Calculation of Interests (cont’d)
According to our credible sources there is no other person, who is named Sunada beside Mr. Kan Sunada in Creston, in places that have a large Japanese population along the CPR branch line from Nelson, Cranbrook to Fernie. Mr. Sunada was in Vancouver in the spring two years ago, and then visited Fernie and was in Cranbrook as well. Earlier he was involved in a press business in Kishū. In fact, one of our staff members knows him and we have had some correspondence with him for business matters. He is also one of the readers of our paper. Thus, I can say that the letter, which was signed under Sunada, sent from Cranbrook and arrived at our company, has no resemblance to his writing skills and handwriting. In addition, Mr. Kan Sunada is not the kind of person who cannot write a letter by himself and has to request a scriber. Even if he has to hire a scriber for some reason, he would be able to verbally tell the scriber words and phrases, which should not result in such a poor letter. At least, he is not a person who can be satisfied by that kind of writing. This leads us to the supposition that someone disguised themselves by using his name, speculating that we would immediately trust the letter if we see the name Sunada. Such a sneaking scheme—I have no words to describe this.
The letter says, “Reply to me soon. If I do not receive a response, I will visit your company in the spring and meet you.” But why does he want to meet us? His writing is just lukewarm and I am not sure if this can be taken as a threat. He must be very furious to say that he is inclined to travel all the way from the interior merely for the news coverage on brothels. Foolish. According to our investigation, this disguised person is from the cave in Cranbrook and he is involved in some standoff between caves. The letter seems like a side effect of this. This is truly strange. I have seen this kind of letter a number of times and I presented just one of them here to let the reader know how much impact this series is having on the people in the interior.
I will finally move on to the content of this section tomorrow.