Kanikosen 蟹工船

"Let's go straight to hell". So begins the story Kanikosen, a classic of Japanese literature written by Takiji Kobayashi in 1929.

I had the good fortune to come across this story in the summer of 2021, first in the comic version by Go Fuijio (ed. Gallo Negro) and then in its original novel format, published in Spanish by the publisher Ático de los libros.

Kanikosen tells the story of the Hakko Maru, a fishing boat operating in the icy waters of Kamchatka, and its crew: a motley collection of hardened sea dogs ruined by drink and women, university students in debt to the state and poor peasants on the verge of starvation.
As the blizzard bites the deck and turns the ships into ghosts, the skipper of the fishing expedition forces the crew to work to exhaustion and mete out brutal punishments if they dare to protest. Gradually, the seed of revolt spreads and, although ships of the Imperial Japanese Navy patrol the area to maintain order among the fishermen, the inevitable mutiny breaks out.

Its author, Takiji Kobayashi, was born in 1903 in Odate, Akita, and grew up in Otaru, Hokkaido. After graduating from the Otaru Graduate School of Business, he worked at the Otaru office of the Hokkaido Takushoku Bank. In 1931 he joined the Communist Party of Japan and two years later, in 1933, he died as a result of torture inflicted by the Tokko, the branch of the Japanese Imperial Police dedicated to investigating political groups and ideologies that might pose a threat to public order.

After reading Kanikosen I decided to make a composition and translate into music the sensations and thoughts that it had generated in me. And thus spread, within my possibilities, this little story full of universal human miseries.

The composition of Kanikosen was very intuitive and is based almost entirely on improvisations. Mixing and editing were the most decisive phases in the compositional aspect.

In the recording I used double bass, metallophone and virtual synthesizers.

Recorded and composed between July and August 2021, mixed and mastered in January 2022, by Rafa Ramos Sania in Patraix, Valencia.

Cover art by Patricia Gil Moral (Patpaletas).