushed red.

After leaving the shaved ice shop and walking a short distance, there was a railway crossing. Ahead, the crossing gate quietly lowered. A passenger car with a row of bright windows passed by, tepidly stirring up the wind and making the ground rumble. The residual heat of the locomotive lingered behind. The white-painted fence stood out in the darkness and quietly lifted. From the opposite side, five or six lingering people passed by. Each of their faces turned this way. “Hey, lookin’ swanky.”

Morimoto felt a chill run through him. When he realized they were being watched as "lovers," his face burned crimson.

“What are you talking about?” O-Kimi shot back. She talked about the factory as she walked: ...like how an older female worker—ignored by everyone due to her odd face and rendered neuter-like by years of monotonous labor—hoarded petty savings yet never joined the other female workers’ circles; or how pretty-faced workers got promoted faster; or how when two female workers fell for one male worker and one got heartbroken, the jilted one married someone else, then arrived at the factory with a glossy red marumage bun “dripping like water,” parading around as if to say “look at me now”; or how some visited soba shops with foremen after watching moving pictures to wheedle wage hikes; or how a company employee who knocked up a female worker then drove off any man he saw joking with her, no matter how innocent...

The road sloped downward, and when they descended, they emerged near the wharf. Cooling-off visitors were loitering near the pier where the harbor lights could be seen. “Apples, summer oranges, pears—how about some?”

A roadside vendor called out in a hoarse voice.

——I kinda want an apple. Muttering as if talking to herself, O-Kimi approached. Like the other female factory workers, O-Kimi enjoyed buying snacks to eat whenever she went out.—As she walked, she vigorously polished a bright red apple’s skin against her sleeve, then crunched right through the peel with a bite. In the darkness, white teeth flashed as they slid past his eyes.

“Delicious! Aren’t you gonna eat?” The apple and this woman fit together perfectly. “Well, maybe I’ll take one…” “Just one? You only bought one, after all.” The woman laughed as though she could barely contain herself. “…You’re such a tease.” “Then why not take a bite from this side?” The woman wiped the apple once more with her sleeve and held it out to him. He grew embarrassed. “Then, over here?”

The woman mischievously swung around the side she had bitten. ——… “You seem a bit down. Then you’ll just have to take a bite from this side.” He reluctantly took a timid single bite.

From there, the H・S Factory came into view. The large gray bulk appeared like a silent battleship moored in place. This first night seized Morimoto. He was perhaps thinking about O-Kimi. He began to feel a new tautness in his work. When he realized this came from O-Kimi, he felt a guilty unease. And then he wondered - wasn't he already starting to sink into exactly what Kawata had cautioned against?

14 The notion that there were no decent workers anywhere—that they were all just paralyzed good-for-nothings—and that they too appeared that way from the outside wasn't true. Even calling it "Ford," workers still received nothing beyond treatment befitting laborers. But facing bottomless economic gloom whichever way they turned, they had no choice but to cling on; moreover, they'd fallen somewhat into the opium of self-delusion that they were "Y's Ford."

"When you get them talking outside the company, they all spit it out—blunt, in bits and pieces."

O-Kimi had once said. This was spot-on. However, no matter how things stood, they were all waiting for someone else to take the lead. Until then, even when meeting close friends, Morimoto had never spoken about factory issues or political matters. That had been since Ishikawa—someone he'd once been close with—had joined the union. Up until that point, he had been nothing more than a metalworker who had risen from apprentice status—chasing after female factory workers' behinds, buying cheap liquor, and talking about nothing but women. Yet when he now approached his former comrades with this transformed awareness, they—strangely enough—responded in ways one wouldn't expect from the same crew of lewd jokesters. Even seeing this made clear that until now, no one had sparked the consciousness lying dormant within them. They all kept meticulous accounts of their daily lives. Over a matter of one sen a day, they would argue so fiercely about the five-rin difference in dried squid prices at the company store that it could escalate into a major fight.

Weary of monthly premiums and insurance doctors’ unkindness and coldness，they had grown thoroughly sick of “Health Insurance Law.” Not only that，but since “Health Insurance” had been implemented，the company had skillfully evaded bearing two-thirds costs for private injuries and full amount for public ones required by law．“Health insurance should naturally be fully covered by company”—without being taught，workers had been saying this．

The Factory Committee was seen by the workers as nothing more than a charade. “Docile,” “Compliant.” They had not placed even a shred of hope in such a “Factory Committee”—one where the company arbitrarily selected workers and held meetings perfunctorily. The workers turned pale at the prospect that the body line—which had never employed a single female worker—might now be replaced with cheaper female labor.— Despite the utter triviality on the surface—no, even just seeing this much—Morimoto found himself seething within, and he could fully sense the power capable of making others seethe.

Morimoto discovered that his own feelings about heading to the factory every morning had been changing without his realizing it until now. On cold mornings when he hunched his shoulders forward, pulled in his neck, and trudged out through squeaking snow, he felt literally like a slave in his misery. In the warmth of his morning bedding, he stretched his legs out slowly and wondered if he couldn't just stay asleep for one more hour.

Because mornings started early, as he watched the long, winding line of laborers—like stains trudging in single file along the narrow snow-covered path, all in the same lifeless manner—he wondered when they would ever coalesce into that magnificent force akin to “Russia.” The single file lacked only visible chains. It evoked the dreary movements of prisoners. That was why he had never put any real effort into his work at the factory. He had once worked desperately hard to get promoted and become a “company employee.” However, no matter how hard he worked, they wouldn’t promote him to company employee, so he had become reckless since around the age of nineteen. Particularly there, it was not humans using machines, but machines that at all times made humans cling to them. Lordly humans being squeezed and compressed by machines—how could they stand it? He thought it better to slackly keep his hands in his pockets. “Just like how an old woman who keeps many cats gradually comes to resemble them,” Morimoto said as he walked, “you lot will start looking like machines before long.” In the factory’s roaring din, they could only speak in voices like sparks flying from a grinding stone against metal. Their hips possessed the tenacity and precision of machinery’s fixed bases. Their impenetrable expressionlessness resembled the icy blackness of iron. Their finger joints had the hardness of chisels. They had a will like steam hammers—once the belt was fastened around these laborers’ necks, they exerted force with the same unyielding precision as lathes shaving shafts, drill presses boring holes, planers flattening iron surfaces, and milling machines finishing gear teeth. Where exactly the machine ended and the laborer began in those workers gripping their handwheels was something no one could distinguish.

There, what determined human actions was not humans themselves. In the conveyorized canning department, how many dozens of times per minute they moved their hands, or how many times a day they walked around the machinery, at what speed, and within what range—none of this was up to them. The rotation of the machinery and the speed of the conveyor mercilessly dictated those motions. Even if we said that "workers" were laboring inside the factory, it felt too inhuman to be called such, and missed the mark entirely.—The ones truly working were nothing but machines. The female worker standing by the conveyor belt—even as menstrual blood spilled from her—was but a "female worker component" embedded into the machinery, with no possibility of breaking free.

If things continued this way, Morimoto couldn’t help but think that the workers wouldn’t just come to resemble machines—they would become machines themselves. The term “artificial humans” had likely arisen from such thoughts. The factory workers resented talk of “artificial humans.”—Who would want to become a machine? All workers longed to remain human.— Morimoto began doing their “work,” and as various things became clear, the factory belatedly took on a strange allure. When leaving in the morning, he decided who to target today. As he left home, pondering how to approach each comrade—considering their various personalities, hobbies, and jobs—whether through certain methods of conversation or casual visits to their houses… he came to see every laborer rushing past him in oil-stained work clothes, both ahead and behind, as future comrades.—This realization stripped away his previous damp, gloomy thoughts.

Under the guidance of Kawata and Ishikawa, he divided the teams into two—male workers and female workers—taking charge of the male workers himself while assigning O-Kimi to handle the female workers. Only their representatives would liaise with Kawata’s group on the “second floor” to decide crucial methods of activity. In each group, small “gatherings” were established to acquire basic, immediately applicable knowledge on economic and political matters. At the outset, Kawata read aloud to Morimoto a brief text written by a central leader—a letter addressed to a comrade in a small provincial city.

“...According to reports, you’ve succeeded in organizing a workers’ study group in your area—haven’t you? I’ve been utterly delighted. And to think seven workers from the ×× Ironworks have joined—how magnificent! After all, that ×× Ironworks is the largest factory in your region. Remarkable! Seven already! Who would dare speak such contemptuous words? If we can befriend even one worker rising against capitalist exploitation in a factory of thousands—a factory made ironclad through appeasement policies and suppression—then by that alone, we’ve effectively captured half of it. The crux lies in how we achieve that capture. If our policies are sound, the path will rapidly open up...”

“Now, about this study group—you’re not trying to turn nine workers into know-it-alls, are you? If that were the case, then instead of proceeding by that hackneyed method—first making them understand labor movements, social movements, and Marxist economics, then organizing and struggling, which has only ever led to repeated failures and wasted efforts—what grievances do the workers in that area currently hold against the capitalists? What are the labor conditions for the workers at ×× Ironworks in particular? It should proceed in the form of determining how to link the workers’ current grievances to demands that can incite struggle—and if done so, those gatherings will completely transform from being mere know-it-all study groups. Vitality will arise with real, living interest.”

—Hadn't we already been on the verge of stepping into that famous failure?

It had continued a while longer. “For instance, when bringing agitation leaflets into the ×× Ironworks to incite conflict, it is absolutely unwise to put those seven workers on the front lines. That would mean having the buds in our factory cut down by the enemy before things have even begun. Such tasks are best handled by those outside the relevant factory. And the factory workers would serve as reporters at that evening’s study group—what kind of reaction those leaflets stirred up within the factory, how many sympathizers they gained... Now, regarding today’s unrest within the factory—what form must further agitation take next? How do we capture every new sympathizer without fail and advance their organization?... On such matters, the meeting will come to pulse with true vitality...”

“This is absolutely correct.” “This is absolutely correct,” Kawata said. That was close. We too must proceed along this line.

15 No matter what difficulties arose, first and foremost, the "factory newspaper" had to be published. The proletarian newspaper was not merely an organ of "propaganda and agitation"—it simultaneously served as a collective "organizer." The factory newspaper had the mission to clearly and concretely expose the daily experiences workers themselves had acquired within the factory, events occurring there, and deceptive policies—providing Marxist answers to these matters and gradually awakening them to class consciousness. Yet this newspaper’s ultimate significance lay in its purpose to deeply permeate the proletarian party—the Communist Party—’s influence among the factory worker masses through these means, eventually building the party upon the factory’s foundation. The true purpose of Kawata’s efforts lay here. However, that was still something no one knew.

In the case of H・S Factory, they decided to publish the factory newspaper using mimeograph printing as "H・S News." Kawata knew from numerous examples of his seniors that those like himself—positioned remotely from the factories they targeted—would end up writing nothing but abstract stock phrases at all times, ignorant of even the concrete facts within those workplaces, and that such writings had already grown stale to everyone inside the factories. But he was able to create it using the collective knowledge of Morimoto and O-Kimi. Kawata was also advancing the same plan to other ironworks, rubber factories, and printing factories.

"H・S News" was published. It could be small in size. It had to be something devoured by workers, loved and cherished by them. The cartoons and caricatures inserted within would make the news more accessible to the workers. What if the factory manager’s caricature was strikingly accurate? Let’s do away with long, tedious essays. Since workers wouldn’t read such things... Kawata could fantasize about the news with the joy of counting down on clenched fists, as if awaiting the birth of his own child.

With the publication of *H・S News*, Morimoto's relationship with the factory workers would no longer remain the vague, weak, and inadequate thing it had been until now; moreover, they would become able to discover even more exceptional "factory cells" among them. *The News* had other major tasks as well. H・S Company regularly published a company magazine called *Can Club*. As with any company, they excluded all workers from editorial duties—manuscripts were arbitrarily handled by salaried employees alone, then further screened by the factory manager to eliminate anything detrimental to corporate interests. Against the deceptive articles, counter-propaganda, and bourgeois indoctrination of such company mouthpieces, *H・S News* had to ceaselessly resist, expose, and turn the tables by weaponizing their own tactics against them.

Since submissions to *Can Club* could be anonymous, it seemed people were writing things they couldn't say openly with bold persistence. Manuscripts came in containing such astonishing content that one would wonder if there were workers actually thinking these things, the employee handling the editing said.

Kawata also knew this wasn’t a lie. There had been an instance where over twenty imperial warships entered Y Port. The flagship Mutsu had its own “newspaper” unique to the vessel. Newspapers are used in so many different situations! The officer editing it had said, “We receive manuscripts in abundance, but there are no good ones—so we have to pad it out with filler material.” “The enlisted men write such reckless things, you see.” Kawata had once told Ishikawa that when he heard that, his eyes had involuntarily glared fiercely.

“An imperial warship!” “They’re thrilled! There really are some inside after all!”

*The News* had to act like a magnet drawing iron fragments from sand—attracting those who wrote "astonishing things" and those who penned "reckless things," even when buried among grit. After three months, four female factory workers were attending the meetings. They were only one fewer than the men.

O-Kimi and Yoshi-chan were at the center of it all.—Because of this, *H・S News* was cautiously printed in only nine copies. At the "gathering," Suzuki managed to keep the female workers thoroughly entertained without letting them get bored, and he became popular with everyone. “Suzuki’s become ridiculously proactive lately,” Kawata said. “And then— Could it be because there are women?” Kawata laughed. For every comrade added, the News was printed with just one more copy. It was passed from the workers attending the meeting to one carefully selected individual through “direct handoffs.”—The newsletter evoked termites that never surfaced visibly, silently gnawing away at the building’s framework until people realized the entire colossal structure had no choice but to come crashing down.

“The movement from now on isn’t about going out into the streets to distribute leaflets or give speeches.” When Kawata noticed young workers with budding class consciousness growing restless, he had to stress this point. “What’s absolutely necessary now is the perseverance to keep publishing this News for five years straight.” *H・S News* ran a cartoon showing Abe Isoo shaking hands with the managing director while secretly throttling workers from behind. They depicted a “fox council” in session. Around a massive table sat the factory manager—along with foremen and company men all drawn with vulpine features—forcing workers to clutch coins labeled “horse shit.” This was their “Factory Committee.” It exposed how Mutual Aid Association funds and Health Insurance premiums were being diverted—but where? And for whose benefit? The whole racket of making workers write groveling “thank-you notes” for condolence gifts—only to display them at the cafeteria entrance—was laid bare and mocked……

All of these things surprised the factory workers who had thought of the company as “Y’s Ford.”

Sixteen "This is sickening... you." "O-Kimi and Kawata are acting weird, I tell ya."

On the way back from the meeting, Suzuki said sullenly. Morimoto stopped in his tracks.—He had known for some time that there were two men at the factory who had kissed O-Kimi. However, that seemed perfectly characteristic of her, and he found it strangely unperturbing. But with Kawata! No sooner had the thought struck him than he felt the ground beneath his feet suddenly sink with a heavy thud. Kawata's always been careless about such matters.

—…….

Yet Suzuki, who acted that way, had actually been in love with O-Kimi. He had thought O-Kimi was his "last straw." He had already frittered away nearly two hundred yen of police funds. He had to forget his own wretchedness. He panicked. But that thrashing only dragged him deeper. It was a bottomless quagmire with no foothold. —And now, he had even lost this last O-Kimi. *Why had I driven myself so hard for those "meetings"?* Now that it had come to this, he dimly sensed—for the first time—where his path truly led. He began waking drenched in night sweats, haunted by terrible dreams.

It was four or five days later. “Yoshi-chan’s fallen head over heels for someone, you know.” O-Kimi laughed mischievously. “And there she is, moping around all lovesick. That’s just ridiculous! So I told her, ‘What are you, some kinda ‘young lady’ or somethin’?’ Gazing at the moon and sighing over something, seeing flowers and... that’s the kinda thing a ‘young lady’ does. You should say what you’re thinking straight out and get it sorted quick, I said.”

“That’s just like you, O-Kimi!” Morimoto laughed bitterly. “If that messes up her work, it’ll be a disaster. I told her I’d talk to that person… If she wants a kiss, have a kiss… Then she’ll find some real drive in her work, I said.” “Then she says she’d be way too embarrassed about something like that.” “Well?”

O-Kimi spoke in a loud, unreserved voice. When he suddenly wondered if this way of speaking all came from Kawata, he was tormented. “Being embarrassed like that—Yoshi-chan’s got this air about her, acting all prim and proper like some young lady.” “If O-Kimi were a man, it might be Kawata,” Morimoto thought at that moment. “If Kawata were to fall in love, everyone joked, it would be ‘love in the same hue as his work.’” It meant that even if he were to fall in love, there would be not the slightest disturbance in his emotions—let alone any disruption to his work.

O-Kimi didn’t say who Yoshi-chan was thinking of.

Lower Seventeen

That summer was hot. But autumn brought alternating rain and sleet, leaving the port town ravaged. When winter came, following autumn, this time the weather was unusually good. But if the good weather continued, snow removal work would disappear, and the workers would waste away.

The lives of port workers were driven further into the abyss by the government’s austerity policies.—Burdened with artisanal methods of exploitation like the oyakata system and piece-rate wages—layered thick as kelp rolls—even when these workers managed to earn wages at the docks, their take-home pay was whittled down through multiple deductions until it ended up halved. Although it was supposed to be a piece-rate system, the foremen arbitrarily falsified the "landing volume" (handling volume) without disclosing the actual figures and only gave them a fraction of that falsified amount. After Kaneshibori installed loading machinery at the coal yard, fifty stevedores who had been carrying pike tools were laid off all at once.

The wives could no longer sit still inside their houses. But if they sat vacantly by the hearth, they would end up sitting like that all day long. They grew vacant. They weren't thinking about anything. —They headed into the kitchen. But when they went into the kitchen, they forgot why they had gone there. They couldn’t stay in one place. Something deep inside them kept driving them relentlessly.—The wives went out to the canal-side street where their husbands worked.

They stayed until sunset, and on their way back, the wives stopped by the foreman’s place. They wanted to borrow as much as they could.

“Don’t be ridiculous!” The foreman peered out from the reception desk. “Take a look at this slump! We’re the ones barely getting by as it is!” Even after being told this, the wives kept leaning on the reception desk’s railing, silent. They had forgotten to go home………….

Through the windows of the H・S Factory, beyond the stagnant canal, the crowd could be seen. The waterfront had grown noisy. The Y Labor Union carried out their activities threading through those disturbances. For an ominous strike to erupt, all that was needed was a single "spark". The union had to build an adequate communication network and organizational structure in preparation.

The "Factory Representatives Conference" was urgently convened. In this case, it held two meanings. Even if transport workers across the nation were to rise up in unison, it was clear that Y City’s "factory workers" would stand outside that struggle—as was the case in every other city. They had to expand this into a city-wide strike through the power of the “Factory Reps.” One concerned the recent disturbances at the H・S Factory.

Six people from four ironworks, three from three printing factories, and four from two rubber factories had gathered. They each represented the opinions of dozens from their respective factories. Among them were two comrades from the ironworks where Morimoto had made his rounds as an apprentice. “After all, we really are…!”

With that, they laughed together. To bring the Factory Reps to this level, Kawata and the others had been making unglamorous efforts for over half a year. —And so,

The H・S Company trembled with fear. Neither company employees nor factory workers could focus on their work. —This arose from Mitsuta Bank’s merger with Kaneshiba Bank, a first-class Japanese bank. The government pursued nationwide control of financial institutions—their centralization. This merger too was part of that. Banks were increasingly consolidated into huge, fewer entities. Thus Mitsuta Bank’s control over the H・S Company transferred intact to Kaneshiba Bank.

However, Kaneshiba Bank had two companies under its control: the "N.S. Canning Company" and the "T.S. Canning Company." These were the two companies it possessed. Yet in the canning industry until now, Kaneshiba-affiliated companies had always been overshadowed by the "H・S Company." Therefore, if "H・S" were now brought under their umbrella, they could securely monopolize Japan's canning industry.—They could standardize products nationwide to boost production efficiency, implement shared technological improvements across factory equipment, reduce labor costs, and crucially in sales—prevent the wasteful price drops previously triggered, establish monopoly pricing, and reap profits to their heart's content.—Thus it became clear that Kaneshiba would aggressively meddle directly within business operations themselves, rather than maintaining Mitsuta Bank's former approach of "simple control." This meant the "industrial rationalization" long dreaded by factory workers would now be implemented directly—and with extreme brutality. The factory buzzed with these rumors.

However, the problem was more complex.

“With this latest development—you know—the Managing Director, the Manager, the Factory Manager… these bastards are the ones turning pale.” Kasahara said this while being forced to work late every night at the office, preparing handover documents for submission to the new bank. “Kaneshiba’s bringing in executives and heavyweight directors from their own clique—looks like they mean to boot those fuckers out.” “But when it comes down to it, those guys are surprisingly brittle.—Makes things interesting though.” “They’re scheming something desperate.”

But Kasahara, who was always nearby, had a rough grasp of their intentions.—They were agitating about how Kaneshiba’s ruthless expansion would sacrifice the factory’s “beloved” workers, lower their living standards, and plunge “Y’s Ford” into becoming “Y’s Prison Cell,” all while trying to protect their own crumbling positions through unified action by all employees. “Hmm, seems like they might get tripped up a bit.”

“But once Kaneshiba gets involved,” said Kasahara, “no matter how much the Managing Director thrashes about, given the sheer scale difference, it won’t even be a wrestling match. From now on, industrial capitalists not tied to financial capitalists will come crashing down one after another. There’s plenty of good precedents.” Speaking of which※—(a shop symbol combining a reversed “Γ” and the character 辰)—even Suzuki had his hand forced in the same way. This marked one phase in financial capital’s conquest.

Moreover, the majority of H・S’s canned goods were sold to its parent company, Nichiro Company, and shipped off to Kamchatka. Thus, they were constantly threatened on one front by the advance of Soviet Russia’s “Five-Year Plan” and on another by the wasteful competition among domestic capitalists. Fluctuations in the number of successful fishing zone bids directly impacted production output.—In order to prepare for this, H・S had to mobilize the government to stir up general patriotic sentiment and hostility toward Soviet Russia.

This year, there were even reliable rumors that Russia was systematically encroaching on our prime fishing zones using various means. The stock prices of Nichiro and H・S plummeted like water about to tip over. In response to these circumstances at H・S, Kawata—while taking for granted the factory cells’ proactive efforts, exposés and agitation via *News*, and recruitment of new cells—further sought to seize upon the current “trembling-with-fear” instability to ensure that workers could defend their positions and interests as laborers by...

“Autonomization of the Factory Committee” [Kawata] proposed that efforts must be made to initiate the struggle for the committee’s autonomization. For workers to resolutely withstand any capitalist “offensive,” it was essential above all that every laborer in the factory marched in lockstep. Workplace after workplace faced utter devastation due to inconsistent stances—a common occurrence. This stemmed from their lacking an “institution” to thoroughly debate issues across the entire factory. What they needed as that institution was an autonomous Factory Committee. As things stood, it was being arbitrarily managed by the factory manager, company-appointed foremen, and cowed workers. We must demand its reorganization as an institution for workers’ benefit—one organized by workers themselves.—Once approved, the concrete plans regarding timing, methods, and other particulars were painstakingly formulated over an extended period.

Then there were situation reports from other representatives. In transport workers' strikes, their list of demands had to include clauses capable of mobilizing factory workers as well. It was resolved that factory cells would devote their full strength to propaganda and agitation by linking these efforts with issues unique to the factory. When it ended, Kawata flopped backward onto his back.

"This makes three days I haven't slept properly," Kawata thought. Kawata was being particularly targeted by police pursuit. He kept changing locations, constantly on the run. At each new place, he made contact and continued directing the union and Morimoto's group. But in a small city under 200,000 people, this bordered on impossibly dangerous.

Eighteen When the meeting ended, they exited one by one, each leaving separately. When they left the bustling street and neared the entrance to T-town, someone slipped up behind Morimoto and fell into step beside him. When he thought Oh!, it was Kawata. “Just have some business in T-town now.” Morimoto suddenly had a strange premonition—Kawata was going to O-Kimi’s place, wasn’t he? Kawata began talking earnestly about their movement as they walked together. Kawata’s earnest tone was always like that, but it carried a dogmatic, headstrong quality. It even made those encountering him for the first time feel an unconscious antipathy. However, whenever Morimoto heard that tone from Kawata, he always felt a strange “reassurance” in what he was doing. He could even feel what could be called power there.

“Can you devote yourself to this work?” Kawata asked. Morimoto answered, “I can.” “When I say ‘devoted’…” Kawata said this and fell silent for a moment, deep in thought. People still passed by on the street. A car’s headlights intermittently sliced across half of Kawata’s face before rounding the curve and disappearing. “By ‘devoted,’ I mean being ready to dedicate your whole life.” he said. At their feet, snow resembling coarse springtime sugar rustled faintly.

“Of course, our work isn’t something that can be done half-heartedly—and given that we have to keep coming up time and again, piling up layer upon layer before anything comes to fruition... Well, it goes without saying.” Morimoto thought this was an oddly formal way of phrasing things now. “Even ‘News’ reaching this level within six months—I think that’s the power of our flawless ‘organization.’” “So you see, our goal is to build a socialist country.” “For that purpose, it requires an iron-like ‘organization’ and the power of so-called devoted comrades who can operate and staunchly defend it...”

There, uncharacteristically, Kawata cut off his words. "You understand?" "I know." Strange, bringing this up now...

When he said that, Kawata gave a muffled laugh deep in his throat. "That iron-like organization means a political party that establishes its foundation firmly among factory workers through factory cells and stands at the vanguard to fight for workers." "And when we speak of a workers' party, that can only mean the 'Communist Party'." But Morimoto had heard all this until he was sick of it. So he replied, "Yeah, that's right."

“I could go for some nabeyaki.” Kawata stopped and scanned the area. After walking a short distance, they spotted a small eatery. The two ate nabeyaki there. While inquiring about Morimoto’s family situation, income, and dependents, Kawata began speaking about himself. He recounted his motivations for joining the movement—stories of battling three spies with lead pipes, a destitute woman who occasionally sent him money. He spoke of her being his only romantic connection, and how his mother back home had fallen ill from worrying over him. He recited a poem: “Do you think you alone have parents?” Listening tightened Morimoto’s chest.—Kawata’s eyes, perpetually cool and unmoved, glistened as he finished. Morimoto realized he’d never seen this side of Kawata before. The Kawata who worked had never revealed such vulnerability to anyone, not even for a minute.

“How’s the factory holding up?”

Kawata asked. He was always worried about Morimoto’s "face."

“A bit.” “But it’s been a while.” “Hm—any amount’s bad news.” “According to Mr. Kasahara at the company, the Special Higher Police have been visiting the factory manager like crazy lately—discussing something.” Kawata—who’d been rolling the hot nabeyaki tempura across his tongue—suddenly twitched his eyebrows. “The manager sometimes brings strangers around the factory for tours—might be Special Higher Police.” “And O-Kimi says there’s someone among us workers who’s been bought off—reporting every move we make.” “If they accidentally cross paths with Saeki’s goons without realizing—we’re done for!”

...! We’ve got to be careful. “They’ve figured out about the ‘News’ after all.” “They’re struggling.” “They’re scrambling to figure out where it’s being produced and what routes it’s coming through.” “Hmph!” The “News” had initially been strictly passed hand-to-hand. However, as the organization’s roots spread and grew stronger, they began deliberately leaving copies in conspicuous factory spots and distributing them on a small scale.

“The factory manager’s saying it’s the union members making them.” That No.16 issue of *News*—the one that published the Managing Director’s detailed annual income, family life, year’s worth of geisha expenses, and mistress dealings—had proven so popular they ended up passing it around everywhere. Because of that exposé, among the female workers, there were apparently many who cried—if this was true—saying they’d been deceived until now by the Managing Director’s “plain suits.” “It’s something like a rumor, but—”

The two of them laughed out loud. "After all—with every detail accounted for—those bastards must've had nowhere to turn." Outside,the pedestrian traffic had thinned out. The two of them walked cautiously.

When they came to the slope near Morimoto’s house, Kawata took out a newspaper-wrapped bundle from his inner pocket. “Read this by tomorrow,” he said. “And burn it right after.”

Morimoto received it.

“Then I’ll come to your place around nine tomorrow, so stay home.” With that, Kawata turned down the dark path and walked away.

He stood there, listening to the sound of those footsteps.

The next day, Morimoto received an invitation from Kawata to join the "Communist Party."

19

The cells of the H・S Factory gathered every single day. Detailed methods were decided there to ensure there were no oversights. Kawata also made an appearance.

For mass news distributed in leaflet form to truly have a living effect, its "timing" absolutely had to be chosen. It had to be just before the factory committee was convened and simultaneously on the very day the Kanebishi restructuring was finalized. The second and third wave tactics following the leaflet distribution, along with the matter of holding a workers' assembly, were resolved. This time, both the Managing Director’s side and the workers were attempting to utilize it. It was different from an ordinary strike. The Managing Director was on the verge of collapse. Therefore, their adversary in this struggle wasn’t the Managing Director or the Factory Manager. It lay in seizing upon this great "turmoil" and securing an organ for worker solidarity. However, what the Managing Directors were plotting also took the same form in terms of uniting the workers.—How would these two opposing forces heading toward the same exact point become entangled?

The leaflets generally had the following framework.

1. What good is it if the factory manager arbitrarily appoints the factory committee? We demand that all committee members be determined through an election by all factory workers. 2. Up until now, all proposals submitted were ones that the factory manager had merely glanced over and deemed unproblematic. How can such absurdity be allowed to stand? To forcefully present the real day-to-day issues affecting workers. 3. The factory manager had arbitrarily assumed the position of committee chairman. As it stands, there’s no way resolutions beneficial to the workers will be passed; the committee chairman must be determined through mutual election by all committee members. 4. Even matters decided by the committee are left unresolved, and when it comes to amending crucial factory regulations, they’ve never once been brought before the committee—the Managing Director and Factory Manager arbitrarily decide everything on their own. In the end, they only submit trivial matters to the committee. As it stands, the committee is worse than a mere facade. We oppose all such deceptions. 5. Given that this is a factory where female workers are also employed, committee members must be selected from among them as well. 6. The sole force to prepare against Kanebishi’s brutal restructuring and the exploitation and layoffs of workers lies in nothing other than seizing control of this factory committee’s autonomy, aligning our steps, and uniting all workers. 7. The Managing Directors may scheme to cling to their positions. We must not be taken in by this.

8. The rubber companies, printing companies, and ironworks in the city were also shouldering the same issues and rising up. They called for solidarity with their H・S comrades. 9. The dockworkers' plight was no longer someone else's fire across the river. The same fate lay in wait for us all. We had to clasp hands with them and stand together—and so on.

As rumors and speculations from various quarters swirled around, they grew like a snowball. That recklessly stirred up the workers. Everyone forgot how to stay calm. Waiting for break time, everyone gathered. Even the foremen came sticking their necks into their group.

Finishing department workers who had always been secretly making various tools for the factory manager were now being openly subjected to insults. The workers were not only forbidden from making their own items in the factory—even taking out a single piece of iron scrap or tin plate would get them fired.

—Even the new factory manager? Ha ha ha! Give it your best shot! Those who had curried favor with their superiors and swaggered about found their positions utterly overturned. Once they lost their pillar of support, they were magnificently shunned by everyone. Serves you right! They brazenly spat in contempt.

The foremen who had such connections turned pale and panicked. Yet they quickly declared they must convene a workers' assembly to formulate countermeasures. Saeki and his cohort spearheaded this effort. "H·S stands at a critical juncture—we demand your revolutionary awakening!" they proclaimed while stirring up company loyalty. —They only ever considered using the workers as pawns during such crises. During lunch breaks, the female workers loitered near where male workers held intense discussions.

“What’s going to happen?” they asked. “They’re firing half of us—men and women both!” The male workers shouted desperately.

20. The leaflets were brought into the factory by the female factory workers through careful planning. When night shift preparations delayed their return home, they were slipped one by one into the coats in the changing room. Close to ten female workers swiftly swung into action for that purpose.

In the morning, as Morimoto pressed the time clock at the factory entrance, a finishing department foreman wearing a flat cap— “This is bad!” said the foreman. “—A dangerous leaflet. It’s from the same line as the *News*.” “Huh.” “—They’ve all been distributed this time. Where’re they getting in from? This factory’s gotten too big for its britches.” The foreman was an “itinerant worker” who had drifted from factories around Tsurumi. He had treated everyone as “country bumpkin workers”—what could they possibly know?—and looked down on them. In the finishing department, they were saying that if there was a strike, they’d hang this foreman from a grate before even dealing with the Managing Director and give him a good push from below. “Hmph! Just you wait!” Morimoto laughed wryly to himself.

Inside the factory，unrest was growing due to Kanabishi’s stance reported in the morning paper and the articles in the leaflets． The moment he stepped inside and sensed it，Morimoto knew this was working． In the time just before work began，everyone had gathered in clusters by the machines，talking about the leaflets．

"Now that it's come to this, this is undoubtedly our foremost issue."

Morimoto caught the words that came flying from outside the circle of the gathering. When he showed his face in the canning department, O-Kimi—stationed on the top line—quickly noticed and walked over. With a nonchalant air, “It’s okay. They say it’s only logical for the committee to be elected.” “That old man on your side—that stubborn bald bastard!” “That bastard’s the only one hogging all the leaflets from everyone and strutting around with them.” Having said that, she ran off like a man.

The anarchist Takebayashi was oiling the can edge bending machine. He glanced up sharply, "It's you, then." he said.

“What’s this? While everyone’s getting worked up like this, you alone stand there aloof, like you’ve become the factory manager or something.” Morimoto started and removed the drill bit. “The guiding principles differ.” “That so?” “So your guiding principle says you alone can go without eating? How noble.” “Yeah.” “Exactly right.”

What Morimoto had to monitor in the canning department was the activity of workers bound by blood relations. He had particularly cautioned O-Kimi and the comrades here about this matter. Yet it had not yet manifested. The sole concern was whether the factory manager—having already perceived movements across the entire plant and recognizing their impact on H・S's collective interests—might preemptively strike through measures like a factory-wide assembly. Within these internal movements—though clearly understood—they could not ignore that the agitation stemmed not from their own class-based stance, but from what was deemed a "major corporate crisis." There he detected a fragile susceptibility ripe for exploitation.

In the foundry, on the side where wheel sand molds were stored, three or four people stood clustered together. Wood pattern carpenters were among them. They kept sniffling back their runny noses repeatedly. "If there's nobody bold enough to step forward and lead, these efforts are doomed," came the voice. The speaker was Masuno—as an apprentice, he had been carrying a bucket of molten iron from furnace to sand molds when he tripped over a discarded wooden pattern at his feet, burning half his face. The accident had left a terrible scar on him.

One or two would come out from each workplace. Morimoto had been considering him as a candidate for a "cell."

The foundry workers all had burns on their faces or bandages on their hands. When they poured iron into the sand molds, the rapid vaporization of moisture and the iron sparks that erupted alongside it caused everyone to suffer burns.

When Kitakawa Jii, the hard-of-hearing foundry worker, saw Morimoto, "Will anything really happen like the leaflets say?" "Is there no other way but to do it like this, Morio?!" he said. "That's right," "If it comes to that, even you can rest easy, old man." Because Kitakawa Jii was hard of hearing, he tilted his head while looking at him and offered an uncertain smile. Yamagami from the riveting section,

“Let’s do this!”

“Let’s do this!” he said. He was a comrade. “How’s the finishing department?” Even when he barely moved his arm, the muscles of his upper arm would bulge into hard knots—he had a solid, unyielding body. “Well, that’s the main floor for you.” “The main floor was solid. Don’t let them outmaneuver you.” He laughed.

“I’d like to see them try to outmaneuver us.” The finishing department with its skilled workers involved in the Kanebishi matter—not that they would respond directly as such—held an advantage unlike the canning department where replacements could be brought in immediately. Above all, with Morimoto and the core of the “cell” based here, they remained steadfast. The comrade drawing a chalk circle on the ball pan glanced at Morimoto, his eyes crinkling in a smile. He wiped his chalk-dusted hands on the seat of his work pants,

“What about the paper?”

he asked. ―First thing in the morning. There was a need to strike first. The comrades at the lathes, planers, and boring machines glanced over with smirking faces. Leaning one foot against the machinery, they animatedly debated the "Kanebishi policy," spittle flying as they spoke. The gear that had been cutting teeth since yesterday remained fixed in the boring machine. Beside the large lathe stood piles of ordered gears, shafts, riveted chimneys, and iron plates. The oily reek of fresh red paint from the finished machine stung their nostrils.

The work bell's blare reverberated across the corrugated roof. Only two foremen had appeared at the factory. They seemed to have gone to the office. The workers showed no inclination to start their machines immediately when the bell rang—same as always. As belts began clacking rhythmically—click... click...—the loud chatter drowned beneath a swelling rumble that surged upward like an advancing force. When belts connected to shafts, machines sprang alive—gears interlocking teeth, cylinders slicing air. Conveyors bearing empty cans at fixed intervals slid between machinery like celluloid film strips. Each transfer of tinplate sheets from trolleys to blanking dies sent blade-sharp reflections flashing across ceilings, walls, and machine profiles. Through gaps in mechanical roars came singing from Top Line women aligning lids—their voices threading through din while iron ceiling beams trembled invisibly against industrial strain.

“That News thing’s just Communist Party propaganda, isn’t it?” The foreman walked between the machines with both hands behind his back. “There we go.”

The questioned worker curtly rebuffed him. But then he suddenly froze—that man was one of the cell members. When the H・S News had many cartoons, he would often slap paste onto the machine and press it there.

Behind them stood the Communist Party, resolute. That was exactly it. But if that’s what the Communist Party amounted to, then even they only ever talked about the most obvious things. That’s precisely what made them frightening. He let out a laugh. “So when they say it’s nothing—that’s the real truth, huh?” Twenty minutes had passed since work began—a laboring worker got jabbed in the back from behind. “Came around from somewhere.” Scraps of paper were slipped stealthily into pockets. The saving grace was there being only about two foremen present.

“All workers must gather in the cafeteria after hours for discussions on establishing an elected system for the Factory Committee.” The crisis was looming. “With the power of unity, let us protect ourselves.” “They’re passing it to the next group,” “But not to any suspicious ones.” Hoh! Just as I thought.

At the same time, identical scraps of paper were circulating through the "Workplace," the "Foundry," the "Body Line," the "Top Line," the "Lacquer Workshop," the "Nailing Workshop," and the "Canning Department"—all via the same method.— The foremen were talking as they filed back from the office. The foreman stationed at the machinery saw it, panicked, and ran off. He began a hushed conversation while standing in the factory corner. The workers kept working while shooting sideways glares at them.

From behind the glass door of the finishing area’s watch post, Foreman “Guren” came bursting out in a panic. Saito—who had been pressing metal against the Kongōto grinding wheel—took a scrap of paper from the lathe worker beside him and slipped it into his pocket. Guren had glimpsed it. Nerves were taut.—Everyone wondered what was happening. They saw those “itinerant workers” all turn right in unison as if on command.

“Hey!” A large hand grabbed Saito’s shoulder. However, when Saito turned around, he remained composed. “What is it?”

While speaking slowly, his other hand swiftly crumpled the paper scrap in his pocket and ground it into the floor with his shoe. “Th-th-that paper!” The foreman sputtered. “—Paper?”

The sandy floor was damp with water. Saito fiddled with the paper scraps using his shoe tip while asking, "What's wrong?" "What's wrong?" "Fat bastard." Yet there was nothing more the foreman could do about it. "Resentful wretch," he muttered while staring at the trampled paper scraps. "You bastard! Finally managed to trick me!" "Bastard!" he spat. Workers who'd stopped their machines to watch thought: Serves him right! Won't be long before Guren gets strung up himself.

The foreman, displeased at his plan’s failure, shrugged his shoulders and left. The workers’ eyes mercilessly ridiculed him from every direction.

“Idiot bastard!” A comrade carving a track into a shaft on the lathe cupped their hand over their mouth and played a prank from behind. They burst out laughing. The foreman whirled around and surveyed the workplace. Suddenly everyone put on serious faces and pretended to adjust the machines. Unable to hold back, someone in the corner snorted. “What an infuriating bastard!” He violently flung open the glass door and went inside. “You’d better watch your own neck, you fool!”

During lunch break，Morimoto and four close comrades sat together in their usual spot，carefully refining their plans once more． “How’s it going with the women’s side？” “Makes tactical sense too．” “Hahahaha．”

“That’s right.”

O-Kimi could be seen in a far-off corner, animatedly talking to her fellow workers about something. She moved her entire face freely with exaggerated expressions, speaking around a mouthful of food. O-Kimi was fully present there—Morimoto suddenly felt a pang of loneliness, realizing he couldn’t express his feelings to that woman at all. As the meal was ending, O-Kimi passed through the area where everyone was gathered, still holding her dishes.

“How’s it going?” “About a quarter.” “There’s no one opposed to it.” “Even so, the women haven’t been caught even once right?”

“Yeah.” But I’ll try my best. “I’m counting on you.” “Mr. Morimoto, go throw your neck into it today.” “If you get laid off, we’ll all take care of you.”

O-Kimi laughed brightly and headed to the stand. “And then, how about ‘the big shots’?”

Morimoto asked his comrades. “Of course, the office hasn’t noticed anything about the ‘Factory Conference’ yet, but they’re probably taking countermeasures—that’s what the server said.” “They said the managing director came by car.” “It seems the factory manager called him by phone.” “But the managing director’s got his mind doing somersaults and is racing around.” “It seems he still can’t even focus on the factory—” “This here’s our strategic advantage.”

The changing room was adjacent to the “cafeteria” that served as the assembly area and was located on the second floor. And there was only one exit. And so, to leave, they had no choice but to go up to the second floor, pass through the cafeteria, change their clothes, and then come back down those very stairs. By sheer coincidence, this provided Morimoto and his comrades with supremely advantageous conditions. If they didn’t attend the cafeteria meeting, there was simply no way to leave.—They had stationed trusted “cells” at the stairway exit beforehand to intercept the workers.

The dissenting factory workers and female factory workers loitered near the machines and in the corners of the lower factory floor for a while, grumbling complaints. They couldn’t leave even if they wanted to. There were many elderly workers and married women among them. The female factory workers formed clusters here and there and simply stood. The women had no other reason. Somehow it felt awkward, and they seemed hesitant, as if it were presumptuous. “This isn’t about planning a strike,” “Please make the committee elected through a vote.” “That’s all there is to it.”

As Morimoto walked around saying this, they said that if it was just that much, there might be a calmer way to discuss it. "Where exactly was there anything not calm about this?" "We aren’t picking a fight with the company—it’s a request." When persuaded by O-Kimi and Yoshi-chan, five or six female factory workers formed a tight cluster, their bodies bumping against one another as they ascended the stairs. The foremen had withdrawn to the office when things began happening, so none of them interfered.

In the cafeteria, unexpectedly, more than two-thirds of the factory workers crowded in. However, most of them gathered out of the belief that it was "a matter of the company’s survival." That would be a grave miscalculation—something utterly unthinkable. Otherwise, this many Ford workers would never have gathered. However, they had to immediately seize upon that momentum, wield powerful agitation tactics, and steer things decisively in that direction.—

At that moment, a shadow came rushing through the dimly lit factory. They were lookouts that had been stationed at key points throughout the factory.

“Mori! Saeki and those bastards are busy plotting something in the materials warehouse!” “And they’re only wearing their judo uniforms!” “Saeki?!” Morimoto’s face changed instantly. Were they coming to smash them with violence? That infuriated him. He was not accustomed to such things. Alright—then he’d have the young workers from the finishing section stand guard here. And they needed to start without any damned dawdling!

Morimoto climbed the stairs. The muffled roar of nearly five hundred factory workers, mingling with stomping feet and scraping chairs, bore down like heavy pressure. The prearranged rousing speech cut through it like a thick blade. From a distance, each word dragged its lingering resonance as it clearly captured the workers. The momentum of the crowd—like a tidal wave—became clear through the surging roar. Through this, above all else, they had to use that speech to drag in workers gathered out of company loyalty.—He felt a fierce surge of blood such as he had never experienced. When he thought about the great task ahead that he must accomplish, his body began shaking violently. He strained his neck muscles and clenched his jaw, but it wouldn’t stop. He even felt a vague terror within. If only Kawata were here now—if Kawata would just stand by him—he could push through with strength.

A familiar face turned around and laughed.—'Hang in there,' the smile seemed to say.

The cafeteria sweltered with steam heat and human congestion. Greasy work uniforms stood shoulder-to-shoulder and face-to-face—some seated, some standing—arms crossed, chins propped on hands, glaring at the speaker. They had clustered into workplace groups without realizing it themselves. Takebayashi’s anarchist comrades leaned against the back wall in sulky defiance, their postures thick with resentment.

The female factory workers on the left, conscious of everyone’s gaze, had clustered together awkwardly like a puddle. In all the company’s “meetings” up until now, only the female factory workers had been excluded. The women were now exhilarated by both this first-time experience and their elevated position—. On the platform stood Masuno from the foundry. “Why did half my face turn into a demon’s?” He was talking about that very thing. Every time he shook his body and spoke, his flushed, sagging face twisted into that of a demon.—At first, whispers arose among the crowd.

Still making that horrible face! Occasional small laughs rippled through the crowd. But they were steadily crushed under Masuno's mounting fervor. "We gamble our very lives on this 'daily work' of ours!" "You must all laugh at this face." "But poor wretch that I am—I count myself lucky it stopped at my face!" "For less than two yen a day, we're forced to stake even our lives without hesitation!" "To you can-makers handling tinplate—I know how many here lack fingers! People without fingers!" "And I hear that's why they call this the top canning factory in Japan!" "So when that happens—we can't do anything but obey the company!" "Why?" "Isn't it because we've got no organization fighting solely for us workers?" Masuno pressed on with growing fire.

"What with Kinshibishi this and that, industrial rationalization that and the other—I don’t know any of that troublesome logic. All I know is that more than half of us are about to be laid off—laid off—our wages are being slashed, and we’re being driven harder and harder, they say. The big shots apparently need to make more and more profit.—" He looked around for a cup to drink water. "And……." There was no cup filled with water. He faltered there. When he flushed with excitement, he repeated the same words. Then he lost track of how far he’d gotten in his speech. Countless faces before him piled up, distorted, swayed. They were shouting something. He was at a loss. He bellowed only the final words.

"And so—the factory committee!" "We must take back the committee they've been running however they please and make it ours!" "The first step is electing committee members." "We've all united and earnestly hope you'll fight for this cause.—What the hell did I just say?!" He tacked on words that barely qualified as coherent speech. Hearing this, everyone burst into laughter. "Loud and clear!"

Deliberately, someone clapped.

O-Kimi was following behind Morimoto. She quietly poked him in the back. O-Kimi often had one cheek that would turn bright red when she was excited. “Your ear...” “Wait.” “Hmm.” “You know, we decided to have Yoshi-chan do it.”

“Yoshi-chan?” That “Wandering Orphan”? he thought. When you followed Kawata—who laid everything out bluntly—Yoshi-chan became the “Wandering Orphan.” Her skin looked parched and dull, forever giving her a chilled appearance—a narrow-shouldered woman. Though quiet, she spoke only after careful consideration. Whenever O-Kimi stood beside her, Yoshi-chan’s presence grew meager, as if eclipsed by shadow.

“You know, earnest people can be surprisingly bold when it counts,” she said. “Even if I did it myself, that’d be fine—but you know I’m just the sort of woman who might go and say something like that. So I don’t think it’d move them all that much. But with Yoshi-chan—well! That’s what everyone’s saying—maximum propaganda impact! We’re forcing her up there against her will.” O-Kimi laughed slyly. Her moist red lips hovered right by his ear.

They all waited to see who would come out next. But the people saw something unexpected. The one who emerged from the corner was a "woman"—the crowd abruptly fell silent. And when they realized it was that "Yoshi-chan," the suppressed silence suddenly rebounded. They burst into an uproar. "That woman?!" Yoshi-chan climbed onto the platform with unsteady steps, then turned slightly toward where her fellow female workers were and stood with both hands properly lowered, her head bowed. Her face was deathly pale.

“In front of all these men, huh? With that, she’s quite the streetwise one, huh?” Beside him, a lacquer factory worker was speaking; Morimoto took in the words. Yoshi-chan began to speak without raising her face, remaining exactly as she was. Because they couldn’t hear her, everyone stopped talking. Cupping their hands behind their ears, everyone stretched up on tiptoe. “...Stepping up here required such resolve... I may seem impudent... But I’m desperate... If someone doesn’t take the lead and act boldly, what will become of us...?”

“That meek Yoshi...” With every phrase she spoke, the workers’ remarks cut in. “Hey, how’s that?”

O-Kimi said. “She’s holding up well.” “Ever since I began working alongside everyone here, I’ve changed in ways even I can recognize.” “……We’ve always received… special treatment… from the men… from the company….” Her words faltered intermittently. “For women to stand in a place like this… to speak like this… I believe it’s never happened since this factory began… We want to join together without exception… to support each other moving forward.” “Everyone… please…”

When Yoshi-chan stepped down, a roar erupted alongside applause. That went on and on. Just as O-Kimi had said, it elicited an even greater response from the male workers than anticipated. “After all, it was a bit too heated.”

O-Kimi said. “For Yoshi-chan, it was a triumph.” “But she did well.” “When I listen to that—tears just come like this.” “—Right.”

O-Kimi rubbed her own eyes. “Come on, I should go praise her.” O-Kimi ran toward the female workers. Yoshi-chan was surrounded by everyone. As they watched, she—overcome by the excitement she had been containing—suddenly burst into tears! She burst into tears.

"I can't rest assured," Morimoto thought. As he walked around, he saw that most gathered here were indeed members of the "Company Survival Faction." One of his comrades said to him: "But once they've gathered like this, swept up in a single momentum, it might unexpectedly not amount to much after all." "But we succeeded by grasping those dangerous critical junctures," he reflected. "There's no forcing them further—we'll have to drag them over to our side."

Next, one representative from each workplace ascended the platform. They were all "cells". Each and every one of them hurled fiery words. There, they thoroughly exposed the schemes of those bastards who sought to sell out all workers under the name of "Autumn of Corporate Survival." Then, among the workers, a disturbance like wind through a thicket rippled through. Morimoto jolted. But with each successive, relentless exposé, they were rapidly swept into a new surge of movement.

The lights came on. In the dimness, the factory workers—now a single mass of uniform gray—their rough shoulders leapt sharply upward in an instant. Someone—

“Look—the lights came on!” someone exclaimed.

Those meaningless words, however, suddenly made everyone’s spirits come alive. Now is the time for unity!

Suddenly, four or five people stomped their feet and began to sing. The factory workers who roamed from bar to bar drinking all knew that song at the very least. Now it spilled from their lips without the slightest effort. Because everyone turned to look at them all at once, they grew somewhat self-conscious, and the next song faltered. However, the deep, ragged voices continued. If cowards will leave, then let them leave! Go! Morimoto was the last to ascend the platform. He had no need to say anything. He merely had to explain the contents of the prepared "resolution document" and "list of demands," and obtain everyone's approval. In every minute detail of these preparations lay the groundwork Kawata and the others had laid.

He had not yet finished speaking. A fierce argument broke out on the stairs below.—The workers kicked their stools over all at once. The group—charged with unified momentum—kept pushing through the narrow entrance exactly as they were.

“If any bastard tries to interfere—crush ’em!” At that moment, as if suppressed, the commotion below stopped. And then, one of the lookouts came rushing up in a panic.

“They’re saying Saeki’s crew is coming up!” “And just as they were scuffling, the Managing Director, Factory Manager, and Foremen showed up.” “What do we do?” “Alright!” Morimoto said firmly. “Let’s only bring up the Managing Director and Factory Manager.” “Under no circumstances are we to let the foremen or Saeki’s crew through.” “That’s right.” “No objections!”

Either they would push through all at once or be pushed back—they had reached that point! The Factory Manager led the way as the Managing Director ascended. The Factory Manager pursed his excited lips tightly with force. Yet a gentle smile had surfaced on the Managing Director’s face. He politely greeted the workers and representatives. This was the same benevolent Managing Director they always knew. A portion of the female and male workers finally stirred—Morimoto, deciphering the Managing Director’s hidden agenda, instinctively knew he must strike first. This nascent momentum—the decisive initiative! He believed this single move would determine everything. Letting the Managing Director utter even one word first meant surrendering control of this assembly—

He stood before all the factory workers and clearly recounted the proceedings up to that point, reported that the system of electing Factory Committee members had been resolved with unanimous approval, and submitted both the resolution document and list of demands. At that moment, a coordinated round of applause erupted from the cell’s front ranks. It had been planned. Five hundred pairs of hands clapped, slightly out of sync, following suit. Morimoto felt a surge of anxiety. Yet the applause shook the low-hanging corrugated iron roof and rattled the glass windows, reverberating through the space. The lingering echoes left the Managing Director’s small frame—isolated among them with but one ally—as frail as kindling.

The Managing Director was clearly flustered. The Managing Director, holding the list of demands, stood clutching it as if he had forgotten what to do next, his manner uncertain—in truth, he had entered this cafeteria clinging to one bright expectation. The excessive benevolence he had long bestowed upon the workers as "Y's Ford" could not be so easily undone. He had believed this. Even if those ungrateful agitators had been handled leniently in some small measure, he had been certain that if only he himself appeared there, every last worker would come rushing to his side "in an instant"—or so he had thought. But could it truly have come to such wretchedness⁉ And then—that unified applause! More than anything, the Managing Director found himself crushed by this sense of betrayal toward himself. To make matters worse, he was being assailed from both sides. On one front—his own position! This had thoroughly sapped his resolve. The pathos of "industrial capitalists"—now completely controlled by "financial capitalists" and facing inevitable ruin—gnawed at his very bones. Not only that—it was clear Russia would invade Kamchatka's prime fishing grounds this very year in retaliation over the crab cannery ship fishermen supply dispute.

But the Factory Manager spoke—he had perceived danger. “Since this is an urgent matter and the Managing Director has something he wishes to address with all factory workers... we’ll set that aside for now...”

“Hey!” “Wait a minute!” From behind Morimoto, the lacquer factory cell hurled needle-sharp words. “W-we did this all by ourselves... The meeting...” “That’s right! That’s right!” Excitement clogged their throats before words could form. Then Morimoto seized the initiative. “So... if I may... regarding your arbitrary...” It was his first time speaking to the Managing Director and Factory Manager while standing less than three feet away. He flushed red, growing repeatedly flustered. This was Morimoto—who normally labored like scrap metal in some corner where he couldn’t even properly glimpse the Managing Director’s face. Yet face-to-face, the Managing Director radiated unexpected dignity—though being addressed by such “scrap metal” left the Factory Manager speechless before the workers.

“First—a definite answer!” “You must accept our demands!” “Then!” From among the factory workers filling the cafeteria, someone shouted that. Such a manner of addressing superiors was utterly unprecedented in this factory. When gathered together this way, they unconsciously drew strength from their numbers. And they calmly stated these demands as if they were entirely different people. The Factory Manager and Morimoto simultaneously widened their eyes. Who had shaped the factory workers into this form—and when?

“That’s impossible to settle here and now.” “We require time to deliberate.” The Managing Director spoke for the first time. This diction—like their nappa uniforms—had been H・S’s pride. “Time?” “But this modest resolution can’t be stretched any further.” “But our side...” Morimoto needed to drive the wedge deeper. “In these dire times—when we don’t know what tomorrow brings—we who can barely scrape by each day are cornered into defending this organization with our lives.” “Since this began, worker after worker has mounted this platform swearing they’ll sink their teeth into a full strike if demands go unmet—that we must win them at all costs.” “Of course, we ourselves want no part of strikes...”

“Strike!” “Now!” These words could not fail to strike home with the Managing Director and the Factory Manager. Kamchatka’s order for sixty-six million cans! ——……. The factory workers fell silent. Morimoto had to take another crucial preemptive move. “Of course, regarding Kaneshiba, I imagine you yourself must have various matters you’d like to consult about together as well, but…”

The Managing Director suddenly raised his head. Morimoto couldn’t help but grin! He did so. Yet he pressed his advantage without hesitation. “However, all of that must come after these demands are accepted and the regulations are clearly amended accordingly—only then can we consult each other. If not, we would be utterly pitiable.” ——………………. The Managing Director had until mere moments ago been scheming to exploit this “workers’ assembly” for his own ends. He planned to make all factory workers pass a resolution supporting him and oppose Kaneshiba’s move to install new executives en masse. Each would contribute funds to form a “Tokyo Delegation Committee” of workers and office staff that would visit relevant authorities and campaign—above all, it was convenient that this wasn’t solely his personal problem. As proof, hadn’t even the factory workers themselves reached the point of holding spontaneous assemblies? Thus when foremen reported the workers’ gathering, contrary to their panic, the Managing Director had smirked inwardly. Things don’t go smoothly just because you’re in perfect harmony. . Otherwise, he should have called the police immediately. But he hadn’t done that. Now the Managing Director clearly realized he’d catastrophically miscalculated the workers’ feelings toward him. Moreover—I never imagined they’d come at me like this. There’s someone behind this! But could “Y’s Ford” really be this fragile? Workers are strange creatures.—They’ve outmaneuvered me!

And it was already too late!

“Well... within two or three days...” The Managing Director himself became aware of his own pitiful feebleness. Within two or three days! However, Kaneshiba had no intention of waiting two or three days. ——……. Morimoto was now making the final “checkmate move” that would decide victory or defeat in one fell swoop!

——……. Five hundred workers' ears hung suspended, awaiting the Managing Director's solitary word. Those who supported the Managing Director and those workers who thought they'd stumbled into some absurd gathering—here and now, they'd all become identical. The five hundred laborers breathed as one single organism. ——………………. From the very back came the sharp crack of a shoe heel striking the floor. ——By tomorrow after hours.... A wave-like murmur swelled—or so it felt. The next instant, the cafeteria exploded with a ground-shaking roar as "Banzai!" burst forth from within.

He merely filled his eyes with tears, clasped his hands tightly to his chest, and thought he caught a fleeting glimpse of O-Kimi staring his way over the shoulders of others...

21

How anxiously Kawata must be waiting. Up in that "second floor," Kawata must have been pacing restlessly as he waited. But Morimoto couldn’t figure out how to begin explaining today’s magnificent outcome—where to start, what words to use. O-Kimi felt the same way. The two had to report the situation to Kawata, decide on countermeasures based on the Managing Director’s response, return immediately, and attend the cell meeting at a comrade’s house. Before going up to the "second floor," they were required to pass by the house twice beforehand to check the surroundings.—Walking along the dark opposite side of the street, they looked up at the second floor. The light was on. There was no sign of anyone. In the Western goods store below, the familiar shopkeeper sat at the counter watching the front.—Suddenly seeming to notice them, her face moved slightly.

Then, the shopkeeper waved her hand as if swatting away smoke before her eyes. That seemed to be a signal meaning “No good, no good.” Something’s wrong. Because they couldn’t stop, they simply passed by. They went a little way, then returned to the same spot. They had to be cautious of their surroundings. “Hey, O-Kimi, pretend to be a customer and go buy some toilet paper or something.”

“Right.” “Something’s wrong.” “There’s no way they should’ve found out about that place.” O-Kimi hurried into the brightly lit Western goods store. Morimoto waited by a vacant lot’s wall some distance away. After a moment, he saw O-Kimi emerge from the store. “What happened?” “It’s bad.” O-Kimi gasped for breath. “The shopkeeper couldn’t speak properly—they must have someone planted inside.” “When she gave me change, she pushed me like she meant ‘Get out fast! Get out fast!’—”

A violent chill ran down his spine. Had it been brighter, O-Kimi might have seen his face turn ashen, like pallid earth. That was unlike him—the him who had cornered the Managing Director.

——Hmm, I wonder what it is. Could it be about the strike? His tongue thickened against his will.

No matter what—this area's dangerous. They avoided the bright main street. They stopped by briefly at a comrade's house where a meeting was being held. Thinking it would cause worry, they didn't mention that matter. Two or three people had gathered. Everyone was excited, making a lively racket.—He grew concerned about his own home. And his throat went dry at once. He got up to go to the kitchen twice to drink water. He decided to step out and come back later, so he went outside. "You look pale." "This is a crucial time—be careful."

The comrade said offhandedly. O-Kimi was with him too. He walked on without saying a word, utterly unlike his usual self. “Mr. Suzuki’s such a weird person.” O-Kimi seemed to have been thinking about something and suddenly said this. Moreover, she seemed unable to bear walking in silence any longer.

"That person says such strange things," she said. "...You even made Kawata kiss you, so why not me too! He was drunk, glaring like that." "After that, I really came to hate him." "He must have misunderstood something." "People say I'm easy to misinterpret, but... Ever since I started this work, I've completely quit all those useless things I used to do." "What's strange is I've lost all interest in it anyway." "And you know Yoshi-chan's been pining after Mr. Kawata." "That person still hasn't told him, it seems..."

He gasped! He froze. He grew so flustered that even he found it strange. But was it really true? Now that he thought about it, Kawata had once mentioned a pitiful woman living in utter poverty—that she was his only woman. "Not just Suzuki... Men are all..." O-Kimi said this and—true to habit—gave a mischievous snicker. "But even so... you're... a bit different."

That was because— Morimoto let his words slip from some strange impulse he himself didn’t understand. But somehow, if he didn’t say it now, he felt that would be the end of it. He spoke in a terribly serious low voice.

“That’s because… I truly… love you!” “Well, that’s ridiculous! What are you even saying, you fool?!”—Her bright, unguarded laughter—the kind that could scatter his own cloying words to the winds—Morimoto blurted it out and instantly realized this, flushing crimson. But O-Kimi fell completely silent. The two walked on without another word, steeped in jarring discomfort.

When they reached the bridge, he became aware. He had O-Kimi walk slightly ahead while he checked every pocket of his clothes. From his inner pocket emerged a thin pamphlet folded in four, its creases worn ragged. It was something he had received from Kawata that needed burning. He tore it thoroughly into tiny pieces and cast them into the river. On the surface of the dark, stagnant water, the paper fragments floated starkly white before fluttering downward. After waiting intervals, he disposed of them in separate batches. As he did this, he sensed himself growing calmer.

O-Kimi was waiting for him, her body leaning against the thick show window glass. He still said nothing.

When they came to where they would part ways and stopped, Morimoto took the woman's hand for the first time and said:

“Cheer up—let’s give it one more push!” “Y’s Ford can come to a complete halt through our power!” O-Kimi kept her head down, avoiding his gaze—but squeezed his hand in return. Morimoto gasped when he opened his house door! He froze. Though he hadn’t actually seen anything, it was that peculiar intuition they alone possessed—flashing through them like lightning in such moments. The shoji rattled open. Two unfamiliar men in suits stood rigidly before him. We’ve failed, he thought. It was his first time experiencing this—yet when it came to pass, he found himself strangely composed.

“Who are you?” “Hmph.” The faces of the men in suits twisted sarcastically. “We’re from headquarters.” He silently climbed upstairs. His father hadn’t returned yet—wasn’t home. “Well now, you!” Mother sat frozen, her face drained of color. During their wait, she must have served tea to these suits—a tray of Nanbu senbei rice crackers and two teacups lay arranged. Seeing this, his chest constricted. He turned to his mother, who couldn’t voice what came next—

“It’s nothing. I’ll be back soon,” he said. He had every last pocket searched by the two men in suits. The interior of the house lay completely scattered after the “House Search”.

While tying his shoelaces in the earthen-floored entryway, the stocky man said, “Never thought we’d find someone connected in a dump like this.” He detected an unusual implication in those words. He had been abiding by what Kawata had told him. Up until now, they should never have known his face. Had Kawata said something? That was absolutely impossible. Then— He thought something had happened.

Mother remained seated. He felt that if he were to say anything, that alone would make him break down in tears.

"I'll be back." He was then taken away.

22

The foul detention cell kept Morimoto awake. It was a solitary cell. He sat with his back pressed against the wooden wall in the stagnant air.—Thoughts kept flitting through his head, one after another. Yet strangely, fear did not come. Only his head was growing sharper by the moment.

Dawn was approaching. Yet it still hadn't dawned. In fits and starts, even so, he thought he had dreamed of O-Kimi. He was cold. He tucked his chin into his chest and curved his back. Tap, tap... tap, tap, tap.... His sharpened ear caught the sound of indeterminate origin. The moment he strained his ears, it ceased. He held his breath. His ear was ringing. Everything had frozen solid.

Tap, tap, tap... tap... tap... He pressed his ear against the wooden wall. And then—it was coming from next door. But he couldn't tell what the sound was. He reflexively checked toward the front. Then, quietly pressing his fist against it, he tapped back three times from his side—low and deliberate. The sound from beyond ceased. But had it been wise to do such a thing? Morimoto suddenly stiffened. For a while, both parties remained silent.

Tap, tap, tap....

Again, the other side began tapping. But this time, the spot being tapped was different. He moved toward that spot. Then, from there, a small beam of light was leaking out. As is common in any detention cell, it seemed several previous occupants had gradually worked it open, leaving only that spot where the plank had worn small and thin, forming a hole.—Fortunately, it was positioned toward the back, away from view. Summoning his resolve, he tried tapping the same spot—tap, tap, tap.

A low voice leaked out from there!

He gingerly shifted his body and pressed his ear exactly against the hole. —Da... It wasn’t clear. He readjusted his ear again and again. ——Who...? “Who is it?”—But who, exactly, was the one asking that very question. He moved his mouth to the hole. “Who is it?” he asked. And then immediately pressed his ear against it. The other party seemed to have fallen silent, but then spoke up in a slightly louder voice: —Who?

he repeated.

Ah! That voice—wasn't it Kawata's? His blood suddenly began to race. After checking toward the front, he pressed his mouth against it. “Kawata?” The other man had clearly been startled. “Who?” “Mori!” “Mori?” The other man had realized too. He focused all his nerves on his ear. “Gen...” “Gen...?” “Genki ka...” “Oh—you okay?” “I’m okay.”

……. He couldn't make out what had been said. "I can't hear—louder!" "Ko...ba...."

—Factory... Hm. —You okay? Mm, worked out. —After that... What next? —You holding up? I'm fine. —He...

―Huh? ―Don't let them break you. ―Hn! ―When... ―When? ―No—any time.

“Anytime.” “Stay strong…” “Got it!” Even through this constrained exchange, he could sense Kawata’s familiar presence. His chest grew hot. He gulped audibly. —Someone… —Mm. —A comrade…. —Hm? Up to ‘naka’? He pressed his ear against it with all his might. —No—comrade. Ah—a comrade.

—U...ra.... —U...ra....

Kawata's words weren't clear. But he—Ah! he thought.

Did he betray us? He involuntarily raised his voice.

—Nn. —Is it true? It's true. His palm—clenched without his realizing—was slick with sweat.

He understood… Mm, he got it.

It can’t be… Hm? Hm? He understood even what shouldn’t be… He should understand… Hn. Everyone… Everyone… He understood. —…! —The incident… —The incident? Mm. —The Incident… —Mm, I got it. —The Communist Party! —After all! So it was true after all, he thought. He felt a “chest-tightness” as if his torso had been bound. —Until… —Hm?

—Until the end... —Mm.

“Hang in there.” I got it! That... At that moment, he was startled and jerked upright because he thought he’d heard footsteps approaching down the corridor. And it was indeed footsteps. —Something had apparently erupted in a sudden commotion at the far end.

Suzuki, who had been formally detained under procedural pretexts and given privileged treatment within the detention cells, was found at dawn by a jailer police officer to have hanged himself.

＊　　　　　　　　＊

The next day, the workers at "H・S Factory" achieved self-governance of the "Factory Committee" as they had anticipated. Even if it contained whatever second scheme the managing director had in store. However, they had to fortify their "footing" to withstand the genuine struggle that would truly come next. Morimoto’s legacy remained— O-Kimi realized that the handshake which had first connected them was meant for parting. Thinking about that made her heart ache. However, until he returned, O-Kimi knew the work they had to prepare.

O-Kimi discussed the matter with Yoshi-chan on her way home from the factory.—Yoshi-chan quietly wiped her eyes. “Don’t cry!” “Don’t cry!”

O-Kimi placed her hand on her thin shoulder. Yoshi-chan was thinking about Kawata.

Spring was near. Gritty snow made a sifting, sifting sound underfoot. (February 24, 1930)