苦役列車

Kanta Kitamachi's family fell apart when his father was convicted of a sex crime, and after a gloomy youth of divorce and changing schools he left home at the end of middle school with money squeezed from his mother. Now nineteen, he loads and unloads at a cold-storage warehouse on the waterfront for 5,500 yen a day, all of it gone at once on drink and soapland visits, and he is regularly evicted for unpaid rent. Then Kusakabe, a sporty vocational student with an easy smile, starts working beside him. Kanta warms to him and pushes him to introduce a girl, with drink and an inferiority complex never far away.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novella

Length

147 pages in the original

Genres

Autofiction, Coming of age (assigned by AI)

Set in

Japan, 1980s

First published

2010 by Shinchosha

Author's age

43 when first published

ISBN

9784103032328 (original)