Umi ni Ikuru Hitobito

Umi ni Ikuru Hitobito (海に生くる人々, "Those Who Live on the Sea") is a 1926 novel by Japanese author Yoshiki Hayama.

Overview

Umi ni Ikuru Hitobito, whose name translates to "Those Who Live on the Sea",[1] was written by Yoshiki Hayama[2] and published in 1926.[3]

Background

Hayama had spent a year in Waseda University where he picked up a few intellectual habits,[3] but after leaving the university he worked on a ship carrying coal from Hokkaidō and Yokohama.[3]

The novel recounts his experiences aboard this ship, divided between several characters:[3] Fujiwara is the leader of a group of crew members on the Manju-maru who are on strike, representing Hayama's interest in Marxism;[3] Hata is a hot-tempered seaman on a quest for justice, representing Hayama's youthful ardour;[3] and Yasui, a man who injures his leg and is denied medical attention, mirroring an experience Hayama himself had.[3] Hayama wrote the novel while in a Nagoya prison for union activity in 1924.[3]

Plot

The story takes place in 1914, when the outbreak of war in Europe brings great wealth to Japan.[3] The crew of the ship Manju-maru, however, suffer under a brutal and despotic captain and his officers as the ship journeys south from the port of Muroran.[3] The captain is indifferent to the suffering of both his own men and those on a sinking ship nearby, and cares only for his own pleasures be they at home or at a hot spring in Muroran with a female companion.[3] He treats any resistance on the part of those under his command as insubordination or laziness.[3]

The book describes the various hobbies of the sailors, some caring for nothing but women and others obsessed with confectioneries.[3] One of the sailors, Fujiwara, dreams of liberating the proletariat,[3] and while class-consciousness is on full display in the novel parts of Fujiwara's socialism are anachronistic for the setting.[lower-alpha 1]

At the climax of the novel the sailors go on strike and demand an improvement to their working conditions, demands to which the captain accedes for selfish reasons.[5] When the ship arrives in Yokohama, though, harbour police arrest Fujiwara and Hata, and four other ringleaders are expelled from the ship.[5] The last line reads: "They waited for their punishment to be decided."[5]

Reception

Literary historian and critic Donald Keene called the work Hayama's "major contribution to the proletarian literature movement".[2] While noting that the work has been praised as "epochmaking"[5] and as a cornerstone of not only the proletarian literature movement but of all of Taishō literature,[5] Keene himself dismisses it as "a conspicuously bad book" when "[j]udged by normal standards of plot, characterization, style, and so on."[5]

Notes
    1. Examples include his recognizing a Japanese translation of Das Kapital, which did not appear in Japanese until 1920,[4] and his understanding of the labour movement reflecting a post-October Revolution influence.[5]

    References
    1. Keene 1998, pp. 599–600.
    2. Keene 1998, p. 599.
    3. Keene 1998, p. 600.
    4. Keene 1998, pp. 600–601.
    5. Keene 1998, p. 601.

    Works cited
    • Keene, Donald (1998) [1984]. A History of Japanese Literature, Vol. 3: Dawn to the West – Japanese Literature of the Modern Era (Fiction) (paperback ed.). New York, NY: Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-11435-6.
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