An Ugly Case
Ugly incident involving many devil leaders
Furtive conflict over a crip prostitute
Died in a foreign land leaving her child to [someone’s care]
The reason why I wrapped up miscellany short and am starting a new section “An Ugly Case” is that this incident was rare, though a little dated, and it involved quite a few devil leaders, who struggled and worked their guts out in order to take a control over one single prostitute’s career. What is more, this case presents a strange spectacle of human paradox, because the woman was crippled and beautiful, which is rare to find in their society.
When an exposition took place in Portland, Yoshida, a well-known prostitute abductor in Yokohama, sent a prostitute candidate to Vancouver. This crippled beauty, whose name is Michi Kawada, was in the Yokohama area and was extremely well-trained in sewing. Tempted by Yoshida’s sweet-talk, she migrated to this country at a young age before she turned twenty, and was immediately transferred from Vancouver to Hayashi’s cave in Nelson. There is an interesting episode about this. Before she went to Nelson, Michi was unwomanly drunk, lying on the street near Powell Street, and was unluckily found by a secretary of the Consulate General. To avoid people’s attention, she did not depart from the station in Vancouver but got on the train at the Westminster Junction, transferred at Revelstoke, passed Arrowhead and arrived in Nelson. One man accompanied her as a bodyguard from Vancouver to Nelson.
The reader may remember Hayashi as a devil who entered the interior after committing adultery with Okane, wife of Kichijirō Arimori whom you know. Hayashi has already quit his cave business and returned to Japan last summer.
Hayashi received Omichi and planned to have her work at his cave in Nelson. However, the town started to buzz that she was crippled and, in addition, Omichi was pregnant then, so he finally decided to send her to another devil leader, Shinpei Matsumoto.
At that time, Matsumoto was running his cave in Lethbridge with his wife Oshige and had enough prostitutes, and he did not feel any need for a new prostitute. Of course, he consulted his wife too. Even if this was a request from Hayashi they had many prostitutes, so they declined it and sent her to Chiba from Fukuoka Prefecture. Sly old fox Matsumoto did not forget to extort 150 dollars from Chiba. He pretended that he was sending his own prostitute to make this arrangement.
Chiba was running a cave in Michel at that time. I have mentioned him a long time ago in the series; when he was working at a railway in the United States, he tricked a woman called Onatsu from Noboricho, Hiroshima, who was wife of Shōtarō Itagaki, into entering the interior with her to start his prostitution business.
Anyhow, crippled beauty Omichi Kawada was delivered to Vancouver by Yoshida, sent from Vancouver to Hayashi in Nelson, then introduced to Matsumoto in Lethbridge, and finally given to Chiba in Michel. Her fate was settled. Omichi’s baby was born in Michel.