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Home / No.22 (December 14, 1908)

No.22 (December 14, 1908)

Route of Cave Pioneering (cont’d)

I have already described how Takeshi Satō pioneered the caves in Saskatoon. He was running a western restaurant in Nelson for a short period of time before he moved to Seattle a few years ago. Then he disappeared without clearing up his debt to a wholesale store, which led to a more serious anti-Japanese sentiment in Nelson. We can say that his deed certainly created troubles for the straight Japanese.

“Route of Cave Pioneering” ended up being a lengthy section, because I inserted the backgrounds of devils in between. As I have a number of other sections I want to include, I will wrap up the rest of this section quickly.

As I mentioned earlier, Calgary was pioneered by Chatarō and Sentarō Ōta and is currently dominated by folks from Izu. Since this, Izu has produced many who plot illicit profit-making that involves abduction of prostitutes. Izu is diverse, of course, so not the entire region of Izu produces devils. In fact, Keitarō Yamada is from Shige, Tagata-gun, Izu (some people say that he is from Yagisawa), and Goemon Kashima, who sent his wife to Takeshi Satō, is from Heta, Heta-mura, Tagata-gun. Others, including well-known Koyama and Shirō Nonami in San Francisco and Negishi, who mediated quite a lot of prostitutes in Canada, are also from Heta. People generally say that Izu produced many prostitutes and this is because of the presence of these devils. They defamed Izu-ers significantly.

The cave in Golden is dominated by a devil called Hatori; Revelstoke once had a cave owner called Kudō; Medicine Hat had Makino and Chiba; Kamloops had Yūji Ōmori and his wife Oshizu; Vernon had Yokota for a long time and, as of last spring, devil Toramatsu Motegi’s sister Masa Higuchi and Ichirō Kataoka’s daughter Ohana. However, they were expelled after the town became stricter and had no other choice but move inside along the CPR line to Okanagan, Landing, and Kelowna. But all these places had bad economies and they were not able to make anything good for themselves. They then moved back toward Vancouver via Sicamous and just arrived in Ashcroft a few days ago. Their movement is now fully recorded in Enma’s* (!) file.

To make observation of a cave in the furthest region, Rintarō Iida, who is currently located in Calgary, once brought his wife and prostitutes with him and occupied Port Arthur and Fort William. Both are well-known cities by Lake Superior in Ontario and 1,900 miles away from Vancouver. Serves him right, his business “successfully” ended up as a failure. He cannot expose the shame of the Japanese to the eastern region. I conclude the “Route of Cave Pioneering” here. What is next?

*Enma is the god of death in Hinduism and Buddhism.
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