The Voyage (Book)
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| Author | Nishikawa Masayoshi |
|---|---|
| Original title | Kōkai |
| Country | Neo-Korea |
| Language | Hiakemirian Constructed Language |
| Genre | Semakunaru Horror, Science Fiction, Psychological Horror, Body Horror, Grotesque Realism |
| Publisher | Kokugahin |
Publication date | September 5th, 1985 |
Published in English | August 5th, 1989 |
| Media type | Print (Paperback & Hardback) |
| Pages | 812 (HCL Version} 800 (Seurian Version) |
| Awards | Order of Literary Accomplishment |
The Voyage (Hiakemirian Constructed Language: Kōkai) is an 1985 Semakunaru Horror and Science Fiction novel by Kāichrén author Nishikawa Masayoshi. The story has no single point of view character, instead focusing on the multiple perspectives of the crew of the KSF. Kōkai, a small space cargo ship crewed by 12 individuals, which crashes into an attitude under the direction of the crew's captain, Ban Sho. The three most common perspectives are of the ship's medical professional, Kajiwara Haru, the ship's former captain, Ban Sho, and the ship's temporary captain, Akiyama Juro, with Ose Noboru gathering a larger role in later sections of the book.
Throughout the course of the novel, the crew of the Kōkai is whittled down due to paranoia and pre-existing hostilities amongst the crew, with Juro especially falling to his severe paranoia and murdering the pregnant Haru, whom he had been in an failing relationship with for some time before the events of the novel. Ban Sho, who has throughout the novel been bedridden and gradually mutilated by the rest of the cast as a result of their blaming of him for the incident, is revealed to have been innocent - in the sense that it was in fact Juro who had created the situation which lead to the crash due to his drunkenness. By the end of the story, only Ban Sho and Juro are left alive on the ship - with Juro, who had found a cryopod with the potential to save one member of the crew immediately after his murder of Haru, forcing Sho into such before committing suicide. The novel ends on an exploration log made by the company who originally sent out the Kōkai - where blame for the events of the novel is officially shifted onto Sho due to the family of Juro being in the midst of trying to sue them.
Kōkai would be influential in the field of "post" Semakunaru Horror, although Masayoshi personally identified with the orthodox line of thought in regards to that dispute. It was additionally influential in the field of science fiction, with its portrayal of space as still being infested by Iminchebol-type negative relations between labor and worked being expanded upon in future Virtual-Struggle and general Scifi works.
Summary
The novel opens with what is considered an "average" day on the Kōkai, a cramped, ugly, and poorly constructed logistics ship - Kajiwara Haru, the ship's doctor, is looking over her recent paychecks and expressing concern over the fact that they are at risk of losing their jobs to her friend, Tanabe Mana. Ban Sho, the captain, and his navigator Akiyama Juro are in the bridge, where they are playing a quick game of cards and discussing the recent wave of paycuts to members of the higher staff, blaming the ongoing "reorganization" of the Intārojisutikusu company they work for on such. Juro, having wagered and won one of the few bottles of alchohol anyone on the crew could get their hands on, carelessly types in a series of coordinates he reads from a post-it-note following his consumption of such. A few additional viewpoints of members of the ship are shown, before suddenly the ship crashes into an asteroid - damaging its engines severely, and wounding Ban Sho.
Akiyama moves to take control of the ship - trying to distract from the status of such by blaming Sho on drinking while in his position, an excuse much of the crew accepts due to their own derelictions of duty in the past. They agree to try and keep Sho alive for the moment, until they can hold a "tribunal" on his actions once he is healed. The Kōkai has enough non-rotting provisions to survive a few months - meaning that the crew believes they can survive through sending a beacon out, something the director of engineering aboard the ship, Nakayama Tadashi, accomplishes in exchange for his life. Throughout this time, there are repeated perspectives from Ban - who is wrapped in gauze, unable to move, and in near-constant pain throughout the course of the day. He attempts to converse with Haru one day after being given one of the remaining dosages of painkillers, attempting to explain what happened - but his tongue was cut during the last time he was given them and fell asleep - something Haru discovers during Ban's attempt to speak.
Juro begins to exhibit signs of paranoia - forcing two crew members to stand guard over the food at all time and escalating his verbal abuse of members of the crew, including Haru - and repeatedly coming to the medbay and simply staring at Sho for hours at end. From his own perspective, he is keeping the crew away from the wounded captain - who he notes has been more quiet than when he first caught sight of Juro. Juro, during one of his increasing periods of refusing to sleep, notices that a singular piece of bread has been removed from the stockpile of food. In his paranoid spiral, he believes this to be a sign of long-term sabotage of the stockpile, forcing the crew to gather in the central area of the ship and refusing to let them leave until the thief is discovered. Over three days without eating, Mana finally breaks and reveals she took the slice as a late-night snack. Juro has her forcibly sent into space with the assent of the entirety of the crew excluding Haru and Ban, something which minorly assuages his paranoia.
Throughout the course of another month, Juro restricts the supply of food further - standing watch at almost every hour he is capable of being awake, and intimidating Haru into giving him stimulants to allow for such to continue. Juro begins to consider himself the "god" of the ship, demanding praise for the fact that the rest of the crew has survived, and beginning to mandate greater amounts of work on trying to repair the engine, something which was abandoned due to the death of Tadashi. Juro is assisted in this by Ose Noboru, who takes the role of Juro's "headbreaker" in exchange for greater food rations, ignoring his own concerns over what is occurring to accomplish such. The engine is blocked by a series of vents which have become dangerous over the course of the first few months - with the crew refusing to go into such. In a fit of rage, Juro has Tadashi's protégé, Nagata Shiro, forced into the vent by Ose - with Shiro being repeatedly cut by shards of metal while he attempts to get the engine, eventually bleeding out by the time he arrives there.
This causes the crew to begin considering dissent - with Juro seizing a revolver Ban smuggled onto the ship as a means to defend himself, with the revolver and his lack of sleep causing him to eventually begin aiming at anyone who approaches him in the food storage room without his assent. Throughout the course of the coming months, multiple crewmembers die - either from overdoses allowed by Haru, who has been repeatedly affected by suicidal ideation of her own, or by Ose - who has attached his anchor firmly to Juro, and therefore attempts to crush dissent through repeated beatings which lead to the death of one other crew member due to internal damage.
Ban finally has the ability to move his arms again, and - while Juro is taking one of the few periods of rest he allows under the guard of Ose, draws the series of events which lead to the collapse. Haru debates with herself throughout the course of a week before eventually deciding to reveal this - but she is prevented when Juro, who found one of the drawings produced by Ban on the ground, shoots and kills her immediately after revealing he knew the two had a son together. Juro then immediately afterwards is informed of a cryopod behind Ose's room - leading to Ose's death as Juro believes he has been hiding it for his own utilization in the future (it is implied heavily that Ose was actually saving it for Juro himself).
The death of Ose leads to chaos on the ship, and in the course of a series of attempts at killing Juro the majority of the crew dies, with Juro himself being heavily injured. Finally forced to confront what his paranoia has lead to, Juro forces Ban into the cryopod, closes it, and shoots himself - leaving the ship adrift and dead. In the end, the company arrives a week after the conflict occurs, and, due to both the ongoing legal proceedings and a desire to get a new ship on the route quickly decides to blame Ban for the events of the ship - stating that it was his fault the crew collapsed. The book ends with an internal announcement of Ban being sentenced to death.
Major Characters
Akiyama Juro
Juro is derived, in both personality and role, from Masayoshi's interpretation of Captain Job Korris - with Juro's monomania, gradual descent into paranoia, and willingness to sacrifice other members of the crew for his own power being intended as direct reflections of Korris's own actions in this regards. To fulfill this, Juro takes on the most unambiguously antagonistic role in the story despite his regular position as a point of view character - with his own internal monologue repeatedly being used to show the depths of his obsession with the role he believes he is obligate to take - the most striking example being the own internal justification he utilizes to blame Haru for the near-entirety of the events of the story, including all the deaths directly caused by his orders. His suicide, under this lens, becomes one final means of avoiding responsibility - contrasted with the distinctly heroic actions of self-sacrifice carried out by Tadashi, with his action of saving Ban being one final act to ensure that his legacy as the captain continues to exist.
Despite this antagonistic role, Juro is still given some level of narrative sympathy - with his paranoia being traced directly to the breaking of his career and future prospects by the corporation which chartered the Kōkai and his lack of capacity to fulfill any other role due to his exclusion from general society. With his inability to exist in the social structures which would be needed to function in society, his collapse of mind when a struggle which disables his natural leader and his failure to adapt to the role takes a more sympathetic tack.
Kajiwara Haru
Haru's role in the story can be primarily traced to her role as the focal viewpoint for "narrowing" within the context of such - her life gradually being crushed throughout the process of the collapse of society / industry represented through such across the ship. This is encapsulated in her inability to save, or even speak up for to any great extent, Mana - with her death, Haru has lost all connections to pre-industrial existence, and therefore becomes a cog within the machine that has become Juro's leadership of the ship. When she attempts to break this state, she has already been narrowed to such an extent that she is unable to take action before the representation of collapsing existence (Juro) kills her.
Her pregnancy, and the implications given throughout the story that it was not an entirely consensual relationship with Juro, is generally read as another sign of the collapsing standards of society brought as a result of the industrial crunch aboard the ship. Her role of being forced to work through such alongside the verbal abuse constantly given by Juro establishes his role as a fundamental exploiter using her own repressed hopes as a means to prop himself up.
Ban Sho
Sho's role as the most neutral observer is functionally crucial to maintaining the flow of the story - with the isolation he feels being another form of narrowing which causes the collapse of the society aboard the ship. His role as a simultaneous idol and rival to Juro (alongside the romantic undertones of certain sections of the story covering the two) shows Juro's obsession with power in a more direct fashion, with Sho's own agency being ignored by Juro in order to maintain his own narrative. Additionally, Juro's removal of Sho's tongue can be seen as an extension of these beliefs - by silencing Sho, Juro attempts to maintain his role while also using him as a tool to endure amongst the collapsing morale of the ship, with Sho being a target of "just punishment" who can be abused and exploited as a parasite without any moral justification needing to go into acts targeting him.
Structure
Throughout the story, a key part of the telling of the story is the differences between the perspective viewpoints - with Haru's clear, simple narration being utilized to show her general lack of outstanding issues, Juro's rambling and usually lacking-in-punctuation sentences being used both to show the degrading mentality he exhibits throughout the story, and Sho's generally slow and cautious dialogue choices on both an internal and external level showing his former status as the clear-headed member of the trio, before such is taken by him by Juro. Much of the description of the ship takes inspiration from the "Apartment Days" of Matsumoto Kyou, with repeated focus on the sheer constraint felt from moving within such and the mold-like growths which come to dominate the ship throughout later parts of the story. In this sense it takes the fundamental decay felt by the crew and converts it to environmental storytelling.
Repeatedly throughout the story, the ship and crew are combined into a singular narrative entity - the wounding of the ship treated as an extension of the wounding of the crew, and vice versa. Juro's control of the ship becomes control of the crew, and the loss of such becomes the final moment in which his ideals and beliefs collapse due to the absolute failure of his leadership to maintain the status of either. This is finalized at the end of the story by the way the death of the ship is associated with the death of Sho.
Format
All three main perspectives utilize different font formats, with Sho standing out due to the entirety of his pages having a semi-transparent detailing of the wounds upon his body behind the lines of thought he is making while on painkillers. Additionally notable is that the Kōkai, whenever mentioned distinctly, is colored a different shade of black from the rest of the dialogue - causing the eye to be drawn to it, and allowing for it to be notable whenever it is mentioned.
Themes
As mentioned earlier, the story works as a part of the general body of work based on Semakunaru Horror, with Narrowing - the process of hollowing caused by the development of industrialization and the fashion in which large entities exploited their workers - being the primary focus of the story in many senses. Especially crucial to this perspective of narrowing is Juro and Haru - both of whom are crushed by the weight of the industrial world around them, with Haru being even further crushed and forced into a role as a cog in the organization of the increasing cult of personality surrounding Juro by the death of her friend. Juro, in comparison, has his paranoia and worst instincts consume the entirety of his being throughout his narrowing, both due to the collapse of his privilege aboard the ship due to the upcoming closure of the Kōkai, and - due to factors inherent to that closure - the seperation of himself from Ban, something his ego and drive to surpass Ban cannot comprehend.
The story also touches on other themes of Semakunaru, including the lack of nature aboard the ship and themes of suicidal ideation.