URA HELLO WORK CHAPTER ONE: TUNA FISHING
What is Shinya Kusaka’s URA HELLO WORK?
Where can I buy it?
1 – TUNA FISHING CREW (マグロ漁船乗組員： MAGURO GYOSEN NORIKUMIIN)
RISK: ****
SALARY:***
HARD LABOR:****
ILLEGALITY:*
In the not-too-distant past, Yakuza loan-sharks would say, “Since you can’t pay back the money, why don’t you work on my tuna boat?” If you work on a tuna boat, you can earn enough to pay off a fairly large loan, and that might be the only way you can do it. But in fact, it’s really difficult to find anyone willing to work there, and the details of the “tuna crew recruiter” are shrouded in mystery. (There was a case where a restaurant owner who owed money to a loan-shark who ‘strongly suggested’ tuna servitude. The gangster was later charged with attempted extortion but he was acquitted.)
I tried every step I could think of to investigate this hustle, but was unable to meet anyone who had tuna-crewed. However, I had help from an unexpected source! Mr. Smallswamp (Who we’ll meet later on in the chapter on Medical Experiments) happened to know a former tuna crew member, and offered to introduce us. Let’s call this man Mr. Monkeypasser (not his real name). He is 39 and has worked on tuna boats for a total of 5 years (plus more experience bonito fishing). I managed to catch up with him while he was waiting for his next ship to put out.
At the meeting spot, I heard a gruff and hearty voice call my name. I turned around and there was Mr. Monkeypasser with his thick eyebrows, dusky skin and wide shoulders – a real fisherman! He certainly looked like someone who was in debt and was able to work it off. I was flustered by his intimidating appearance, so he had to introduce himself first, and, stammeringly, I replied. Then he led me to a Japanese-style bar where we talked while gorging ourselves on ramen.
“IT’S RARE FOR A DUDE TO BE FORCED INTO THIS JOB, JUST BECAUSE HE’S IN DEBT!”
. . .Is what he said. I asked him, “But doesn’t everyone joining the crew have some kind of ‘special situation’ ?” He laughed in my direction. By the way, he’s from Touhoku, so it’s really hard for me to understand his thick accent. Basically I’m translating his speech into regular Japanese (Ed. Note: ha! Meta!). “I hear that rumor a lot – ‘Who’s making you guys work on the boat?’ , but really if a guy wants to do it, he does it; That’s all there is to it! But recently, there’s a lot of desperate immigrants on the crews, more than Japanese even. And they can’t even talk right! Can’t understand a damn word. . .”
The fishing industry has been hit by the current recession, and owners are hiring immigrant labor to cut costs.
It seems that all my images of Yakuza slave-galleys were nothing but urban legends ; n practice, it’s immigrants and career fishermen like Mr. Passmonkey out on the ocean. When I realized this, I felt briefly despondent. But then, Mr. Passmonkey continued:
“If there’s 30 guys on an average crew, maybe 2 or 3 have some kinda ‘situation’ going on, but of course it all depends on how bent the owner is. If the ship owner is deeply connected with the Yakuza, he’s more likely to press-gang some debtors! But if you look at it from the H.R. perspective – a noob isn’t going to be as useful as a career fisherman. Plus, if they were honest and hardworking, they probably wouldn’t of gotten press-ganged in the first place, so the boss has to consider that, too, before he hires them.”
“AHA! Gangs,”I thought, as Mr. Passmonkey continued:
“Yeah, that kind of stuff happened more in the past – because there was a shortage of labor, wasn’t there? When the economy was good, who was gonna say, “Hey, I’m gonna drop everything and work on a tuna boat!” So that’s why they had to press-gang debtors – or the flip-side: guys running away to sea to escape debt collectors!!”
Of course there’s always wild rumors – like guys getting lured out to sea under false pretenses, only to be murdered for the insurance money. That stuff never happens. And even if it did happen, no one would say anything. Least of all me!”
There are cases of long-haul tuna boats being gone for 2 or even 3 years at a time. They do put into port for supplies, but this is very seldom – maybe once every time they make a big catch. Recently they’ve been going as far as East and South Africa, which is quite a “round trip.” For all this, Mr. Passmonkey has never been interested in vacationing abroad, and marriage is pretty much out of the question as well. I asked Mr. Passmonkey about the length of his voyages:
“Some boats can be out for over a year – we think 10 months is short! We keep the tuna immersed in water, and rely on a big-ass refrigerator tank to keep them fresh. You want a big catch: the faster you fill up the hold, the sooner you can go home: and of course the reverse is also true! As for money, it’s enough to live on. For a standard-length voyage, around $60,000 a year is normal. Of course the monthly rate is less if you’re only gone for one month at a time! At any rate, since there’s nothing to spend the money on at sea, it really piles up! Of course some fellows get into a bit of gambling, but if you do it moderately, you’ll still have a lot left over when you get back.
“Lots of guys ask me about the money, and then they tell me they want to try life at sea. But fishing is hard work, and not a lot of guys are up to all the physical toil. Most guys act interested but then don’t show up for the hiring– they were just “window shopping!” You can tell them about the job, about all the money, but it goes in one ear and out the other. But when it comes right down to it, we barely have enough guys!
“Long distance fishing – you’re stuck on the same boat with the same guys all year, so it’s really important to be able to communicate. If you get on board with no guts, or trying to do a half-assed job, you’re in trouble! Or maybe you really want to be a fisherman, but it turns out you get paralyzing sea-sickness! Useless! Or if you cry like a baby that you want to go home, you’re a nuisance to us. Usually those guys learn to deal with it in the first week, though. At least they adapt to the extent that they can do their damn job.”
Listening to him speak, one can feel Mr. Passmonkey’s passion for his work. He seems to feel that even a debtor, if they really adapt to life at sea, can be redeemed by fishing.
“If you’ve already thrown away your life once, and you get a second chance, you’ll work your fingers to the bone to regain your lost honor. The first time I met (this guy), he wouldn’t talk about his situation. But after a month together at sea, he opened up. There’s a lot of guys who leave the boat reformed. Of course, you got your useless jerk-offs too! But in general, tuna-boats aren’t just fishing; you can also think of the tuna boat as a “second chance factory.”
THERE’S NO FISHING MORE DANGEROUS THAN TUNA FISHING
Next, Mr. Passmonkey told me about the serious conditions of life on the high seas.
“I know a guy – a ‘connected’ guy (関係者: ‘kankeisha’) – who puts out propaganda to try to get youngsters to jump on board our super-wonderful ship, but the reality is tuna fishing is the most dangerous kind! I knew an older guy who fell off the ship on the winter seas and died. And I’ve cut my body badly while filleting the tuna. Not to mention the sharks! Sometimes there’s more sharks than tuna! All different kinds – maira, and shomoku sharks circling around. It’s really tough to manage them. You can sometimes kill them if you hit them on the snout, or you can electro-shock them, but sharks don’t die easy! One time a new guy – I thought he was dead for sure – he got bit right on the leg and he was kicking up an awful ruckus about it! Without a word, we all pitched in, though, and finished the shark off.
“You’ll realize it if you think about it for a second – in the middle of the ocean, there’s not a big jump from injury to death! A little knife cut or small wound is one thing, but if you get a deep gash, by the time you can see a doctor, you’ll have lost your life! I’m not exaggerating. Sure, we’ve got some emergency supplies, but full-scale medical treatment is only available on dry land. An acquaintance of mine was on a boat where some guy got a huge deep wound – and there was no anesthetic on board! They had to literally flood the hole in his body with sake while stitching it up. In that case, they were able to save him. But since it takes over a week to get to the nearest hostpial, it’s not unusual for the guy to die. They say the ocean really tests how much you want to live! That’s why it’s hard for us to find new guys that really got that burning desire to put out to sea.
“And when you get to the actual fishing spot, that’s when work gets really hard. It’s not like the old days when you’d catch them one by one. And by law we got to use these damn “longline-fishing” nets which are a bitch to control. You’ll be laboring for up to 20 hours at a stretch. Guys get swept out to sea because they’re so tired, they forget to be careful. There’s not a moment to catch your breath. After you’ve been working 12, 15 hours, you can’t keep your concentration – and that’s when mistakes happen. I knew a guy whose finger got snapped off in the nets – it went flying! I told him to stop working but he kept going – even though he was all holding his severed finger and crying. There was nothing any of us could say to him.”
ONLY GO CRAB-FISHING IF YOU ARE DESPERATE AS HELL.
You can make a good living crewing a tuna boat, but if you need even more money, your only option is the grim, cruel world of crab-fishing.
“Crabbing is so rough, even I don’t want to try it! Tuna boats hit some rough waters, but crabbing season only comes once a year, right when the sea is raging like a monster! What’s more, tuna boats are fairly large, so the chance of getting capsized is minimal. Even in a big storm, we have other things to worry about. But crab boats are really dinky, and if your boat flips in the middle of a storm. ..Those guys live in constant fear that they’ll be thrown into a winter ocean with waves that come at you like titanic black fangs, one after another, attacking. Even a skilled swimmer will be paralyzed by the temperature in a minute, and find himself unable to move his arms or legs. Don’t go crab fishing unless you’ve already made peace with your maker and said goodbye to your family!”
He also said that here are Japanese fishermen that help the Russians illegally fish crabs in Japanese-controlled oceans.
“It’s common to see reports of Russians illegally fishing on the news. But what the media doesn’t show is how Japanese locals guide Russians to the good crab spots, and act as lookouts, when the Coast Guard comes! Because the Coast Guard has really been cracking down, it’s much harder for the Russians to do their thing. . . so they’ve been paying our fishermen to sail near the Russian boats and act as camoflauge! They have a lot of different techniques for that. ‘No, skipper, no one but us Japanese out here!’
“Unlike tuna, which we can catch year-round, crab fishing has a very narrow window of time. But if you work your ass off during crab season, you can clear $10,000 a month. Nothing to scoff at, brother! My buddy went off to do mitsuryou (密漁, illegal fishing), up around the Karafuto islands (disputed between Japan and Russia), but I haven’t heard from him since. I hope he’s ok!”
Most of the mitsuryou is run by the Russian mafiya, it seems, but Mr. Passmonkey didn’t know anything more specific than that. Why did fishermen try to do such dangerous work, I asked?
“The money’s good but that’s not the only reason. We’re tough guys – we like to test our strength. See if we got what it takes. If you can survive crab fishing, you’re looked on as the most tough of the tough. Everyone at the fishermans’ bar will listen to your stories.
As for me, I like the long-distance fishing runs. Everything is huge-scale: the size of the boat, the distance, and even the tuna are huge! I guess land is too boring for the likes of me! Even when we touch down on foreign continents, I can’t get settled. I’m restless to get back on the open ocean.I just can’t get the knack for leading a life on land!”
In the end, Mr. Passmonkey was headed out to sea again just two months after this book is published.
12 comments Tags: crime, ura hello work —
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Amazin.
Keep on the good job.
Fucking amazing. Totally appreciate this shit.
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Hi Schultz, Can I just take moment, to say, if I may, that I for one am, am sincerely grateful, that you are volunteering your own time to translate this book, so that I don’t have to pay for it and learn Japanese to read it and if you continue I pledge, on my grandmother’s grave, that I will read every chapter, and will be even more grateful that I don’t pay for your bandwidth. – CBP
good one Steven.
it’s looking goooood dude. such interesting stuff! and i love that you gave him hella fishermany slang. and the use of the word ‘press-gang’ is fekkin genius.
What’s “noob” translated from??
When you started off there, I was about to say, “No way tuna boating is more dangerous than Bering Sea crab fishin’”. That Alaska crabbin’ is frickin’ psycho. Keep up the good work.
ONLY GO CRAB-FISHING IF YOU ARE DESPERATE AS HELL.
I will remember these words of wisdom. Thanks a lot – I really enjoy reading your translations and getting these insights to aspects of Japanese life that fall in the category of ‘things you don’t know that you don’t know.’ Please keep up the good work!
@funniously ; glad you agree about the crab-fishing danger. But I got to say – if it’s right, it’s only because the author got his facts right. I just translate!
素晴らしい。これって良い勉強になるぜ。
＞＞What’s “noob” translated from??
I’d like to know, too. I’m sure there’s a more… degrading word than sho-shin-sha.
@ aaron @ fake: I translated ‘noob’ from 素人.
stay tuned – on Monday (japan time) I’m uploading the chapter on medical guinea pigs.