In February 2009, I was in a book store in the international terminal of Tokyo's Narita Airport when I saw it: Kobayashi Takiji's 1929 novella Kani Kosen (The Factory Ship) on the endcap sporting the best-sellers of 2008.

Two young Japanese women paused near the endcap, and then one picked up the book. I asked them why they were interested in it, explaining that I research Japanese proletarian literature. One woman cautiously answered, “Kani kosen has been discussed a lot lately.” Neither woman had read it, nor did they buy it then.

“Discussed a lot lately.” To the surprise of many, circulation of the nearly 80 year old proletarian novella Kani kosen jumped from approximately 5,000 copies per year to over 500,000 in 2008, and that does not include sales of the four manga versions which may have reached many more readers.

Anthony Giddens was right to emphasize that ‘[a] large part of the chequered history of the concept of class has to be understood in terms of the changing concerns of those who have made use of the notion, concerns which reflect changing directions of emphasis within sociology itself’ (1977: 99). It must be added, though, that those concerns also reflect value-ridden perceptions about the structure of societies and social models, and indeed the changing structures and prevailing political and social values in society. Even the shifting emphasis in social analysis that Giddens refers to may reflect emerging ideologies within the profession and within the broader context of social relations, notably paradigm shifts. This is certainly the case with the use of the class concept and methodologies of class analysis in the People's Republic of China (PRC) over the last two to three decades.