From Adbusters: “As they endure the nightly mundanity of the convenience store or the daytime lobotomy of waving red sticks at traffic jams, the freeter part-timers know that Kanikosen is a novel aimed at them. But the full-time, white-collar “salarymen” think it is all theirs, too: the novel describes cruelty, exploitation and imprisonment, all of which echoes the sense of padded slavery felt so keenly in Japan’s white-collar ranks. And women, whose relationship with the Japanese workplace has been a long, largely unrewarded struggle for equality and respect, empathize deeply with the below-decks repression of the crab-canning ship. Still, it is undoubtedly among the young, Asao’s “lost generation,” now aged between 20 and 35, that the connections are the sharpest.” …Read more
