ssijoko

cryptídea


23, Letras PT-JP, trans bi gal who's also a war vessel piloted by small animals, gay as hell

PT-BR/ENG
discord: ssijoko#0170
birdsite/tumblr: @ssijoko (bird site's mostly in portuguese tho)


ssijoko
@ssijoko

shoutouts to kanikosen, very very good boookkkk

should i write a whole post about it yes or no....


ssijoko
@ssijoko

(the answer is yes let's go for it) (somewhat spoilery)

kanikosen (the crab cannery ship, 1929, japanese proletarian literature novel, also had manga and movie adaptations) is REALLY good, it showcases the working conditions of the factory-boats at the time (which, due to not being covered neither by the navy's laws nor by the laws covering industry, is able to essentially be a sweatshop with dreadful working conditions, on of many examples of worker exploitation in Japan at the time) and how it's workers eventually organize, strike, and take over the ship

and obviously there's a lot that could be talked about it (and tbf a bunch of it is connected, hell given how it's proletarian literature it's impossible to detach it from marxism and the many proletarian movements of the 1920's in japan [and just the general historical context of the time in Japan, in which the book by itself does a ok job at showing, but i still recommend giving a light check on that], followed by it being radically snuffed out on the tail end of the 1920's and the 30's), but the part i wanna focus on is **how there are very few individual characters, and even less ones that are actually named, and how the rest of the cast is essentially composed of different groups of people that get their characterization by one-off individualizations, that often is just temporary and meant to showcase a aspect of the whole situation, as the worker's wellbeing gets worse and worse

out of the individual characters, only two are given names (the foreman Asakawa, constantly shown as cruel and brutal and the most antagonistic (individual) character, and Yamada, who is only given a name when he dies), while the rest are referred to by either their occupation (like the ship's capitan, the place where they came from (such as Shibaura, who is first introduced as the fisherman from Shibaura), or any otherwise notable quality (like the stutterer fisherman). in fact, many of them were first a part of another mass (like shibaura or the stutterer being a part of the fishermans before being slowly individualized, or the ex-student who started organizing the workers who was at first just a part of the ex-students who worked at the ship).

which is particularly good at putting forward the themes of the book: as the book goes on, the characterized masses, in what the book describes as ironic since by the design those ships hire the most desperate and marginalized people that will accept it in order to escape whatever dreadful situation they're on (like being exiled from their rural hometown and forced into the city, with people as young as 14 being sent to work there), eventually realize more and more the full extent of the situation they're in, and organize and fuse together into a single mass, as they organize themselves and set the next course of their actions. that aspect, which ties in very well with the ending, showing that the greatest victory the proletariat can achieve in it's one-off efforts is to further organize itself and escape their alienating, slow deaths under the crab cannery ship

(spoilers for the ending ahead

even when marked by a swift defeat, as the first strike fails when the japanese navy intervenes and quickly takes away it's most influential members, despite the strike being able to overpower the foreman and the company representative, and the fishermen realize that they only really have each other as allies in that and showing that even the main, actual antagonists get collectivized and the foreman Asakawa is just shown to be a cog in the machine (and a replaceable one, since in the afterword he gets completely abandoned by the company), the book itself ends on a very hopeful note as the remaining workers figure out their next course of action, with confidence that second time's gonna be the charm. and it was, but their victory is referenced in the afterword, as if it's just a side thing and the real victory was the rest of the workers deciding their next course of action, marking that they understand, find comfort in, and genuinely believe that their combined strength is going to be enough to take destiny by it's hands. in other words, by the growing and maintained organization of the working class victory shows itself as not only possible, but inevitable! a notion that comes straight from the communist manifesto too!

(end of spoiler)

and yeah, in a time where neoliberalism tries to atomize and alienate people more and more and with the system making us feel that it's easier for the world to end than for capitalism to end (shoutouts to mark fisher), kanikosen became an extremely fresh read. after all, as much as it is fiction, it is really cathartic to see things not only actually working out, but also idea that if we just keep at it, things will work out

so yea good book read it (content warning though) and kiss me about it. or hug or whatever else you'd like to do :3

(and since i'm talking about things!! take some time to look at the situation of the japanese major at USP (in Brazil) that, alongside many other literature majors, sufferers from severe understaffing and is at the most immediate risk of not being able to conduct it's classes at night, being the only major in it's department that has remotely any capacity to even have classes at night to begin with)


ssijoko
@ssijoko

i suppose i'll lighten the tone a bit too and say that uhhhhh she manifests on my ism till i commune


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