''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 was a Japanese author associated with the Japanese proletarian literature Proletarian literature refers here to the literature created by left-wing writers mainly for the class-consciousness, class-conscious proletariat. Though the ''Encyclopæ ...

Overview

''Umi ni Ikuru Hitobito'', whose name translates to "Those Who Live on the Sea", was written by

and published in 1926.

Background

Hayama had spent a year in

Waseda University , mottoeng = Independence of scholarship , established = 21 October 1882 , type = Private , endowment = , president = Aiji Tanaka , city = Shinjuku , state = Tokyo , country = Japan , students = 47,959 , undergrad = 39,382 , postgrad ...

where he picked up a few intellectual habits, but after leaving the university he worked on a ship carrying coal from Hokkaidō and

Yokohama is the second-largest city in Japan by population and the most populous municipality of Japan. It is the capital city and the most populous city in Kanagawa Prefecture, with a 2020 population of 3.8 million. It lies on Tokyo Bay, south of T ...

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

Nagoya is the largest city in the Chūbu region, the fourth-most populous city and third most populous urban area in Japan, with a population of 2.3million in 2020. Located on the Pacific coast in central Honshu, it is the capital and the most po ...

prison for union activity in 1924.

Plot

The story takes place in 1914, when the outbreak of war in Europe brings great wealth to Japan. 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 is a city and port located in Iburi Subprefecture, Hokkaido, Japan. It is the capital city of Iburi Subprefecture. As of February 29, 2012, the city has an estimated population of 93,716, with 47,868 households and a population density of . The ...

. 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 A hot spring, hydrothermal spring, or geothermal spring is a spring produced by the emergence of geothermally heated groundwater onto the surface of the Earth. The groundwater is heated either by shallow bodies of magma (molten rock) or by c ...

in Muroran with a female companion. He treats any resistance on the part of those under his command as insubordination or laziness. The book describes the various hobbies of the sailors, some caring for nothing but women and others obsessed with confectioneries. One of the sailors, Fujiwara, dreams of liberating the proletariat, and while class-consciousness is on full display in the novel parts of Fujiwara's socialism are anachronistic for the setting. 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. When the ship arrives in Yokohama, though, harbour police arrest Fujiwara and Hata, and four other ringleaders are expelled from the ship. The last line reads: "They waited for their punishment to be decided."

Reception

Literary historian and critic

Donald Keene Donald Lawrence Keene (June 18, 1922 – February 24, 2019) was an American-born Japanese scholar, historian, teacher, writer and translator of Japanese literature. Keene was University Professor emeritus and Shincho Professor Emeritus of Japane ...

called the work Hayama's "major contribution to the proletarian literature movement". While noting that the work has been praised as "epochmaking" and as a cornerstone of not only the

proletarian literature Proletarian literature refers here to the literature created by left-wing writers mainly for the class-consciousness, class-conscious proletariat. Though the ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' states that because it "is essentially an intended device of ...

movement but of all of Taishō literature, Keene himself dismisses it as "a conspicuously bad book" when " dged by normal standards of plot, characterization, style, and so on."

Notes

References

Works cited

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Umi ni ikuru hitobito 1926 novels Proletarian literature Taishō-period works