What is "kanikosen"

published in English as The Cannery Boat (1933), The Factory Ship (1973), and The Crab Cannery Ship (2013) is a novel by Takiji Kobayashi, written in 1929. Written from a communist point of view, it concerns the crew of a crab fishing ship's hardships as they struggle under what they view as capitalist exploitation. The book has been made into a film and as manga. It is a short work, totalling around 80 pages in its English translation.