No.03 (November 21, 1908)

Currently, the interior caves that most deserve our attention include Nelson and Cranbrook. Each has four caves, and they are located inside the town. Nelson has them stand side by side with white caves on the backstreet of Chinatown; Cranbrook has them also mixed with white caves in front of the train station. In total of 14 women make profit in Nelson, and 10 in Cranbrook.

I will omit backgrounds of these women here, as I plan to write about them in a separate section, but their clients do not include sons of noble families on white horses and silver saddles, visiting caves out of whim, of course. Women are offered as sacrifices to satisfy barbaric desires of mainly labourers. Inside the dark redlight district is an endless stroll of desiring devils, who are drawn by Rappabushi* if not Sugagaki**. This is where the devil leaders’ lifelines are carried on. What surprises us is the fact that in both Nelson and Cranbrook, caves explicitly display signs, without fear, such as Japanese House, Tōkyō House, or Hana, Ito, or sometimes in English names such as Maple or Josie. This would not happen if there was a credible Japanese person beside them.

However, Nelson has no straight Japanese but only cave traders. There are interesting materials about this but I will leave them for a separate section. The next place we should keep our eyes on is Calgary. It also has four caves but unlike the two places mentioned above, they are located in a place called North Creek, which is located over the hill and a big bridge, two miles away from the town. They are also mixed with white caves. They were abolished two years ago, but when they restarted it was Oume, a wife of Sentarō Ōta who died recently in Cranbrook, who entered there before anyone else. Fernie and Hosmer have no remnants of the past after the fire, which you know. Revelstoke has two, Lethbridge has one, Macleod has one, and other places have two at most, but usually one: brave women in these places are dealing with savage men of a different race. Last summer, Medicine Hat had a devil called Chiba from Fukuoka Prefecture. He stole Otomi, who was born in Noboricho, Hiroshima, who migrated to this country a long time ago, and who is a wife of Masatada Tobe from Hiroshima. Tobe was Chiba’s friend from the time when they were in the United States but Chiba took Otomi and another prostitute, and is running a prostitution business at his own house. We have heard that he bought this house from the owner of American Hotel, which is located in front of the station in Medicine Hat. But because the city’s economy is not well, he occupies a place in Michel near Fernie and still lives as a person of the shade. Some towns are prohibited from publicly running caves. For example, Edmonton and Winnipeg fall into this category. In Edmonton, a devil called Toraji Asami and a woman hide their business under the name of tea house; in Winnipeg, Tanabe is also doing a “tea house” at 124 Pacific Avenue.