The Cannery Boat By Takiji Kobayashi And Other Japanese Short Stories By T Kobayashi And Others

This collection introduces the work of Japan’s foremost Marxist writer, Kobayashi Takiji (1903–1933), to an English-speaking audience, providing access to a vibrant, dramatic, politically engaged side of Japanese literature that is seldom seen outside Japan. The volume presents a new translation of Takiji’s fiercely anticapitalist Kani kōsen—a classic that became a runaway bestseller in Japan in 2008, nearly eight decades after its 1929 publication. It also offers the first-ever translations of Yasuko and Life of a Party Member, two outstanding works that unforgettably explore both the costs and fulfillments of revolutionary activism for men and women. The book features a comprehensive introduction by Komori Yōichi, a prominent Takiji scholar and professor of Japanese literature at Tokyo University.

From Wikipedia: Kanikosen is a novel by Takiji Kobayashi, written in 1929. Written from a communist point of view, it concerns the crew of a crab fishing ship's hardships as they struggle under capitalist exploitation. The book has been made into a film and as manga.

Provides an invaluable and very accessible addition to existing biographic sources and references, not least because of the supporting biographies of major writers and the historical and cultural notes provided.

Japanese people have lived on the country's other three main islands--Honshu, Kyushu, and Shikoku--for many centuries, but ethnic Japanese, or Wajin, began coming to Hokkaido in large numbers only in the latter half of the nineteenth century. This book tells the story of Japan's aboriginal people, the Ainu, followed by that of foreign explorers and ethnic Japanese pioneers. The book pays close attention to the Japanese-Russian conflicts over the island, including Cold War confrontations and more recent clashes over fishing rights and the Hokkaido-administered islands seized by the U.S.S.R. in 1945.