The Cannery Boat/The Factory in the Sea
The Factory in the Sea
by
Denji Kuroshima
The Factory in the Sea
I
At high tide the factory floated into the sea.
The tall chimneys, with their three-pronged lightning rods, were reflected upside down in the water, where they wriggled and twisted with the undulating of the waves.
This factory, built on reclaimed land, was surrounded on three sides by a concrete wall that gave it the appearance of a prison. Solid and gloomy it towered, but its twin brother below was broken up by the ripples, like a fat man’s reflection in a cracked mirror.
When the gates were shut all communication with the village was cut off. Another world arose, a world completely cut off from demonstrations, from leaflets, from the groans of starving men. Provisions, raw materials, men—a launch brought all these from the mainland.
Here the bosses prided themselves on being out of reach of the unions’ clutches.
Through the thin, damp morning mist came the loud thudding sound of a launch as it approached the pier. From the strikers’ headquarters on the mainland, Handa, who had been awakened by a gnawing emptiness in his stomach, watched the boat. The deck was thick with workers, like clustering ants. They seemed so close you could almost reach them with your hand. These were scabs who went back and forth to Factory No. 11—the factory that floated in the sea.
Handa’s stomach ached from hunger and there was a bitter taste in his mouth. A stuffy odour of grimy humans and of soy filled the room. It was crowded with strikers who had come in worn out from picketing. They were huddled together and were sleeping soundly under dirty blankets. Handa sidled over to the bin which held the rice balls.
“The fellows who came in last night from picketing ate them all,” said Oki, sensing Handa’s intentions, and without turning round he scratched away pleasantly at his flea-bites.
“Did they? I wonder if there’s any tea?”
“I think there is.”
Handa picked up an enamel tea-pot and raised the spout to his lips. The taste was more like rust than tea. His finger on the lid, he swallowed it down until the pot was drained.
As soon as the strike had been declared, twelve out of a total of thirteen factories came completely to a standstill. Only in No. 11, the largest and most up-to-date, did work continue. At first its employees had walked to work, but Handa and his men would waylay them and drag them into the ranks of the strikers. Those who refused they would beat up and then drive away. The company then started bringing blacklegs by boat from the neighbouring village to the factory pier, sending them back the same way in the evening. A gang of thugs was always in readiness on the wharf. The scabs were farmers and fishermen. When these were taken on temporarily, during the slack season on the farms, they were called unskilled and received only 60 per cent. or 70 per cent. of the full wage. Now they got 20 per cent. or 25 per cent. over the regular wages.
When the boat drew alongside the pier, the human ants crawled down the gangway. They were so placed as to make them look as numerous as possible. But the strikers were up to such tricks.
“What of it? They haven’t got eighty real workers,” they sneered. When counted from the distance, one by one, the men who looked really capable of working amounted to only sixty-five.
“D’ye think they’ve got eighty? With a handful like that it’ll take them all their time to mix the pulp.”
“You’ve said it.”
But as the strikers weakened under the strain the number of workers began to increase. Eighty became 100; 100 became 120.
The farmers made not the least response to the strikers’ leaflets and house-to-house canvassing. The leaflets they used as toilet-paper. These farmers, who, working on their farms from morning till night, just managing to pay their rent and buy manure, had never known what it was to hold ready cash in their hands and felt unbounded gratitude for this work in the soy factory where they could make more than two yen a day.
“I don’t suppose there’s any chance of calling up spirits by daylight,” said Oki, still scratching away at his flea-bitten hands and legs and back.
“Hardly!”
“By the look of things now, unless we get a ghost to appear, we haven’t much chance of winning.”
“Who’s that?” Machida, who had come from Tokyo to help them, turned suddenly round. “Who’s talking about spooks?”
Oki drew in his neck comically.
“Hell, were you listening in? I wouldn’t have said it if I’d known.” He grinned at Handa.
The company, hoping to crush the union, had planned and constructed Factory No. 11 on a grand scale. Even if all its other factories were to be razed to the ground, they need not turn a hair so long as No. 11 was immune. All the workers employed were steady farmers’ sons who had been testified by their headmaster as “free from dangerous thoughts.”
While the foundation stone of the factory was being laid, a Korean named Chiun had been buried alive there. He was a young fellow, with the unmistakable eyebrows and nose of a Korean, but he spoke Japanese without an accent. Now he was petrified in the concrete. He had slipped and fallen into the sticky mass flowing down the chute; as he sank he trod with his feet and waved his arms in the air as if swimming, but his limbs only sank deeper and deeper in the concrete, which was as treacherous as a bog. The contractor had been a party to graft as regards the proportion of cement, so that once you slipped in you went down and down into a bottomless quicksand.
Within the space of raising his legs two or three times, he sank from his waist up to his chest. Had anyone attempted to rescue him he, too, would have been drowned. Chiun, with his mouth wide open, showing all his yellowed teeth, was crying out in Korean. He was like one of those retainers in ancient times who were buried alive with their dead lord. He pawed and kicked with his hands and legs frantically, but even when he exerted all his strength he could scarcely raise himself an inch.
The bystanders shared all his sensations. They felt as though their own limbs were stiffening so that they could not move them.
The head kept frantically bobbing up and down, only to sink deeper after each exertion, until at last it was swallowed up completely. It all took less then two minutes. The onlookers pictured him still struggling.
It was near this spot that Factory No. 11 had been built.
Every night, about 2 o’clock, Chiun’s groaning would echo through the concrete with blood-curdling reverberations. That was why no one would sleep in the dormitory of No. 11. Anyone who slept there would be seized by the ghost, and his limbs become paralysed, it was said. About a year later, priests and sacred dancing-girls were called to offer up prayers. The ghost, however, was not quietened by invocations. By night it would appear and seize workers from out of the factory. This was what Oki had in mind when he asked whether spirits could be called up by daylight.
No, this was not a feasable proposal. Ghosts have no say in the class battles. Machida knew they must win by their own strength. He was dead against salvation from above, whether from arbitration or from ghosts. But Oki, Handa and the others were no use at any other job but soy brewing; they hoped to see the strike settled as soon as possible; that would be better than to see their union completely crushed. But they were afraid of being talked down, so these thoughts were not expressed.
From one end of the village to the other stood the soy factory buildings with their sooty roofs, like rows of black boxes. The chimneys were no longer belching smoke. The bean pulp which had not been stirred for over a month bubbled and fermented.
Gohei’s house was sandwiched in between two factory buildings. There the strikers cooked their rice. His stove was too small, so in front of his thatched cottage they hollowed a sort of fireplace in the ground, and placing two pots on it side by side they boiled the rice in the open air. Every day thirteen sacks of rice were emptied, but that only meant two balls of rice for each of them.
Those who were too hungry to wait for their portions, which would be brought round by special “waiters,” came over to the cook-house. There they filled their bellies by eating burnt rice mixed with hot water. Old men with towels tied round their heads, young men and boys who acted as messengers, gulped down this strange beverage. They considered it a stroke of good luck when they got an extra rice ball; it gave them a pleasant glow of satisfaction.
Handa was one of the hungry fellows, and went over to the fire, followed by Machida. Women and girls, dragging hungry-looking children, came over to help. One measured out the rice in a bowl and handed it to the next one, who sprinkled it with salt and then squeezed it tightly into a ball. Alongside stood the children, fingers in their mouths and cheeks all smudgy, looking on longingly. The whole scene was strange to Machida.
Gohei was gathering wood and dried leaves for the fire. He chopped up bits of the factory fence which had fallen down. Anything belonging to Uematsu that could be laid hands on, ought to be taken and used; such were Gohei’s sentiments, and Machida seconded them. Uematsu was the owner of this Uemaru Soy Company.
“Those palings that are still standing, knock them down and use them too,” said Machida.
Machida liked the way these soy workers managed to live in such surroundings, quite insensitive to all the filth and stench; their perseverance and economizing interested him. He hadn’t experienced such things before. He strove to become one of them. It was really fine to live with these workers, in dirty ragged clothes, regardless of filth and the bad food.
Gohei, who had been brought up and almost pickled in soy from childhood, was rather distant towards Machida.
“That girl with the ‘Uemaru’ towel on her head, whose daughter is she?”
“What?”
Gohei left off his chopping and straightened himself to take a look at the girl. She was helping to make the rice balls. Then, without bothering to answer, he relapsed into a disgruntled silence.
Machida went over to Handa, who was standing near the step, eating. As the girl was sitting quite near, he put his mouth up to Handa’s ear.
“Who is she?”
“Her, don’t you know her? She’s the daughter of Niemon, the cooper.”
“She looks fine, doesn’t she?”
The girl seemed to know that they were talking about her; you could tell it by the way she deliberately refrained from looking in their direction. Machida kept on staring at her, until Handa poked him on the elbow.
The girl was not so very beautiful; her features were regular and her nose was good, but she was under-nourished. It was as if the odour of her father’s barrels had been communicated to her, too. This girl had left her own home and was staying at Gohei’s.
When they first went on strike, in order to rally their spirits, they had all formed up in columns and marched out of the factory. Now, whenever they looked up at the smokeless chimneys they felt their power. If we don’t work, not a puff of smoke comes out, not a barrel can be moved—this they understood and their blood danced and pulsed in their veins. But at home, wives were trying to make them scab. The women worried over the approach of starvation; they worried over the grizzling of hungry children, and not only that, they worried over there being no money for paint and powder.
As often happens in times of strikes, the newspapers reported pathetic cases of men fighting on at the cost of parting with their wives. But these men couldn’t turn out their wives and children, even when the latter did urge them to be scabs. From the age of fifteen or sixteen they longed to possess a wife, but, not earning enough to keep one, and being only soy workers, they had had to abstain for long years. The wife they had at last got, after ten or fifteen years of hardship, saving up little by little! And as for the children, who was going to bring them up if the bread-winner deserted them? Whichever way they turned there was no hope, but in Niemon’s case his wife was the least of his troubles. He had, in addition, an old father and mother and he had no way of getting rid of them. They were against the strike. The old mother in a shrill, piercing voice cursed as sons of bitches the leaders who had begun the strike. Was her son going to kill the parent who had given him birth, and brought him up, she raged. Niemon was at a loss to answer. The one who had silenced his mother and stopped her from uttering one word more of complaint was that girl.
“She’s pretty smart,” said Machida approvingly later, when he heard of this. “Her face is that meek and mild, but she must be pretty strong.”
“She can make a speech, too—not too bad.”
“Can she? I’ve fallen for her at the first glance.”
“What’s so pretty about her?”
“What? Why everything about her’s pretty. I like such a worker’s daughter.”
Handa knew full well that strikes—most strikes—act as matchmakers for girls and fellows. But this girl was already keen on a fellow called Yamaguchi. He knew that too, but he didn’t tell it to Machida; you never knew what trouble love might cause.
II
At night the launch, after taking the scabs home, came back again to the factory pier. There it lay dreamily at anchor.
At headquarters, under the dim electric light, Himuro, one of the committee, was planning an attack with the others. Instead of petitioning Chiun’s ghost to carry off the scabs it would be a quicker and surer method to sink the boat. Even Himuro, who prided himself on being moderate, seemed to realize that something had to be done.
It was decided to ask for volunteers.
The job didn’t involve much danger; therefore every hand went up.
It was a dark clear night with stars shining brightly. The voice of autumn whispered in the breeze from the oak-clad hills at the back of the village. Handa put on some old clothes and brought with him his chisel, hammer and screw driver.
“All ready?”
“Yes.”
Just when they had taken the oar and were pushing their little boat off from the shore, Machida came rushing along, stumbling over the stony wharf.
“You can’t row, can you?” called out Yamaguchi, who had until recently been a sailor.
“Row? Of course I can.”
“If we have too many, they’ll only get in the way. … the boat’ll capsize.”
Machida appeared not to hear, and, jumping in at the stern, made the whole boat rock.
“Look there! Damn you!”
Only the waves lapped the side of the boat; not a single fish was heard leaping in the water. The launch, with her lights extinguished, lay alongside the pier looking like a whale as she showed faintly through the darkness. The row locks were dry and creaked, but when water was poured on them the noise stopped. Their boat drew near the launch.
Machida’s heart was beating with excitement. To tell the truth, he could not row. This was the first time in his fife he’d tried rowing and he exerted himself to save his face.
“If the thugs appear I’ll try some ju-jutsu on them and chuck them into the sea.”
“Don’t speak so loud!” grumbled Yamaguchi.
The sound of a motor truck on the shore came through the chilly air. Every light in the village was out, and from the water they couldn’t see a thing. The truck had come under cover of darkness to carry off the pickets.
“They’re after another of our men,” whispered Handa as he rowed. “They’ll drag him off and lock him up in the factory.”
If five or six pickets were together the truck would drive past; but when one was seen by himself, suddenly it would pull up and from the top down would spring two or three thugs. Then they’d grab the picket roughly by the wrists and drag him up into the truck; it didn’t trouble them how his shins got barked on the steel fastenings on the side. Their attitude was: if you don’t come we’ll kill you.
From beyond a row of houses came a scream. It seemed to shout, “They’ve got me.”
“They’re at it again.”
“That’s what happens when we stay on the defensive, nice and quiet and gentle; the more we’re like that, the more they attack us,” they murmured as they rocked in the boat. Machida’s shoulders and arms trembled from cold and excitement.
“Turn her, turn her,” whispered one man who was standing in the bow.
The boat was just about to bang into the side of the launch. Handa reversed the oar. The boat wheeled round to the left and grazed the launch, coming just below where the cargo was unloaded.
The ship’s hands seemed to be asleep. Sheltered by the high factory buildings, the wind did not reach the pier. Yamaguchi stretched up and, grasping the launch’s iron railing, lightly, like a gymnast, vaulted on to the deck. He turned to the boat and gave some signal. Machida could not make out what it meant; he felt something like antagonism arising in himself, but the others had all given nods of approval.
Handa promptly took the chisel and hammer to make a hole in the side of the ship. He drove the chisel in on the red paint, about five inches under the water.
The noise of the chisel echoed through the whole big craft. Handa gtipped the side of the launch with one hand, and with the other gave great swinging blows with the hammer.
Over the night sea, where all other sounds had died, the clang of the hammer echoed far. It seemed to penetrate far beyond the shore, into the very heart of the village. Machida awaited eagerly the appearance of the gang of thugs; if they showed up, everyone would see his strength! Again and again Handa struck the chisel, but before he could make the hole big enough, Yamaguchi, who had gone aboard to take out the sparking plug, ran stamping over the deck.
“All right! Run for it!”
One of the crew had woken up and, grabbing an axe, rushed out.
Yamaguchi had passed through the engine-room into the sleeping stern to see how things were there. The lamp was out and it was pitch dark, but judging by their breathing the crew were pretty sound asleep. Yamaguchi had formerly worked on a cargo boat, and hence knew the ins and outs of the vessel. He groped around in the darkness and approached the engine stealthily. The hammering outside was audible in the engine-room. … Why weren’t they more quiet? … His irritation was stronger than his fear. He himself strove to make as little noise as possible, as, deliberately, he put all his strength into the screwdriver. In the cabin the even breathing stopped and there was a sound of coughing.
He dashed out on deck, but it wasn’t possible to jump into the boat from there; the little thing seemed packed with black forms. On the other hand, delay was impossible. Instantly he dived from the deck. The water splashed in all directions. Machida started, but the next instant Yamaguchi’s head appeared above the water.
“Let’s go, let’s go!”
Handa stuck at his job. Just a bit more, just a bit more! But the others were trying to push off from the side.
When they set sail they could feel the cold wind blowing down from the hills. A chill came into their sweating bodies. Behind them the voices of the sailors raging and cursing drifted over the water.
Yamaguchi, all dripping wet, took someone’s hand and climbed into the boat.
The next morning Handa’s sleep was broken by the daily sound of the engine. There was the “chut-chut” of the launch disturbing the peace of the morning.
“T–t–then it was no good!” He jumped out of bed in amazement. “She’s going, after all, she’s going!”
“She can’t be. She can’t possibly be.” Yamaguchi rubbed his eyes in astonishment. “I took out the sparking plug; without that you’d never get her going.”
Handa consoled himself with the thought that, even if they hadn’t succeeded, they’d at least done their best. So he had gone to sleep, his mind at ease. At least they’d put all their heart into the job.
He gazed steadily through the mist and there he saw last night’s boat; like a dead whale she lay motionless with just a little of the bottom showing above the water.
He had heard another boat.
Though they smashed up one, there was another to take its place. If they smashed up that, still a third would appear. And if they smashed the last one, probably Uematsu would manage to mend it and load it up with scabs again.
This was not the first time that dogged old Uematsu had got the better of them. Ever since childhood Handa had known only too well the old boss with his square-shaped skull, so flat on top that he would have had no difficulty in running with a cup of water set on it. Every morning, without fail, before anyone else was up, he would go prowling round the works. In one factory they had been wasting rope; in another they had spilt some beans. He nosed out all such minute shortcomings and then came and made his complaints.
And it was not only four or five farmers, who, through that big-skulled old boss, had lost their paddy-fields and their other lands, lost their homes inherited from their forefathers.
Formerly everyone in the village kowtowed to Uematsu, hoping to gain his favour.
How Handa, in his youth, had cherished the hope of becoming like Uematsu’s son! To wear Western clothes, and go to a town school; to be free to play all day!
But now he was proud of the fact he hadn’t been to school.
The songs they sang as they stirred the pulp, monotonous plaintive songs; the sound of hammering the hoops on the barrels with wooden mallets; the smell of the yeast which had made him want to be sick … all these memories of childhood were still vivid in Handa’s mind. The people of the village led hopeless, servile lives of misery. His father used to work from sunrise to sunset, and even then could not make enough to feed them all. When the boss wasn’t looking he used to scoop out some rice from the bin, wrap it up in a towel and bring it home. Handa’s mother and grandmother and sisters would eat every grain up hungrily.
On such land as was not taken up by the factories, they grew rice and other crops. That was the work of the women and the old men who could not work in the factory. The buildings blocked out the sun and the ground was salt, so the oats and rice were stunted, their leaves shrivelled, and the yield was only half. Beans were affected by the poisonous smoke and could not be grown at all.
Still the farmers, loath to lose the lands inherited from their fathers, clung to them as a drowning man clings to a sinking ship.
But the onward march of industrialism got the better of the farmers’ tenacity, and this land, too, became factory sites.
The farmers had worked because they hoped to become rich like the soy manufacturer; that was why doddering old men and children went out into the fields.
When Uematsu changed his concern into a company, and increased the capital, he urged the farmers to take shares in it. They, with five or six shares each, were in high joy, feeling that they too had entered the ranks of the soy manufacturers. They mortgaged their property to make the payments. To make sure the stocks wouldn’t be stolen, they hid them under the old matting and just as before went on toiling away in rags. The farmers, rejoicing at the prospect of dividends, did everything possible to scrape together the money for the payments.
They paid at the rate of fifty yen a share. Next came the dividends.
But actually what did happen next? … The bonds they had hidden so they wouldn’t be stolen were taken from them, with their paddy-fields and the rest of their lands.
“This is no good!” They found themselves completely fleeced. “Ah, ah, what a pity we did it!”
But still they did not know how to defy Uematsu.
Now the case was different.
Now the soy workers felt independent of Uematsu; they did not bow and scrape. They planned how they could get back what had been taken from them. Handa, if only for the sake of his father, who had been forced to steal rice, felt he could not stand still and suffer any longer.
III
On October 13th the following notice was posted up.
“Workers! The pledge which you tendered to the strike leaders—‘If I betray the strike, I hereby promise to pay a fine of 500 yen’—is not legally binding. Workers! You are absolutely free. Should anyone try to claim 500 yen from you, the company will gladly undertake all court proceedings for you. Workers! You must act according to your own free will! You are absolutely free.”
The contents of the pledge had been kept a dead secret. How then did the company find out?
Who was the spy?
Suspicion fell everywhere, but it was risky to be too sure.
Ever since the founding of the union, Yamaguchi had quarrelled with his uncle and cousin. They felt honoured at being given the rank of assistant manager and foreman by Uematsu, and sided with him. In fact, all Yamaguchi’s relatives united in a chorus of criticism and abuse against him.
“Damn them! D’ye think I’ll give it up, no matter what they say!”
Struggling against a deep sense of isolation, he pitted all his strength against Uematsu. Relatives he considered were in the way all the time. At the same time it would be difficult to turn them out.
His mother had died a long time ago. His father was not one to say anything to his son in a hurry, even when the other relatives egged him on. He refused, however, to accept a penny from a “socialist” son; he thus showed his hostility to his son’s ideas. Twenty shares which would pay a dividend of 1212 per cent. a year he treasured more than he did his son.
Whenever Yamaguchi went to the union, his father grumbled at him.
“You good-for-nothing lout, you take a holiday from your ship for any bloody reason,” he stormed. “When I die I won’t leave these shares to you. I’ll give them to the village, or I’ll leave them to Tokujiro.”
“I don’t want any of your shares.”
“You idiot, you damned fool,” he thundered, “you dare say that! That’s not the right spirit!”
After his death the shares were found with the name changed, showing that he intended them for his son. Yamaguchi promptly sold them. This had happened two months ago.
His cousin, Tokujiro, was a foreman in No. 8 Factory. After the strike began he changed over to No. 11. Yamaguchi only made use of his cousin when he had to. And the cousin did the same with him. Otherwise, even when they met in the street, they did not even nod.
Yamaguchi went to see Tokujiro, hoping to find out who was the spy.
“Your crowd started the quarrel, didn’t they?” Tokujiro was always at pains to prove that the company had been forced into the dispute. Yamaguchi soon tumbled to the fact that he was acting on orders from Uematsu.
“… But having once accepted the challenge, as men, we’ll keep on to the end.—To win or to lose, to live or to die”
Tokujiro meant this as a hint of Uematsu’s resolve never to rest until the union was completely crushed. His tone was that of a thief priding himself on his thefts.
“Keep on, keep on as much as you like, but you don’t suppose Yamaki’s are going to miss this chance, do you?” said Yamaguchi, smiling.
Yamaki’s was a rival company. Everyone imagined that they would use the strike to oust Uematsu from the market.
To quarrel and curse one another in this fashion had become habitual with Yamaguchi and Tokujiro. There are some people who, when you meet them, are so irritating that you can’t help picking a quarrel with them. These two felt like that towards each other.
“Your crowd at first put forward thirteen demands and now, in less than two months, aren’t you talking of reducing them to seven? In another couple of months I reckon you’ll be ready to cut them down another five or six, eh?”
Yamaguchi jumped with surprise, but did not let himself be baited.
“Who told you that we were going to reduce the”
Tokujiro interrupted him. His tone was domineering and full of contempt for Yamaguchi.
“I know all that. ‘Though we reduce the number, we’ll never concede the essential demands’ … I know all that…” (For a second time Yamaguchi jumped. These identical phrases had been used at one meeting of the leaders.) “… But, actually, by bringing on this strike you will lose. Why, up to four years ago you were only making sixty yen a year, now you are getting forty yen a month? That”
“Who told you we were going to make concessions?”
Tokujiro’s manner seemed to say, “Keep your hair on, there’s nothing I don’t know about you.”
“Even you, I guess I know more about you than you do yourself,” he grinned, trying to irritate Yamaguchi.
“You can talk big, you crowd, but do you think you’re going to divide the ranks of our workers? From all accounts you, yourselves, are being split up on all sides. Isn’t that the case?”
Yamaguchi left off the conversation and went away. He felt very downhearted. “He must be the spy.” In his mind he had picked Tokujiro’s informant. It was a man who had a reputation of being one of their able leaders. “It must be him. He’s the only one who could have told Tokujiro all those inside details about us,” he mumbled to himself as he walked towards the strikers’ headquarters.
IV
In front of the barrelling-shop towered a mountain of washed barrels. There was a continuous dull noise of lids being hammered on the barrels. From the big vat the undiluted soy gushed with terrific force. Four-gallon barrels formed a row over the matting that had been spread for them. In the midst of all this, the workers of No. 11 kept up operations. They worked on into the night. Even the furnaces, kept burning incessantly, groaned under the strain.
In tying up the barrels, the foremen utilized competition as a means of increasing the efficiency of the farmers who had just become accustomed to the work. In the electric light the rope, as it was hauled at roughly and twisted round one barrel, looked like a wriggling snake.
Further off a tank of pulp bubbled under compressed air. A truck loaded with barrels, all with new labels on them, dashed along at full speed towards the pier; the sound of the wheels echoed in the concrete cavern.
Chiun’s ghost had hidden himself. The company, in its struggle against Yamaki had, at any cost, to fulfil all orders. Autumn was the rush time in the soy industry. The men were paid special rates for night work. For those who stayed in the company’s dormitory there were special rewards.
In other factories the men lived together in special quarters. 150 men slept in one room with fifty mats. That meant three men to one mat. The mats were full of holes, and sticky and greasy. The pillows were of wood. The food was fit only for pigs. Uematsu believed in feeding his livestock cheaply. But for the men this system had proved a blessing in disguise; being always herded together they had come instinctively to learn the meaning of solidarity. One idea, one emotion animated them all.
Uematsu understood this and in the new factory. No. 11, he did not allow the men to live together. He employed only boys, vouched for by their headmasters.
After the strikers had started attacking the boats it became dangerous to bring the men back to the village each day. This, however, threatened to deprive him of scabs. So he began to give “prizes” to those who would stay in the dormitory. All mention of Chiun’s ghost was forbidden.
From the top of the strainer the bag, swollen up with bean pulp, stuck out bulkily. The vats in the room where the final process was carried out stood in a row like a fleet of warships. The man on guard, who was an ex-policeman, passed behind the vats like a shadow.
“It looks mighty dangerous for to-morrow or the next day. I tell you it looks as if the blighters are going to resort to violence.” He grabbed the foreman by the shoulder and whispered in his ear: “Tell all ours to be ready.”
“D’ye think the sons of bitches could do anything?”
“You don’t think there’s any chance of them cutting the telephone wires?”
The scabs, obedient to the masters, toiled sixteen hours a day. … “We’ll have to work and save up now, as we won’t get the chance of working sixteen hours a day when the strike’s over.” Their fingers had become all blistered and bleeding from handling the bags. From standing so long their legs became like logs of wood. During the day it was not so bad, but from twilight until knocking-off time seemed longer than the whole day. They longed for the 10.30 bell. The sleep they could get in the dormitory was insufficient to rest their fatigued muscles. Standing up, sewing the bags, they would drop off to sleep. The eyes of the young boys who dashed the pulp into the bags became blurred and they would miss their aim. All around was slushy with the pulp.
If they had not toiled away feverishly like this! If they had not worked more than the regular eight hours! Who would have worked the extra? The oppressed workers. The strikers would have won. The company would have been forced to climb down.
Thinking of themselves, they had turned their backs on the strikers. They went to all lengths cringing before the bosses, and found themselves working sixteen or seventeen hours a day. If the workers begin to concede an inch they are done for and become just like oxen with great heavy weights hung through their nostrils, which weigh them down. For ever they must go with bowed heads.
The clock in the office struck ten. Its last note was still tingling in the ear-drum when from the locked gate on the north side a shot rang out. They all started, and then stood rigid as boards.
Following on that, in the far darkness, sparks shot up. A second report and then a third; then a prolonged rumble as the pile of old barrels came tumbling down.
“The strikers!”
Sacks and straw bags and pails came flying through the air. They abandoned their work and pushed their way towards the exit of the fermenting chamber on the other side. In a flash they knew that the desperate strikers had come to settle account with their betrayers. From the barrelling shops, from the pulp shops, the workers, their faces all smeared brown with beans, streamed towards the south gate. Uematsu’s barrel mountain collapsed. Empty barrels flew around the heads of the squirming mob.
“Don’t rush, don’t rush!”
The great crowd reached the exit of the fermenting chamber. But it was barred by the guard. A swift current of men was stemmed there and divided to left and right. Outside the door waited a group of burly-looking men, with guns in their hands.
From under the matting the ex-policeman guard brought out clubs and bamboo spears and knives which had been got ready secretly. He intended arming everyone with one.
When the workers saw them they felt a chill, as if someone had brandished a naked sword before them. ······· Yamaguchi climbed over the high wall, taking leaflets with him to distribute among the scabs.
He tied a stone on to the end of a rope ladder and threw it over the wall, and then climbed up it. Stooping down on the top of the wall, he investigated to make sure it was not spread with live wires.
Below him other ladders were thrown up powerfully and other figures were seen wriggling up in the darkness. More than had been arranged at the meeting of leaders had come. At different places the stones simply struck the concrete wall with a sharp sound and then bounced back again to the throwers’ feet, only to be thrown up once more. At this rate we shall soon be discovered, thought Yamaguchi, but he could not call down to tell them to be quieter. If he did, they’d be discovered still sooner.
A fierce excitement was visible in the actions of those below him. They were resolved to do or die. If they remained docile any longer, they’d simply be slaughtered by Uematsu. Uematsu’s many allies were like a pack of wolves; if one of their number howled all the others would come racing to his aid. The workers were hopelessly trapped. Yamaguchi knew that from long experience. They had no allies but themselves. But they did not want to die like sheep at the slaughter-house. They wanted to have at least one crack at the heads of the wolves.
Yamaguchi hung on to the edge of the wall, and then as lightly as he could jumped down on the other side. When he landed, the whole weight of his body came with a shock into his head. Soon after him an old man landed a little to his side and rolled over. The ground was spread with cinders, and as he lay all rolled up in a ball on top of them you would have thought it was a cicada’s cast-off skin. Yamaguchi himself, at the instant of jumping, felt as though he was being rolled up into a ball.
“Are you all right?” He put out a hand to the old man, who straightened his back. It was Niemon.
“Maybe to-night’s the last we’ll be together,” whispered this man who had the old mother and father he could not get rid of. “We must be prepared!”
When he heard how determined even the father of that girl was, Yamaguchi felt his muscles contract. Were they going to let themselves be pushed back to the old miserable state of affairs when their fathers had to steal food if they were to feed their old parents and their young children? Or were they going to smash all that?
To-night, to-night of all nights, they must acquit themselves well! It didn’t matter if he himself had to die.
The scabs, like a wave that has receded, collected their strength, and then rose up in a second fierce wave, pressing in on the strikers. They threw themselves madly at this oncoming wave. Machida was at the head, shaking a knotty club. The two forces clashed just at the open space in front of the barrelling-shop. Yamaguchi and Niemon, almost crushed between the two crowds, were capsized in the swirling current. Poles and pails and clubs were active. What remained of the wall of barrels came down on the heads of the struggling mass of men. Amid the cursing and screaming and bellowing, the mob clawed at one another; hands or faces or clothes, anywhere and everywhere without distinction. Empty barrels bounced noisily off one struggling head on to another. It was no time for Yamaguchi to be distributing leaflets. Even though he managed to do it, there was no time for the people to pick them up and read them. He tried to put a check on the men, but it was no time for checking. His head was almost wrenched off with the force of a blow on the face. The bulky, square bundle of leaflets concealed around his body got in his way. Again and again he snatched some of them out and threw them at the heads of the jostling crowd. The coarse, rustling papers scattered above the heads and then fluttered everywhere.
Suddenly he was almost knocked over sideways.
“Son of a bitch!”
He stood firm and looked to see what had pushed him. By the dim electric light he saw a thug brandishing, unsheathed, a great Japanese sword, coming towards him. Everyone drew back. A path opened. Like lightning Machida rushed in from the side and threw himself on the thug.
“Look out!” Yamaguchi yelled from the rear, but Machida was deaf to everything. He was soon flattened between the shoulders of the mob and knocked right over. From all directions the force of the mob focussed on the two of them. Barrels, pails, stones from both sides whistled through the air and landed on them. Above the steaming heads, little pails collided with big barrels and were smashed to smithereens.
Yamaguchi was caught up in the raging whirlpool which stank of sweat and pulp, and carried into the barrelling-shop. They were being pressed by the scabs. Between the vats fights were going on. The lamp hanging from the ceiling and its glass shade were smashed by a blow from a long bamboo pole.
It was pitch dark.
At that moment Yamaguchi got a great whiff of strong, raw soy and was struck by something which came at him wildly, sideways.
The bung is out! he realized in a flash. … The soy shot right out at him from the lower part of the vat, as from a pump, and completely drenched him. The thick, sticky liquid dripped from all his body. In no time all around him had become a seething flood of soy. His eyes smarted with the salt and when, without thinking, he wiped them with his hand, it, too, must have been covered with soy, for they stung worse than ever. As he stood there blinking, against the light above the strainer next door he saw the forms of Handa and Himuro, bringing up supporters. ······· All ahead of Machida seemed bathed in active radiance. He was practically unaware of what he was doing. Only not to be behind the others, not to be a coward! That single thought filled his mind. The bottom of his kimono, sticky with sweat and soy, clung around his legs. He tucked it up. In the corridor a dim ten-candle power light, covered with cobwebs, was hanging from the sloping roof. Just there someone sprang out on him, crying, “Help, here’s one!” but he soon extricated himself and ran.
In front of the fermenting chamber a gang of thugs awaited something.
Then there was a ferocious shouting and the report of a gun. His friends kept pressing in from the corridor and from the open space in front of the barrelling-shop.
In the darkness at the right Machida made out the white face of Handa, holding up a mat folded in two as a shield, and bending over slightly and saying something.
“Take care, it’s dangerous!” He caught these words as he got close to him.
“What? D’ye think we can be hanging back now?” thought Machida, as he straightened himself up in defiance and went forward towards the fermenting chamber. A series of shots followed. The bullets sounded as if they had struck a barrel and gone right through. Handa and the others followed behind Machida. In front of the chamber, wrapped in the thick darkness and the smoke, a crowd of people seethed. Machida, raising sudenly the long pole he had taken from someone, rushed at them. But just in front of where a big twenty-gallon barrel lay, almost as if he had tripped over a stone, his body crumpled up and he swayed and fell. It seemed to Handa that he fell like some nerveless thing, a log or something. The ones behind could hear his groans and they saw that he did not seem to have any strength to pick himself up again. The bullet had pierced the heart.
Handa stooped down and gathered him in his arms.
“What is it?” he asked, but there was no answer. “What is it? Tell me!”
Then he realized that Machida’s arms and legs were twitching. His eyes were dim and his neck had no strength; it hung down limp.
“What is it? Tell me!”
From amidst the crowd that came running up, Yamaguchi, smelling of soy and looking like a drowned rat, yelled out something.
“They got him!” Handa answered.
Yamaguchi, coming out from between the vats, started to bend down to Machida’s face, but when he saw the mob of thugs scattering hurriedly, he gave them chase. But before he had gone even a few steps he too gave a groan and collapsed beside the barrel.
Handa reached out a hand, all sticky with blood, towards Yamaguchi. He remembered how both Yamaguchi and Machida had been in love with Niemon’s daughter.
“Why, everything about her’s pretty. I like a girl who smells of the workers!”
Suddenly he remembered those words.
V
It was life and death with them. They were all determined, no matter what the consequences, to smash Uematsu.
They strained themselves to the limits or their endurance.
But the strength of Uematsu’s side was greater far than theirs. “Tin-tailed” figures[1] and a company of iron-shod putteed men[1] appeared and ruthlessly crushed the strikers.
VI
Two years passed.
The ceaseless noisy hammering of the coopers’ mallets ascended to the heavens with the dense smoke. The engine of the launch and the rumbling of the trucks added to the din.
The black sooty roofs of the shops had become still blacker. Every day they went on puffing out the steam from the boiling beans, fearful of the loss even a day’s rest would cause. The stench or boiling soy was everywhere. The farmers’ dwellings had been pushed back to the foot of the hills and to the slopes graded like steps. Handa had come out of prison and returned to this village of his, living in one of those shacks. The smoke, blown by the wind, came over towards it.
Uematsu’s square head seemed to have got two or three inches fatter. He must have been more than sixty. But his spirit was unchanged. He still kept up his habit of inspecting the factory.
A priest, whose speciality was sermons, had been attached to the factory. Once a month there was a concert and a movie show. Those who attended were given free refreshments. They also received a towel each with the Uematsu trade-mark stamped on it.
Many grains of sand piled one on top of the other will make a mountain as big as Fuji, and sen by sen saved up will make a million yen—such was the burden of the songs chanted by the singer.
A movie, “The Money-making Tree,” sounded interesting, but it, too, proved a hoax.
On the other hand, in the factories the work became killing. The scabs were saved from being turned off; they were saved from having to leave the village through starvation; they were saved from prison, but in the factories they were subjected to the speed-up. Production of pulp was increased from a little over 600 gallons a day to nearly 800 gallons; 2000 old barrels were washed a day in place of 1500. And at the same time the standard of living went back to the old days.
In order to get fuel the women and children, their noses all blocked with dust and ash, had to pick up coke from the cinder pits.
The increased wages were abolished when Handa, Niemon, Himuro and the others were taken off to the police station. After a while a distinction between “skilled” and “unskilled” was made. Unless a man had been employed for five years or more he was not called “skilled.” This meant that the number of workers in the skilled class were less than a quarter of the total. The “unskilled” men, who had been farmers and fishermen, had their wages cut down to the old 70 per cent. Hell, how they’d been taken in!
For the first time, like a sudden thump on the back, they realized it.
“We’ve been made bloody fools of! We’ve been taken in nicely by the boss’s fine words!”
They stamped their feet in rage.
“If we’re going to get our wages cut 20 per cent. or 30 per cent. like this, we’d have been better at that time to have thrown in our lot with the strikers! We were damned silly!”
Handa, wearing an expression of sadness and loneliness, looked down from his cottage on the slope on the village as one surveying a ruin. There was no job for him. Of the men who formerly had worked with him, hardly one remained. Communication with them had ceased, too. He did not even know where they were or what they were doing. He had no food, but stilll he was reluctant to leave the village. He wanted to stay on living there for ever.
Beneath his eyes giant factories were growing up. Beside them No. 11 seemed dwarfed and old and blackened.
At the shore new land had been reclaimed. For that purpose one-half of the hill on the eastern side had been cut sheer away. The cliff-like remaining half and the red soil of the reclaimed land changed the whole aspect of the village, so that it seemed like a newly opened-up district.
A group of women and children, their yellow kimonos grimed with dirt, flocked round where the cinders were thrown out, rummaging and poking and putting something in their baskets. They were the coke-gatherers. When a cart came bringing a load of cinders, immediately, from all directions, like sparrows, they would collect. There they would chirrup and cry and poach on one another’s finds. This went on every day. Just when you thought they had scattered, back again would come the cart, and again from somewhere the sparrows had collected.
When the “ruffians” were sentenced, Uematsu, intending to appear magnanimous, had worn an expression of sorrow. He said that he hoped they would be treated as leniently as possible. … But once the “ruffians” were safely out of the village he gave a sigh of relief, and began to feel himself again. Now once more he was free to do as he pleased; everyone who might defy him had been removed.
One morning, as he was inspecting the factory, he discovered on the reclaimed land that the men had been raking the coal out of the furnaces before it was completely burned, and purposely making it into coke.
The muscles of his face contracted. His eyes hardened. With the cherry-wood stick he carried in his right hand he turned over the cinders and poked among them. He took it that the men were trying to deceive him and he felt it a crushing blow to his pride.
“Here, there, who said you could gather that?” With a deep, powerful voice, he roared at the women who were loitering there.
“All of us, we all gather it,” answered one woman in confusion.
“Who told you you could?”
“Everyone does it, so I thought the boss has given permission,” said another.
“You liars! You’ve been scheming with your old man so’s as to make it all coke like this. That’s what you’ve been up to, eh?”
“No.”
“You liars! You try to fool me, but you can’t fool these eyes. Plotting together, and cheating me over the coal, aren’t ye?”
The women gathered together in one spot and began taking council. There was no fear in their expressions; nothing of surprise; only rancorous defiance. Some of them angrily emptied the coke they had gathered out of their baskets. “He says we’re trying to cheat him. … It seems to me it’s him that’s cheating us!” came one voice from among the women.
That was the beginning of a new unrest.
They would have put up with not being allowed to use the coke for fuel, but to be accused of scheming together, husbands and wives, this they could not stand. Wasn’t it just equivalent to calling them thieves?
They pledged themselves to make the boss pay for that.
“It looks like another strike… Isn’t there some way, some good way, of settling them!” wondered Uematsu, amazed that such an agitation should spring so unexpectedly from so trivial a cause. He felt a chill in his bones and a weight pressing down in him until his arms began to tremble.
“Isn’t there some way, some good way? … No matter how often you hit them, they never learn a lesson, the rotten swine!”
By degrees the trembling spread from the top part of his body, right down to his knees.