Centered on a narrator who works slaughtering and processing cattle and pigs, the novel follows why he continues in that job while sharing a life with his working wife and young son. It examines a concrete workplace alongside the choices involved in supporting a family and making a living.

A slaughterhouse worker connects his job with the life of his family.

A work of literary criticism on Yoshirō Ishihara's experience of the Soviet labor camps and communism in his thought. It reads Ishihara's ideas not as communitarianism, but as practices of communication and exchange.

Using Yoshirō Ishihara's labor-camp experience as a starting point, it examines communism and responsibility.