Route of Cave Pioneering (cont’d)
Otame and other three women were manipulated by Takahashi and entered Nelson as soon as they were smuggled into this country. They were not able to freely use the language and had completely no idea about the new world, which made it possible for Takahashi to perform his skills without any restrictions. Of course, they distributed money to police and key persons of the town, but he also made a large amount of profit.
Women did not earned money by receiving half of their daily earning each day, which is a common practice today; Takahashi took advantage of the women’s ignorance and made completely ridiculous contracts of twenty dollars per month. Women still did not complain too much and rather appreciated that twenty dollars in this country amounts to forty yen in Japan, and worked shamelessly because there was no single Japanese around them. While Takahashi took responsibility for their meals, he also had earnings from selling alcohol, which was apparently about 120 dollars per night, in addition to selling the women. He must have had evil luck.
Usually, people immediately associate Takahashi with the cave in Nelson but because this is an old story some of the young devils may not know his name.
Takahashi has already returned to Japan a few years ago, leaving his name as a devil behind. But in fact, there was a successor of the caves in Nelson. That is, Tetsuji Ishida. Succeeding Takahashi’s position, Ishida also stirred up Nelson as much as he wanted. During his time, there were some devil additions such as Hayashi and Terada, and after some rise and fall another one called Chabujin joined, and that takes us up to the present. People who have been in Vancouver for long should know the name of Hayashi. This is the man, Shintarō Hayashi, who used to work in the pleasure district around Yokohama and entered the interior after having committed adultery with Okane, the wife of the immigration officer’s translator, Kichijirō Arimori, or also known as mixed-child Kichi.
As I mentioned earlier, there is no other cave places in the interior than Nelson that has that much order. This is because Takahashi and Ishida painstakingly used money for paying whites. In addition, because there is no Japanese around no conflicts arise for the police to bother. So, while it may sound foolish, Japanese caves in Nelson are in very good repute by the police and the city. In fact, cave fellows did not want to have straight Japanese workers in Nelson and drove out Japanese labourers, who came out to work at a sawmill. It is simply surprising to learn that the cave was so influential in the interior that if devils want to drive them out even whites have to accept it.
Our story got sidetracked by my bad writing several times, but in the next episode I plan to write about the general background of Ishida and Chabujin, whom you know.
Correction: Line 3 from yesterday’s episode; Shinsei was misspelled. Very funny.