Quotes from Takiji Kobayashi

After his relationship with Kiyo had turned to disappointment and he began coming to town to drink, he got to know a woman who worked in a cheap noodle restaurant. She was from Sango's village and since she hardly had any land of her own to till, she worked as a day laborer, helping to till others' fields, and did various other jobs. Hearing about Yoshimine and Kiyo, she'd said that love affairs demand the luxury of free time.

Around the time when her school-bound classmates left for the boardinghouses of Sapporo and Otaru, Yasuko came to Otaru to work at the restaurant. She and her former classmates, however, were headed in completely different directions. Yasuko

You could say they got punished for what they did, but when you know the circumstances you can't help feeling sorry." "Mm . . . that's right." "Afterwards Yamagami couldn't make any kind of a living. This is a small place, and the dispute haunted him: wherever he went asking for work, no one would hire him. Up to now he seemed to be managing somehow with the money Yoshi brought in now and then.

Rather than erupting in fury, he had experienced a moment of weakness, as though he were about to burst into tears. Without hating Yoshimine (whom he considered a reliable friend even now), he had felt his own arms and legs shrinking before a reality that he could do absolutely nothing about. This feeling, he understood in retrospect, arose from the fact that Yoshimine was a landlord while he himself was an insignificant pauper.

Even if she could not attend school, she was determined not to be outdone in reading books.

The second . . . when a tenant farmer raises his hand against his landlord and master, regardless of the reasons . . . it leads to unpleasant social repercussions.

In fact, although she had no idea where to go or what kind of work to do, she felt compelled even before considering such matters to throw herself into action. Telling the union man Yamada (or Sasaki) that she wanted to work and had to do it came from an idea that surprised even Yasuko.

I don't know the sutras. I can't console Yamada's spirit by chanting sutras. But I've been thinking a lot, and here's what I think. I've thought about how much Yamada didn't want to die. . . . No, to tell the truth, I've thought about how much he didn't want to be killed. There's no denying that Yamada was killed.

the name for workers in hokkaido was "octopus." in order to stay alive, an octopus will even devour its own limbs

Nor was that all, for at the same time the great burden of making a living lay heavily once again on Okei's shoulders. She felt as if she had been born merely to go on bearing such a weight, forbidden from stretching her hands in any direction or turning aside for even a moment.

Fishermen who till now had known only servile submission, quite unexpectedly felt a tremendous force thrusting them forward. At first they were bewildered. Gradually they realized that their own power, whose presence they had not suspected, was manifesting itself. "But are we capable of making use of that power?" they wondered. Of course they were.

The so-called "lawful" way of seeking change was clearly a deception. Thinking about it in her own way based on what she was familiar with, Yasuko wondered if this was the reason why at some of the recent left-wing speech meetings the police outnumbered even the audience.