This paper examines the unstable flow of labor narratives appearing in modern Japanese novels, and examines the location of the novel The Factory by Hiroko Oyamada. In order to look at the unstable flow of labor narratives, the scope of consideration has been narrowed down to Akutagawa prize-winning works from the 2000s and onwards. Since the collapse of the bubble economy of the 1990s, the number of freeters and irregular workers in modern Japanese novels have increased significantly. In response to this trend, several Japanese literary researchers considered the characteristics of these novels and named them ‘Neet Novels’ and ‘Freeter Novels’ respectively. In the late 2000s, the term “Precariat” became widely used by irregular workers in Japan. In the field of social movements, there was an attempt to define a novel that deals with their stories as “Precariat literature.” These sporadic studies have found that ‘unstable labor’ is a common denominator. In a large framework, the flow has been mainly caused by the lack of desire for selfrealization through labor. In contrast, the novel The Factory highlights that self-realization through labor, (regardless of regular or irregular workers), is just an illusion. It also suggests that there is only a small degree of difference between regular and irregular labor, leading to the dismantling of labor ethics and the loss of identity that applies to all workers. It is a clear turning point in the narrative of ‘unstable labor’ in modern Japanese literature.