The first one to launch the construction of new houses was Jirō Hashimoto, who then had cash in the amount of $3,000 in his hand. He built only one house first and then another one next. The next person was Sugabe’s Osachi, who was followed by Shozo Tsukino; both of them invested $1,200 to $1,300. In addition there was another house built by Otori, who was with Itō, sponsored by Chinese. Among Hashimoto’s houses, which I mentioned earlier, one was sold to white cave business people at $1,800 in the spring two years ago. The other house was passed on to Sankichi Tsuchino in the end of last year.
This Tsuchino, who is from Gōshū and was a straight man in the interior until three or four years ago, but became one of new devils like Takita and Ashida, traveled from Edmonton to Michel and settled down in Cranbrook. Now, the house of Shozo Tsukino was taken over by Chinese for the amount of $1,400. Beside these, there were two houses built by Shinpei Matsumoto out of which one is rented out to whites and the other to a man called Asami who is with two French prostitutes. Asami came from the United States two or three years ago, but has been involved in some upheavals since then. Regarding the current situation here, Japanese managers who run prostitute caves in Cranbrook today include Sachi Sugabe and Itō’s Tori. Tori had some incident with Itō and we will expose that later. Tsuchino rented his house to whites and flew to Macleod.
There is a remarkable drama from Macleod but I will introduce that later on.
Speaking of Cranbrook, or in fact, speaking of the pioneering history of interior caves and its present situation, we must mention Shinpei Matsumoto. There was a time when Matsumoto’s wife Oshige, who cannot also be missed in the history of prostitute caves, returned to Japan. This happened after the first series was published. In February two years ago she came back to Vancouver alone by the Empress. While it did not go easy for her to go ashore, she gave excuses of this or that and got permission to enter the country. Shinpei Matsumoto brought a certificate, which he got from the Cranbrook authorities, and came all the way to Vancouver to greet Oshige. He deftly obtained this certificate by using the network he built from his other business, which he continued doing in the straight world. But this involved a lot of effort by Konagaya.