Cranbrook
No single interior cave site has not been affected by the change in the past two, three years, but among them the case of Cranbrook is particularly remarkable.
Back in 1908, Cranbrook had Jirō Hashimoto’s prostitute cave with Oshichi and Omine; his, so-called, cave no.2 had Higashi’s Osuma, Oka’s Okimi, Miyagi’s Oiwa; his cave no.3 had Makino and Oshichi, who accompanies him, and Mary, who got together with Takita, as you know. There was another cave, which housed three women arranged by Matsuno, Itō and Tsukino. However, Osuma return to Japan in June 1909; Miyagi escaped to Fernie; Oka moved to the house he owned but had rented out to white prostitutes, and placed Okimi with him; and Jirō moved from no.1 and took over the seat left by Osuma. This house was originally owned by Shinpei Matsumoto in the same city but Jirō offered him exactly $1,000 and received operational rights and properties. Jirō’s no.1 in turn was replaced by old devil Kigawa from the interior but his prostitute was killed by disease two years ago and Kigawa returned to Japan.
Makino’s Oshichi soon became involved with Kagawa, who was running a western restaurant in Cranbrook; Mary and Takita left their house even before Oshichi left the city; Oshichi was replaced by Benkichi Ashida and Omine, who bought her house from Shinjō in Revelstoke.
Just like Takita, Ashida was once working at the sawmill in Wattsburg. He was lazy but straight at least, but he fell into stupid things and became involved with Omine. He is one of the new devils. Takita and Mary took over the seat that used to be occupied by Matsuno, and two doors down—the next door is Oka’s private house—is another house, which now houses Sugabe’s Osachi. As a result, there were six Japanese caves and stayed as such though there was some movement until two years ago, that is, June 1910 when it was decided that all caves whether that be white or Asian were going to be closed down and relocated to another district far from the town. This gave a significant blow not only to devil leaders but any other worthless fellows from the devildom. They were devastated for a while but they motivated themselves to newly build prostitute caves in the new location.