EALL Working Papers in Linguistics and Literatures Volume 3 (Fall 2022)

Hokkaido Dialect as the Tongue of Revolution – A Literary-sociolinguistic

Analysis of Kobayashi Takiji’s The Crab Cannery Ship
Joseph Iseri

Abstract

There is much to be said from both literary and linguistic scholars alike about the use of non-
standard language. While each have different primary motivations for investigating linguistic
variation, there is much each field may borrow from the other in unraveling their differing
questions. This paper attempts such a methodological feat by utilizing textual analytical practices
from both sociolinguistic and literary fields and applying them to the literary spectrum of material.
Analyzing non-standard dialect use in Takiji Kobayashi’s 1929 piece The Crab Cannery Ship, this
paper addresses the following questions: (1) how do characters’ use of dialect construct their class
identity, and (2) how are those identities key for achieving the goals of proletarian literature.
Quantitative and qualitative analysis reveals that Hokkaido Dialect (HD) is positioned as a
marginalized style against hegemonic use of Standard Japanese (SJ) and that, while HD may be
the tongue of revolutionaries, SJ remains the ideologically powerful variety in disseminating the
proletarian message. The paper concludes with the advantages and challenges of a literary-
sociolinguistic framework for analysis as well as a call for further research from this perspective.

Key words: literary-sociolinguistic analysis, dialect, indexicality, ideology, proletarian literature

1 Introduction

The analysis of non-standard language in literary works is an interesting nexus for exploration by
both literature researchers and sociolinguists alike. For the literary scholar, non-standard language
use raises questions surrounding the artistic value of language not usually represented
orthographically, or about the motives of the author and their characters by their use of a certain
language variety. Literary scholars generally take novels and scripts as their data and are motivated
to discover the historical, political, and social significance of these texts, their genres, and their
authors. On the other hand, for the sociolinguist, the use of non-standard varieties invites inquiry
of the social motivations of speakers such as identity construction. This involves examining
thorough transcripts of recorded language use centering around the sociological structure of talk
or how talk accomplishes contextually relevant social activity. Despite methodological or
epistemological differences, these fields are not entirely incompatible. At the core of each field
remains overlapping interest in how language relates to socio-historical processes. Generally
referred to as “literary sociolinguistics” (Mair, 1992), this interdisciplinary field remains relatively
underdeveloped compared to either tradition alone.
Utilizing Bakhtin’s (1981) notions of dialogicality and heteroglossia from a literary
tradition and a social constructivist approach (e.g., Bucholtz & Hall, 2005) from sociolinguistic
traditions, I explore two questions related to the non-standard language use featured in Takaji
Kobayashi’s (1929) novel, The Crab Cannery Ship: (1) how do characters’ use of dialect 1

1
The dialects examined are Hokkaido Dialect and Standard Japanese. For the remainder of the paper, Hokkaido
 Iseri 2

construct their class identity; and (2) how are those identities key for achieving the goals of
proletarian literature? By quantitatively and qualitatively analyzing the speech of characters (or
classes of characters) found in Kobayashi’s novel, this paper hopes to shine light on the ways
dialect use can represent the marginalized in a manner that facilitates reader empathy and
generates affective or other psychological responses, while also potentially reifying their
marginality by strategic non-use of dialect. It also aims to draw attention to the underexplored
regions of overlapbetween literary and linguistic fields.
Section 2 introduces the sociohistorical and sociopolitical context of The Crab Cannery
Ship and proletarian literature, as well as the theoretical and analytical frameworks this paper
utilizes, namely those of social constructivism (e.g., Bucholtz & Hall, 2005) and heteroglossia
(Bakhtin, 1981). Section 3 proceeds by explicating the methodology of this study. Section 4 then
introduces the data and relevant analysis, followed by a discussion of the findings (Section 5) and
its further research implications going forward (Section 6).

2 Theoretical framework and literature review

2.1 Proletarian Literature and Kobayashi Takaji

Now more than a century old, the proletarian movement is widely known as the left-wing political
movement that began in the 1910s in Soviet Russia as lower-class citizens such as poor workers
and farmers (the proletariats) usurped the political power of the high-class citizens (the bourgeois)
through means of force and political protest. Literature was one of the primary ways the proletariat
movement gained and later sustained global traction. Proletarian literature thus emerged as a
distinct (and ironically aesthetically modern) form of literature that primarily concerned itself with
contesting the bourgeois-centered power structures (Bowen-Struyk & Field, 2017). It achieved this
in several ways. First, it argued that all literature previous to the movement was not neutral but
rather inherently bourgeois, provided that it was concerned with representing a universe that
favored the moral and ethical understandings of the powerful and not of humanity-at-large
(Kurahara, 1929). Second, it pivots the focus of literature away from the “individual essence” and
instead “emphasize[s an essence] that compels us to strive to consider the societal dimensions of
the problems of individuals” (ibid, p. 178). 2
At the beginning, this genre of literature was a means for facilitating the proletarian
revolution, the term proletariat had two meanings that were often employed synonymously – one
that refers to the working class and one referring to people associated with the Soviet Communist
Party (Clark, 2017). In the case of Japan, only the latter meaning was prominent, with proletariat
(as laborers) literature emerging in the mid-Taisho period (1912-1926) on platforms such as Ōmi
Komaki’s magazine Tane maku hito, which began in 1921 (Keene, 1989). Kobayashi Takiji
became affiliated with the proletarian literature movement around 1927-1928 as an author and
literary critic, himself experiencing much of the financial hardships of the impoverished during his
youth in Otaru City, Hokkaido. Kobayashi also wrote several pieces about proletarian literature,
in which he outlines what he believes are key elements of proletarian literature: proletarian fiction

Dialect will be abbreviated as ‘HD’ and Standard Japanese as ‘SJ’.

2
This pivot away from the individualism of literature appears to be a motivating factor for Kobayashi’s stylistic choice
to avoid making characters (i.e., with names) and rather to have classes of characters who all share a unitary ‘voice’.
It also made the quantitative analysis very difficult due to the trouble of tabulating of ‘who said what’.
 Hokkaido Dialect as the Tongue of Revolution 3

must emerge from workers’ need to commiserate their experiences, be relatively short due to time
constraints of workers, be written in a way that is easily understood by the working class, avoid
“crappy old sermons ordering people to ‘do this and do that!’” and rather create a message that
“hits you smack where it counts” (Kobayashi, n.d., as cited in Bowen-Struyk & Field, 2017). These
points are critical for my analysis of Kobayashi’s works, and the use of dialects in the novel I will
argue is central to these overt goals of Kobayashi as delineated through his own critique.
Before being tortured and subsequently killed by police in their crackdown on anti-
imperialist (and therefore anti-government) dissidents, Kobayashi published several notable works
considered to be proletarian literature. Among them stands Kobayashi’s The Crab Cannery Ship,
which featured in the magazine Senki ‘Battle flag’ in 1929. The Crab Cannery ship would earn
Kobayashi notoriety from both literary critiques and readers alike, even experiencing a ‘boom’ of
popularity as recently as 2008 (Bowen-Struyk, 2009).

2.2 Dialect and identity

Provided this paper seeks to investigate how dialect plays a role in achieving the goals of
proletarian literature, it seems appropriate to introduce both sociolinguistic and literary approaches
to linking non-standard language use and identity construction here. This paper utilizes two key
concepts from two distinct, but interrelated fields: the social constructivist understanding of
identity construction and Mikhail Bakhtin’s (1981) notion of heteroglossia. Both overlap in that
they address issues of style. For Bakhtin, this meant the stylistics of the novel – in what ways is
the style of a novel composed of a system of previous styles that precede it, and in what ways does
it “create images of languages”? (Bakhtin, 1934, p. 336). For researchers under the blanket term
of “social cultural linguistics” (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005), style refers to any constellation of semiotic
features, including but not limited to the linguistic resources a speaker uses to strategically endorse
a persona or identity. However, each deserves a closer examination for me to present the ways in
which they are relevant to this study.

2.2.1 Sociolinguistic perspectives

The notion of dialect use from sociolinguistic perspectives have gradually developed from a
unidirectional, ethnographically influenced unconscious representation of a speakers’ regionality
to more a more complex process of speaker agency and ‘stylization’ (Bucholtz & Hall, 2005;
Coupland, 2007). While researchers in the 1970s were concerned with language shift and change
and used interviews to elicit ‘careful’ and ‘un-careful’ speech registers (e.g., Labov, 1969),
questions that now occupy sociolinguistic research are more concerned with how individuals may
differentially use those registers to construct social persona or identities in context. As Mary
Bucholtz and Kira Hall (2005) assert, identities are not only “macrolevel demographic categories”
but rather are social categories speakers orient to as “ethnographically emergent cultural positions”
(p. 585).
Accordingly, there is a wealth of research that investigates the process of identity
construction through stylistic variation. For example, Johnstone (2007) discusses how lifelong
residents in Pittsburg indexically signal their local identity through epistemic stances in
metalinguistic discourse on “Pittsburghese”. Eckert (2000) also demonstrates how adopting certain
sets of variants (i.e., linguistic units that differ between dialects) are used by Detroit secondary
schoolers to construct themselves as belonging to a social group, like “jock” or “burnout.” In the
 Iseri 4

case of studies on Japanese dialect use, studies are still limited in size and number. Christopher
Ball (2004) analyzed a conversation between a Kansai native couple and a Kanto native woman
and argued that Kansai dialect (KD) usage minimally encodes what he terms ‘stances of alterity,’
which then further index regionality or uchi ‘in group’ and soto ‘out group’ boundaries. Andrew
Barke’s (2018) investigation of KD and speech style shifts in the Japanese workplace demonstrates
a related but separate phenomenon in groups containing only KD native speakers. Barke found
that dialect was used to differentially index other- and self-directed speech, to refer to uchi topics
(i.e., ones that are close to the ‘self’), to express emotion, and to shift between ‘official’ and off-
stage modes of talk (pp. 138-144). Cindi Sturtz-Sreetharan (2015), on the other hand, investigated
how KD and masculine language are used in conjunction to index humor during an episode of a
Japanese reality television show. Sturtz-Sreetharan extrapolates that the semi-scripted nature of
the televised interaction provided a stage for participants to manipulate KD and masculine forms
to construct a humorous, jocular identity. Okamoto and Shibatani-Smith (2016) also discuss how
KD is used on TV, instead focusing on how KD is differentially used between speakers of different
age, social proximity, and career seniority.
All of the above studies investigate the connections between dialect and identity, but
focus on a widely known and used dialect, the Kansai dialect. In contrast, the focal dialect of this
paper, HD, alongside other dialects, have not had nearly as much success at being favorable in the
eyes of wider society. Hence, there is a paucity of research exploring the ways in which HD is
used in situ by speakers to construct their identity. The current paper hopes to contribute (or ignite)
a movement for looking at more minoritized dialects such as HD in sociolinguistic fields of study
in general and in works of literature.

2.2.2 Literary perspectives

In a distinct hemisphere of study, literary studies conceptualize non-standard language use

in written works quite differently. Mikhail Bakhtin’s (1981) work on dialogicality expresses a
similar sentiment to sociolinguistic studies, however. Bakhtin imagines the words and speech of
characters in novels to be inherently in a dialogic relation to the words and speech of those who
have preceded them, and therefore will come to have a relationship with future words and speech,
in addition to other words that exist during the same time period. To quote Bakhtin (1981):

“The word, directed toward its object, enters a dialogically agitated and tension-filled
environment of alien words, value judgments and accents, weaves in and out of complex
interrelationships, merges with some, recoils form others, intersects with yet a third group;
and all this may crucially shape discourse, may leave a trace in all its semantic layers, may
complicate its expression and influence its entire stylistic profile.”
(Bakhtin, 1981, p. 276)

Bakhtin centers his work on understanding how the novel as a genre of literature is a critical
site for supporting this dialogism through what he terms heteroglossia. Heteroglossia refers to the
creative combination of stratified ‘voices’: "social dialects, characteristic group behavior,
professional jargons, and generic languages, language of generation and age groups, tendentious
languages, language of the authorities, and various circles and passing fashions” (Bakhtin, 1981,
pp. 262-263). In the novel, this refers to the simultaneous sounding of various perspectives and
worldviews as posed through the characters, ones that sound ‘whole’ and complete rather than
 Hokkaido Dialect as the Tongue of Revolution 5

simple extensions of the author’s monologic voice.

Furthermore, Bakhtin argues that the speech of anybody ‘borrows’ from others, a process
which he terms polyphony. For example, take the way that a newscaster reports the weather.
Bakhtin argues that the choice of words, speed of talk, and organization of information among
other things (i.e., the stylistics of the genre) are reverberating echoes of the speech of previous
individuals, institutions, and genres of speaking. In this way, any speech is resounding and
transformative of the cacophony of voices that have come before it. Accordingly, any one word or
utterance does not simply exist in a neutral vacuum, but rather is interpreted as value-loaded and
stylistically important. As Bakhtin (1981) continues:

The word does not exist in a neutral and impersonal language (it is not, after all, out of a
dictionary that the speaker gets his words!), but rather it exists in other people's mouths, in
other people's contexts, serving other people's intentions: it is from there that one must take
the word, and make it one's own….[l]anguage is not a neutral medium that passes freely
and easily into the private property of the speaker's intentions; it is populated—
overpopulated—with the intentions of others.
(Bakhtin, 1981, p. 294)

While Bakhtin primarily develops heteroglossia and polyphony as means to analyze the stylistics
of the novel as a genre of literature, he additionally provides evidence for its application to social
dialects, including speech genres (i.e., register, lexicon, pitch, etc.) and non-standard language use.
Thus, dialect use in The Crab Cannery Ship is not only engaging with the many voices that precede
it (e.g., in the form of previous proletarian literature), but also with the then contemporary value-
laden notions surrounding non-standard language use including linguistic ideologies and language
attitudes. These will be introduced in Section 3.1.

3 Methodology

Mair (1992, pp. 104-107) identifies three key aspects of any interdisciplinary study of “literary
sociolinguistics” dealing with non-standard language use: (1) conducting a systematic comparison
of the dialect use to the abstract system documented by linguists; (2) examining dialect distribution
(e.g., does dialect appear in the narrator’s retelling or simply in the direct speech of characters),
and (3) evaluating the intended effect by the author’s utilization of dialect through a lens of
linguistic ideologies. Bakhtin also notes that any understanding of the heteroglossic nature of
speech must begin by understanding a system’s abstract, structural definition. This study adopts
these suggestions by conducting both a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the speech in The
Crab Cannery Ship.
All speech demarcated by quotation marks (i.e., 「(speech)」) were first tabulated by the
speaker (or class of speaker, in the case of this novel). This was then quantitatively analyzed for
frequency of variables that appear in HD. Speech was also identified as being either acrolectic,
mesolectic, or basilectic (i.e., ‘light’, ‘medium’, or ‘heavy’ forms of dialect) based on the
percentage of HD variables over SJ variables 3. Following this, I conducted a qualitative analysis

3
I borrow this term from creole studies (e.g., Bickerton, 1975), but apply it in the same essence of a gradient from
heavier to lighter dialectal variable use. See Saft (2018) for a more complete explanation of this type of application.
 Iseri 6

of the speech of different classes to understand in what ways their speech constructs their class
identity through its dialogue with the linguistic ideologies during its time of publication, as well
as what that entails for achieving the goals of proletarian literature.

3.1 Hokkaido Dialect

HD has a peculiar history in relation to standard forms of language due to its history of imperial
conquest by the mainland Japanese government. Hokkaido as a region experienced an influx of
Japanese mainlanders from the Tōhoku region during the Muromachi and Sengoku periods (1300s
– 1600s) primarily in the southern area of its peninsula but did not experience widespread
colonization until the 18th century Meiji restoration (Ono, 1997). HD thus has many influences
from Tōhoku dialects such those found in Niigata and Aomori prefectures in addition to a steadily
growing influence of SJ from Meiji colonization (Shibata, 1999).
In recent years, HD has experienced dialect leveling that is characteristic of nearly all
dialects in the 21st century, which has perhaps been exacerbated by the fact that HD had already
been influenced by Tokyo Japanese during its formative colonial period (Sanada, 1999). However,
below are a few of the commonly cited characteristics of HD:

Table 1 - Morphosyntactic and Lexical Differences (Dallyn, 2016; Shibata, 1999 [1958])

Linguistic Resource Example Standard Japanese Hokkaido Dialect

Interactional particles ‘let’s play’ asobō yo asobu be
Directional particles ‘to’ e sa
Imperative form ‘look’ miro mire
Non-volitionality ʻwrite on accident’ kaiteshimau kakasaru
Potential form ‘can write’ kakeru
Epistemicity ‘(you) wrote, right?’ kaita deshō / kaita darō kaita ssho
Lexical Items
Woman (n.) onna onago
Glaring (adj.) mabushii mabahii, babahii
Cutting board (n.) manaita namaita
Riding on one’s shoulders (n.) kataguruma kubinma
Bright (adj.) akarui akai
To put away (v.) katadukeru naosu
To wake up (v.) okiru odoroku
To throw away (v.) suteru nageru

Phonological Differences (Dallyn, 2016; Ono, 2009):

• Voicing of consonants that are typically voiceless, such as [t] and [k] becoming [g] and [d]
(i.e., SJ = otoko ‘man’, ika ‘squid’ → HD = odogo ‘man’, iga ‘squid’)
• Vowel [i] often realized as [e] (i.e., SJ = nai ‘NEG’ → HD = nee ‘NEG’)
• Moras containing [i] also have ambiguous difference from moras containing [u] (i.e., SJ =
shi, chi, ji, dji → HD ≈ su, tsu, zu, dzu)
 Hokkaido Dialect as the Tongue of Revolution 7

During Shibata’s 1958 (republished in 1999) survey of HD of 1st, 2nd and 3rd generation
speakers, it was found that 1st generational speakers use unqiuely HD forms much more frequently
than their 2nd and 3rd generational counterparts. For reference, Kobayashi would be categorized
as a 1st generational speaker under Shibata’s survey. Given that he arrived in Otaru at the young
age of 4 in 1907, Kobayashi would be placed at a high level of understanding in terms of
knowledge of dialectal forms and grammar.

3.2 Language ideologies surrounding HD and SJ

As Mair (1992) insightfully notes, the use of non-standard language in novels as a form of direct
quotation can have two very different effects on the reader. In one realm of possibility, dialect in
literary works can falsely represent real dialect speakers in a way that marginalizes them, such as
the selective use of certain nonstandard lexical and grammatical clues that function as stereotyped
instances of eye dialect (ibid, p. 106). In another, however, the use of dialect can serve as a resource
in a societal linguistic repertoire to forward a position on non-standard language or invoke other
emotions from audiences based on the interpretation that dialect has to readers in the society at the
time of its writing (ibid, p. 106). In the case of The Crab Cannery Ship, the data will go on to show
that it seems very much to be the latter case.
It may be productive to introduce the ideologies surrounding HD in the early 1900s by
first explicating the historical context of dialects during the time Kobayashi published The Crab
Cannery Ship. From a dialogic perspective, I argue that the ideological associations of HD are
relevant primarily because of its juxtaposition against the standardized dialect of Japanese, SJ. The
prevalence of SJ as a prestige variety can be attributed to many historical forces, but one especially
salient is the language reformation under Ueda Kazutoshi. Ueda’s goal was to construct a unifying
national language, or kokugo, utilizing the logic of ethnocentric and nationalistic naturalization (A.
Ueda, 2021; Heinrich, 2012). As K. Ueda (1895) dictates:

A language, for the people who speak, is the symbol of the spirit of compatriots, just like
the blood shared by their bodies. Taking the Japanese national language as an example,
the Japanese language is the spiritual blood of the Japanese people. The nation of Japan
is maintained by this spiritual blood, and the Japanese race (Nihon no jinshu) is unified
by this most potent and long-preserved chain
(K. Ueda, 1895)

His eventual establishment of kokugo began with compulsory elementary education in

kokugo, modeled after the then Tokyo-dialect, and eventually gave way to the creation of the
National Language Research Council in 1902 (Heinrich, 2012; Ono, 1976; K. Ueda, 1895). A
series of publications from 1916 to 1917 on what constitutes the ‘official’ language of Japan were
significant in the standardization process because kokugo finally wielded state authority and thus
social prestige.
In contrast, HD and other dialects were relegated as the visceral ‘other’ produced as a part
of the logic of ethnocentrism. Atsuko Ueda (2021) notes:

[W]hen one’s ability becomes the source of judgment regarding whether one “rightfully”
belongs to a given national community, a hierarchy is inevitably instituted among the
 Iseri 8

speakers….a nation will always have an imagined dominant majority….but it can only
be imagined and thus in need of continuous fabrication. This is precisely why anyone can
be suddenly marked as a minority in this framework.
(A. Ueda, 2021, p. 89)

Thus, while HD may exist as ‘unmarked’ among the early first-generation speakers,
speakers such as Kobayashi inevitably faced the various intersecting ideologies of HD as ‘inferior’,
‘backwards’, and ‘marked’ as a result of its minority status.
Specific language ideologies surrounding HD at the time of publication (~1930s) are
ambiguous at best, primarily due to the lack of (socially oriented) research at the time. Linguistic
research surrounding HD primarily investigates dialect leveling (i.e., Dallyn, 2016; Shibata, 1999
[1958]; Takano, 2013) or corpora of dialects used for statistical analysis (Ono, 2019). However,
drawing from Shibata’s (1999 [1958]) study, it can be safely argued that inland varieties of HD
are seen by Generation 1 speakers (i.e., the first group of Japanese nationals to populate the
Hokkaido peninsula around 1895) as a normative register, by Generation 2 speakers (children of
Generation 1 speakers) as their native tongue, and by Generation 3 speakers (children of
Generation 2 speakers) as a familiar, but non-normative register. Utilizing a similar survey
methodology, Takano’s (2013) study of individuals categorized as Generation 2 speakers by
Shibata demonstrates that dialect leveling in coastal regions such as Sapporo occurs at a slower
rate than inland varieties. Thus, it is most likely the case that Kobayashi was familiar with the
negative linguistic ideologies associated with HD.
However, it is arguable that, in the likeness of other dialects that have experienced the
same efforts of language standardization in the Meiji restoration, HD may invoke feelings of
nostalgia or strong connection to (rural) home (see Carroll, 2001; Chun, 2007; Inoue, 2009 for
studies on Kansai Dialect ideology shifts). While the scope of this paper does not permit great
depth of analysis in contemporary works, Hokkaido authors publishing during the same time
period as Kobayashi similarly featured the use of HD by characters in their novels. Arashima
Takeo, for example, features the main character Kimoto in his work Umareizuru Nayami (The
Agony of Coming Into the World) using HD. As Day (2012) argues, the use of HD by Kimoto
expresses the dual nature of his identity in the work as both a rural fisherman close to nature and
a learned artist who has studied in Tokyo. He writes:

Kimoto is a contradictory figure who lives a “double-life.”….[h]is duality is expressed

especially through the language that Kimoto uses. The first time with the writer, Kimoto
spoke the standard dialect. But ten years later, he speaks a local dialect, his original tongue,
even to the writer, who keeps speaking in Tokyo dialect.….[t]his underlines the power
relations encoded in language, making their positions distinct….[t]hus, Kimoto vacillates
through languages between the naichi and Hokkaido, life and art, as well as his obligation
and desire. By crossing and recrossing linguistic borders, his dual identity is reinforced.
(Day, 2012, p. 91)

Contemporary authors thus similarly utilize HD as a means to highlight not only regional
differences between characters, but also to juxtapose ideological associations with gaichi (imperial
colonies and territories of Japan) and naichi (Japan mainland). The linguistic ideologies introduced
here will be made relevant in the discussion section of this paper.
 Hokkaido Dialect as the Tongue of Revolution 9

4 Data and Analysis

4.1 Quantitative analysis

The total number of turns were first categorized based on the character (or class of character) who
uttered them and subsequently analyzed for: (a) dialectal variable use and (b) acrolectal,
mesolectal, or basilectal type of speech in relation to the ratio of dialect variable use to standard
variable use. These are organized in Table 2 below.

Table 2 – Character’s use of dialect

Character / Class of Total # of turns % of turns in dialect Categorization of HD use

character
Fishermen 289 31% Meso / basilectal
Manager / foreman 52 0.5% -
Students 15 13% Acrolectal
Stokers 11 54% Meso / basilectal
Russian(s) 9 0% -
Captain and crew 5 0% -
Cook 2 50% -
Doctor 4 0% -
Lecturer 3 0% -
Worker(s) 3 0% -
Mother(s) 3 0% -
Officer 1 0% -

As Table 2 demonstrates, the class of character that features the most dialogue was
fishermen, who had 289 turns of talk. Second to this was the Manager (kantoku) at 52 turns of
dialogue, followed by students (gakusei or gakusei agari) with 15 turns at talk. Dialect use was
primarily limited to the talk of fishermen and stokers, who later in the novel join the fishermen in
revolting against the ship’s management.
The speech of fishermen and stokers were assigned a ‘meso / basilectal’ description, as a
considerable number of variables in nearly all extended moments of talk were from HD. Students
were assigned an ‘acrolectal’ description, as their use of HD items were limited primarily to a
phrase they developed to motivate the fishermen and other workers to begin the first set of work
strikes and did not regularly feature HD in their speech.

4.2 Qualitative analysis

The qualitative analysis looks deeper at the types of speech commonly attributed to each class of
character in addition to examining irregularities in the dialectal ‘voices’ of characters within the
novel. It is divided by (class of) characters based on the findings of the quantitative analysis
demonstrating that the different (classes of) characters have significantly different frequencies of
 Iseri 10

HD use.

4.2.1 Fishermen

The story is primarily told through the perspective of the fishermen (gyofu) and at great length
describes the horrid living and working conditions they are subjected to by the management of the
boat staff. With a 3rd person narrative perspective, the dialogue of the fishermen remains central
to the progression of the narrative in which fishermen (and later all workers) grow increasingly
discontent with how they are treated until they grow intolerant of such conditions, at which point
they revolt once (and then once more!) to successfully argue for better rights.
The fishermen in the story are all from various regions of Hokkaido, but all commonly
speak some form of HD. In a majority of turns, fishermen employ HD to a great extent on a wide
variety of topics. Excerpts 1, 2 and 3 feature different speech events with different topics in which
fishermen use a wide range of HD variables. Fishermen commonly used HD particles, such as
utterance final particle be or sa, as well as phonological variables, such as contrastive do, [i] to [u]
shifts, and HD imperative constructions. Bolded text indicated HD.

Excerpt 1 – Interactional particles

F: そ よ 、 俺 だ ち だ も の 。 え え 加 減 、 こ っ た ら 腐 り か け た 臭 い で も す べ
よ
“Yep, that’s because its us. It’s going to stink like we’re beginning to rot”

Excerpt 2 – Phonological shifts

F: 「えのぢ生命まと的だな！」それが――心からフイと出た実感が思わず学生の胸をつ衝いた。
「やっぱし炭山と変らないで、死ぬ思いばしないと、え生きられないなんてな。――ガス瓦
斯もお恐ッかねど、波もおっかねしな」
“They’re trying to kill us!” His sudden, piercing words struck at the students’ hearts. “Hell,
this is no different than working in a mine. Seems like you can’t hardly live without dying
while you’re at it. Sure, gas is scary but so are these damned waves.”

Excerpt 3 – Fishermen imperatives

F: 「おい、端を持ってけれ」褌の片端を持ってもらって、広げながら虱をとった。
“Hey, hold that end for me.” Taking the loincloth’s opposite edges, (the men) spread
them out and began plucking out lice.”

It is of note that the majority of HD that appears in the story are non-referential items, such
as interactional particle (i.e., be) or phonological shifts (i.e., HD ore dachi instead of SJ oretachi).
No morphosyntactic HD forms were found in the novel, such as anti-causativization typical of HD
speech. Even the phonological shifts are represented primarily through okurigana use over
standardized kanji rather than through use of hiragana. This avoidance of complex items unique to
HD was most likely to preserve intelligibility for the wider audience who would have been reading
Kobayashi’s work.
What is considerably more interesting, however, are the instances in which fishermen did
 Hokkaido Dialect as the Tongue of Revolution 11

not employ HD. Aside from short turns such as confirmations (i.e., ‘yeah’) or evaluations (i.e., ‘
(its) okay’), fishermen did not employ HD forms during a critical narrative moment – the rallying
of the masses. Towards the end of the novel, when workers are beginning to organize and begin
their strike, one fisherman referred to as the ‘stuttering fisherman’ or ‘stammering fisherman’
(domori (no gyofu)) takes a spotlight to reinforce the most important aspects of their collective
strike. This is displayed in Excerpt 4.

Excerpt 4 – Domori’s speech

DF: 「諸君、まず第一に、俺達は力を合わせることだ。俺達は何があろうと、仲間を裏切らないこ
とだ。これだけさえ、しっかりつかんでいれば、彼奴等如きをモミつぶすは、虫ケラより容易いこ
とだ。――そんならば、第二には何か。諸君、第二にも力を合わせることだ。落伍者を一人
も出さないということだ。一人の裏切者、一人の寝がえり者を出さないということだ。たった一
人の寝がえりものは、三百人の命を殺すということを知らなければならない。一人の寝がえり
…俺達の交渉が彼奴等をタタキのめせるか、その職分を完全につくせるかどうかは、一に諸
君の団結の力に依るのだ」
“The most important thing of all, brothers, is to join forces and keep our power united. If
we hang on tight to that, they’ll be easier to crush than worms. So, what’s the second most
important thing? The second most important thing, brothers, is also to keep our power
united. Not to have anyone drop out. Not to have a single traitor, not a single turncoat.
We must know that just one turncoat kills three hundred lives. One turncoat…Whether
we can beat them at negotiations, whether or not we can fulfill our task, all of that depends
on the strength of our unity, brothers.”

This speech is essentially what constitutes the core message of the proletarian novel,
which is that workers must unify and collectively organize together to achieve a more desirable
world for the working class. The stammering fisherman gives this speech in front of all the workers
on the ship, including sailors, fishermen, and engineers alike. What makes this speech remarkable
is that it is entirely in SJ. While there may be prosodic clues in a real speech, the speech that exists
as is written and understood by the audience is that of the standard, not the dialect. This is also in
sharp contrast to how this fisherman (among others) usually speaks. In naturalistic data, a shift
from one style to another typically is linked to internal and external social factors, such as a change
in addressee, a persona the speaker wishes to forward, or a shift in speech act. Because the
recipients of the message of the stammering fisherman do not change, it is most likely that
Kobayashi intends for the rallying cry to either be (a) directed more specifically at a wider range
of readers, who likely speak SJ (i.e., a change in intended addressee or readership), or (b) a
differently purposed portion of narrative (i.e., a shift from telling the story to telling the point of
the story).
Thus, Kobayashi’s choice to have the stammering fisherman speak SJ reveals the
linguistic ideologies surrounding the HD-SJ or non-standard-standard dialogue oriented to by
Kobayashi; the non-standard is the speech of everyday, whereas it is inappropriate for the critical
speech necessary to achieve proletarian goals.
 Iseri 12

4.2.2 Manager

The manager, referred to as kantoku in the novel, is the primary antagonist in The Crab Cannery.
As a character, the manager is juxtaposed not only ethically by virtue of his cruel work policies
and despicable view on the worth of human life, but also linguistically by his frequent use of
imperatives, like in Excerpt 5 and 6, and extreme tone, like in Excerpt 7. Underlined text refers to
the focus of the excerpt.
Excerpt 5 – Manager’s use of imperatives
M: 「ざま、見やがれ！」
“Look at what’s happening now!”

Excerpt 6 – Manager’s note to fisherman

M: 雑夫、宮口を発見せるものには、バット二つ、手拭一本を、賞与としてくれるべし。浅川監
督。
Workers, whoever finds Miyaguchi wins two packs of Golden Bat cigarettes and a hand
towel, Manager Asakawa

Excerpt 7 – Manager’s brash tone

M: 「船長としてだア――ア」…「おい、一体これア誰の船だんだ。」
“As captain!?”… “Hey, who the hell’s boat do you think this is?”

It is also of note that the manager uses dialectal forms in only two instances, which are
found in Excerpts 8 and 9.

Excerpt 8– Manager’s use of HD

M: 「どうしたんだ、タタき起すど！」と怒鳴りつけた。「いやしくも仕事が国家的である以上、戦
争と同じなんだ。死ぬ覚悟で働け！ 馬鹿野郎」
“What’s a matter, I’ll clobber you!” he cried. “As long as this work is for the nation, it’s
the same as war. Work like you’re prepared to die! You idiots.”

Excerpt 9 – Manager’s use of HD 2

M: 「これでええんだ。――要らないものなんか見なくてもええ、仕事でもしやがれ！」
“These will do – don’t need to look at unnecessary things, just get back to work!”

These usages seem to be outliers in what otherwise constitutes the manager’s

overwhelmingly standard form of Japanese, albeit that his language is more brash and assertive,
which are tendencies associated with stereotypical masculinity in Japanese. In this way, the
manager is constructed as a (despicable and hated) ‘other’. Through the manager’s non-use of
dialect, but shared masculine features, the manager’s identity as a cruel, explosive, and combative
overlord is foregrounded. The manager’s primary use of SJ therefore positions him in dialogic
relation to the fishermen who use HD. Kobayashi’s choice to oppositely position these classes of
characters is accentuated not only through the power relations as explicated by the narrator, but
 Hokkaido Dialect as the Tongue of Revolution 13

also through their choice between standard or non-standard dialect.

4.2.3 Students

Students’ role on the ship is rather ambiguous, as it is not clearly defined by the narrator, and they
are usually lumped in with fishermen. These students are referred to as gakusei or gakusei agari,
defined as ‘one who has just finished being a student’. Whether this means that they had just
graduated from a middle or high school, or that these individuals were unable to complete
schooling and instead came to work on the crab cannery ship, it is left up to the reader’s
interpretation. Regardless of this, students in novel generally take positions of knowledgeability
or leadership. Excerpt 10 demonstrates one such instance where, after the initial strike by workers,
the navy is dispatched to resolve the situation. The student is portrayed as a knowledgeable party
by his being privy to what the navy’s presence entails and by other characters’ eventual orientation
to his assertion of epistemic primacy.

Excerpt 10 – Navy is deployed

G: 「しまったッ」学生の一人がバネのようにはね上った。見る見る顔の色が変った。…
Student: “Oh no!” The student jumped up like a spring. His face turned deathly pale. …

F: 「我帝国の軍艦だ。俺達国民の味方だろう」
Fishermen: “That’s our imperial warship out there. It’s got to be on our side, the side of the people.”

G: 「いや、いや……」学生は手を振った。…
Student: “No, no…”the student waved his hand. …

DF: 「しまった！」そう心の中で叫んだのは、吃りだった。
Stam. Fisherman: “Oh hell” cried the Stuttering Fisherman voicelessly.

Furthermore, the students in the novel primarily use SJ. The instances in which they do
not use SJ and instead opt for HD forms are when they attempt to rally the other workers into
preparing for the strike. Excerpt 11 is one such instance in which a student (or students) intensifies
the direness of the situation through calling out to ‘all those who wish not to be killed’ to follow
him. In doing so, the students’ utterance incorporates HD imperative kere ‘come’.

Excerpt 11 – Student’s rallying cry

G: 「殺されたくないものは来れ！」
“Anyone who doesn’t want to be killed, follow me!”

By having students speak in standard Japanese aside from the emotionally evocative
scenes, it once again evokes a divide between HD and SJ, whereby HD is for emotionally raw and
informal modes of talk, and SJ is for calculating and formal modes of talk.
 Iseri 14

5 Discussion

5.1 Non-standard language use and identity in The Crab Cannery Ship

The distribution of HD and SJ forms follow specific patterns as they relate to the genre of the
speech event and the identity of the (classes of) characters that speak in those forms. SJ forms are
ubiquitously distributed in speech events that are at the core narrative of the proletarian message,
even when the ‘voice’ of the character that is animating that message was previously constructed
with an identity seemingly at odds with that mode of speech. The primary example of this would
be the stammering fisherman, who throughout the novel uses HD to a great degree and is thus
constructed to be a character with whom the reader can emotionally connect and empathize.
Towards the end of the novel, the stammering fisherman does not use HD and instead is portrayed
as speaking in SJ. This creates a palatable division between the ‘voices’ of the stammering
fisherman; the voice of a relatable figure and a fellow proletariat is that of HD, whereas the voice
of the organized leader is that of SJ. In this way, the heteroglossic nature of the stammering
fisherman’s character is revealed, as well as the dialogic relationship between SJ and HD.
Both SJ and HD serve an important role in fulfilling the primary purpose of the proletarian
novel. As introduced in Section 2, a pivotal aspect of proletarian literature is that of creating a
fictional world with characters that the reader (assumingly a proletariat themselves) can empathize
with. Furthermore, according to Kobayashi himself, proletarian works must avoid didactic
lecturing and instead show how a proletarian revolution is not only beneficial, but necessary for
the greater good of Japan (and therefore the world). The use of HD and SJ in somewhat opposite
modes of talk between the same character serves to highlight the transformation of the fellow
worker to a proletariat leader. This rendering is also supported by the fact that the stammering
fisherman goes on to become a martyr, as he is subsequently arrested after the first revolt and the
memory of his (and others’) sacrifice helps to spur a second revolt that is purportedly successful
in the epilogue.
The choice of Kobayashi to have characters such as the stuttering fisherman speak in a
mostly standard, acrolectic version of dialect only during scenes key to the narrative proletarian
revolution (and therefore for the wider audience to understand) reveals how Kobayashi treats non-
standard speech in the grander schema of proletarian literature. That is to say, dialect is the
language of the proletariat, but not of the forces that seek to unify all proletariats together. The
positioning of HD and dialect in relation to SJ is one of local/global, queer/normative, and
marginalized/standardized. The distribution of dialect across and within characters invokes the
dialogic nature of non-standard and standard language use. As the purpose of proletarian literature
is to motivate the masses of workers across Japan (and arguably the world), SJ is the ‘natural’
choice. This is not to say that Kobayashi somehow uniquely generated this dialectic between non-
standard and standard speech varieties, but rather points to the larger socio-political ideologies of
language use during his time.
In many ways, Kobayashi’s decision to make certain classes of characters speak in one
dialect or another are successful in resisting ideologies that place HD as a rural, backwards, and
‘otherized’ minority language. By centering conflict that places HD speakers as its protagonist and
SJ speaker(s) as its antagonist, the audience is encouraged to align with downtrodden and
subjugated workers. From a different perspective, however, Kobayashi nonetheless reifies those
same traditional notions between the power-language dialectic by featuring the climactic rallying
 Hokkaido Dialect as the Tongue of Revolution 15

speech of the Stammering Fisherman in SJ. Provided that Kobayashi himself was subjected to
education that emphasizes SJ as “the blood shared by their [compatriots’] bodies”, it is clear that
Kobayashi shared a vision of kokugo that may have been globally promulgated alongside the
proletariat message.

5.2 Efficacy of literary-sociolinguistic framework analysis

The literary-sociolinguistic framework utilized in this paper advocates for a blend of both literary
and sociolinguistic concerns surrounding non-standard language use in novels. While still
developing, this paper challenges the differences between each field’s set of questions through a
mixed methodology employing both literary and sociolinguistic perspectives. As with any
endeavor for a joint research methodology, there are growing pains. Several questions emerged
during the course of the analysis which, while peripheral to the study at hand, nevertheless raise
important concerns about such a venture. From a sociolinguistic perspective, can literary dialogue
be analyzed as a set of ‘utterances’ in a linguistic sense? How can we account for the interpretations
of literary works that may serve as the ‘response’ of the readership? And from a literary point of
view, are characters’ ‘voices’ the same as or different from the author’s? How much weight do
these voices have to mainstream ideologies and how do we make such a measurement?
While I do not have all the answers to these questions, the analysis provided here aims to
demonstrate that there are commonalities in the socially constructed linguistic ideologies analyzed
from both sociolinguistic and literary perspectives, in so far that they are reflexively created
through literary text just as much as in everyday talk. From a social constructivist paradigm,
language, be it spoken or written, does not just reflect social reality, but creates it. My argument is
thus that the linguistic ideological norms surrounding HD use in the 1920s and 1930s are not only
reflected in Kobayashi’s work but reproduced as a result of the variability in dialect distribution in
the ‘speech’ of characters. The purpose of the novel, its assumed readership, and its relation to
contemporary literary works are strictly literary concerns may provide some hints as to why HD
was used by Kobayashi. However, by simultaneously applying a sociolinguistic lens, the analysis
reveals how certain class identities are constructed through HD or SJ use and therefore provides
new insight. I thus forward that both literary and sociolinguistic modes of analysis can be
complementary in a ‘literary-sociolinguistic’ field of study (Mair, 1992).

6 Conclusion

Thus, by careful manipulation of dialectal registers, Kobayashi uses language to strengthen the
core message of The Crab Cannery Ship and solidifies in the minds of readers how and why
proletarian revolution (i.e., action) can and must be achieved. Demonstrating how the heteroglossic
nature of constructed speech by characters within a narrative can serve narrative purposes is a joint
effort between understandings of identity as they are located in fields of sociocultural linguistics
and sociohistoric positionings of the novel within literary fields of study.
Further research can and should be conducted in this intersection, which may be fruitful
in attempts to understand how social conceptions of language in situ influence narrative decisions
or interpretations of speech found in literature.
 Iseri 16

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