“Exploration of Devil Caves,” Tairiku Nippō: Part 1 | 大陸日報「魔窟探検記」: 正編

Here devil caves refer to a group of shameless traders who fill their pockets with face powder-smell money in interior Canada while tarnishing the face of fellow Japanese. Of course, we will write about the movement of the very prostitutes, the main actors, and mediators, as well as the devil fellows who earn a living by selling women. However, our primary topics will include: how they crossed the ocean from Japan in the first place; how they settle in unknown towns; which evil, devil men run the show in those towns; how they communicate with devils in Japan; how they hid themselves from our eyes in fear and trembling when they stayed in Vancouver; what prostitutes’ everyday lives look like. In fact, “prostitutes” include women with different backgrounds: those from Vancouver; those who were kidnapped in Japan and forced to come; daughters of hunters; daughters of farmers; there is also a case where a female student, who was wishing to study abroad, not knowing the situation of this kind, and deceived by a human-eating-devil and convinced to cross 4,000 miles of rough waves, arriving in Canada only to realize that she was forced into prostitution, not able to escape from it, not able to speak the language, and stuck in the situation, being served as a sacrifice of evil men. As it turned out her heart fell and she became an admirable older sister of the devildom. Other topics will include: what attitude police authorities have toward these devils; whether prostitution is profitable in reality; how they take care of such money; what preferences prostitutes have and how they access leisure like regular people; whether there are people from influential families in Vancouver, who earned immoral easy money by communicating with red or green devils in interior. We attempt to detect every single one of their crimes and evils, covering a wide variety of topics, using materials that have been piled up on our editor’s desk.

I would like to notify you that there are people in our society who spit wrong, disillusioning ideas based on their superficial observations. For example, with respect to prostitutes, they would say: regardless of the location, east or west, or time, past or present, development of an immigrant land always involves pioneering prostitutes and labourers who gather around the women. Prostitutes become victims of the labourers’ sexual desire and offer them pleasure. This is why labourers are able to build a foundation for their permanent settlement there, instead of temporary residence. In fact, Tetsuji Hayakawa is one of the famous pro-prostitution individuals in Japan, who claim that we should encourage prostitution as a policy in order to facilitate the development of the nation. Unfortunately, his idea is not applicable to devil caves in Canada. In fact, it is not simply not applicable, but the presence of these caves is tremendously harmful to the development of fellow Japanese. I hope the reader will nod in the affirmative to the facts that are going to appear in Exploration of Devil Caves.

Where are they located? Once you leave Vancouver and travel to interior by the CPR lines, you will see caves everywhere. Some places have straight Japanese workers but others have no Japanese but a small community among mountains where devils target white labourers working in a mine as clients of their prostitution businesses. Among towns there are ones that have their caves expelled by government policy. In some towns, new prostitutes enter the community some time after caves were expelled. In fact, Calgary once had strict regulations but prostitution has become vibrant again. Nelson and Cranbrook show no change and are carrying on their businesses. Vernon recently had its caves expelled. Let us list the towns, in which Japanese prostitutes left their footprints: Ashcroft, Kamloops, Vernon, Kelowna, Revelstoke, Three Valley, Golden, Greenwood, Grand Forks, Rossland, Trail, Nelson, Kaslo, Wardner, Cranbrook, Fernie, Hosmer, Blairmore, Michel, Macleod, Lethbridge, Calgary, Red Deer, Edmonton, Saskatoon, Medicine Hat, Moose Jaw, Port Arthur, Fort William, Winnipeg, Prince Albert, etc., which already amounts to over thirty places.

Beside these, there seem to be devils who entered Canada from the United States and are doing prostitution businesses in some countryside, which means that there are more places than what I have just listed. However, as I noted earlier, not all of these places are still doing prostitution. Some places have not recovered from the town’s strict order. They tend to act on an ad hoc basis and are urged to make a rush to places that have a reputation for having a moderate town policy or having good economy. One example is Fernie after the fire. Fernie was originally not a town that tolerates prostitution but the great fire burned down the entire town, which invited whites to build new houses, new streets to emerge, and new people to settle in. Devil fellows traveled from Cranbrook, Lethbridge, and Blairmore to move to Fernie, assuming that brothels would be in demand, but apparently they are not as successful as they wished because the town is strict.

Anyway, as you can see they do not permanently settle in one place, but instead pay full attention to the changing winds.

So what do the current situations of these places look like?

Currently, the interior caves that most deserve our attention include Nelson and Cranbrook. Each has four caves, and they are located inside the town. Nelson has them stand side by side with white caves on the backstreet of Chinatown; Cranbrook has them also mixed with white caves in front of the train station. In total of 14 women make profit in Nelson, and 10 in Cranbrook.

I will omit backgrounds of these women here, as I plan to write about them in a separate section, but their clients do not include sons of noble families on white horses and silver saddles, visiting caves out of whim, of course. Women are offered as sacrifices to satisfy barbaric desires of mainly labourers. Inside the dark redlight district is an endless stroll of desiring devils, who are drawn by Rappabushi* if not Sugagaki**. This is where the devil leaders’ lifelines are carried on. What surprises us is the fact that in both Nelson and Cranbrook, caves explicitly display signs, without fear, such as Japanese House, Tōkyō House, or Hana, Ito, or sometimes in English names such as Maple or Josie. This would not happen if there was a credible Japanese person beside them.

However, Nelson has no straight Japanese but only cave traders. There are interesting materials about this but I will leave them for a separate section. The next place we should keep our eyes on is Calgary. It also has four caves but unlike the two places mentioned above, they are located in a place called North Creek, which is located over the hill and a big bridge, two miles away from the town. They are also mixed with white caves. They were abolished two years ago, but when they restarted it was Oume, a wife of Sentarō Ōta who died recently in Cranbrook, who entered there before anyone else. Fernie and Hosmer have no remnants of the past after the fire, which you know. Revelstoke has two, Lethbridge has one, Macleod has one, and other places have two at most, but usually one: brave women in these places are dealing with savage men of a different race. Last summer, Medicine Hat had a devil called Chiba from Fukuoka Prefecture. He stole Otomi, who was born in Noboricho, Hiroshima, who migrated to this country a long time ago, and who is a wife of Masatada Tobe from Hiroshima. Tobe was Chiba’s friend from the time when they were in the United States but Chiba took Otomi and another prostitute, and is running a prostitution business at his own house. We have heard that he bought this house from the owner of American Hotel, which is located in front of the station in Medicine Hat. But because the city’s economy is not well, he occupies a place in Michel near Fernie and still lives as a person of the shade. Some towns are prohibited from publicly running caves. For example, Edmonton and Winnipeg fall into this category. In Edmonton, a devil called Toraji Asami and a woman hide their business under the name of tea house; in Winnipeg, Tanabe is also doing a “tea house” at 124 Pacific Avenue.

Let me offer you brief accounts of Asami and Tanabe’s biographies here.

Toraji Asami, who currently disguises his business as a tea house in Edmonton, was once a sailor and his parents had a general store in Kure*. But 15 or 16 years ago a gambler and sailor, whose nickname was Ōtora, opened a Japanese devil cave in Victoria with four prostitutes, and Toraji back then used to visit Ōtora’s brothel every time he sailed by a sealer to Victoria with a group called Hakodatefuji. Since then Ōtora moved from Victoria to Nanaimo and again was involved in prostitution business, and Toraji, became involved with prostitute Otori and started living at Ōtora’s as a cook. Later Toraji and Otori’s relationship continued and the two flew to Portland. Toraji then left for Japan using the money Otori earned by prostitution, married a daughter of Shimada, a well-known boss in Yokohama, and had her have his child; at the same time he had the hots for a prostitute in Maganecho** area, pulled her out from the brothel and had her migrate to this country using his wife’s passport. Later he almost bought a schooner in Ōsaka for the explicit purpose of import of prostitutes, but this ended in failure. Then he traveled to Canada again and expanded his business with Otori across regions, and currently has his home castle in Edmonton. Otori broke up with him for some reason and currently does prostitution in Revelstoke. In devils society everyone knows Asami’s Otori; she is that influential.

Next, Tanabe, first name Saburō, is from Wakayama, Kishū, and has been in New York previously under his nickname Nankin Tanabe. Later, he came to a river and became a salmon fisher; borrowed all the money and other things from a page at the Gulf of Georgia 8, 9 years ago; escaped to the United States and ran a poolroom in Seattle; went to Japan and brought a woman from Kōbe; somehow managed to enter Victoria but was not able to cross the American border; he reluctantly decided to settle in the interior with this woman, which was April or May two years ago. This woman is a bitch, who used to be involved in prostitution in Nishidemachi of the city of Hyōgo. She is now a madam of a tea house in Winnipeg with two prostitutes. Apparently their business is going not so badly; the two of them must be happy counting easy money. A stupid thing.

The Oldest Place

As I briefly mentioned in the previous section, the devil cave run by Ōtora in Victoria is one of the oldest, but in the interior Revelstoke has one of the older ones.

In Revelstoke there is a Chinese person called Wong, who has been in this country over twenty years and in Revelstoke for seventeen years. According to Wong in the interior Revelstoke, Nelson and Kaslo are older ones while Cranbrook and Calgary are not.

Everyday Life

I do not wish to write too much about the everyday lives of prostitutes. You will not be wrong if you assume that what they pursue by putting red powder on themselves is purely money.

She would wake up at around noon, rubbing their sleepy eyes, drift into the kitchen where her lover or actual husband works hard to prepare her meal, she bosses him around and makes him serve her, and starts her shamisen practice, just like the rain drops. Some would read magazines or newly published novels; some would spend money on junk food; and others would go out for shopping to town by hiding their shameless faces under their thick make-up. Some have the courage skin to visit Chinese gambling places as women, without changing their wrappers, and talk horrifying things like “I earned 50 ryo* today” or “I worked for 30 ryo.” There are also some rare women who study Japanese calligraphy.

They have a meal at 5 or 6 in the evening and another meal again at midnight.

In fact, their everyday lives cannot be generalized as they differ between towns, and between houses. Nelson currently has four devil caves but no straight Japanese businesses, and thus they have no relationships with straight fellows. On the other hand, Cranbrook is rather open and has straight business people and devil fellows visiting each other all the time. Of course, there are some purely serious people too but apparently most are frequent visitors to the caves. As such, there used to be ill-natured vagabonds, who pick a quarrel with devils and demanding alcohol and a grand meal. However, it is questionable indeed whether it is good or bad for them to ask for alcohol like that. The other party is people of the shade and they cannot say big things after all. But preying on their weakness is equally bad. Compared to this, those in Nelson have their lives in order. There is no straight Japanese in the first place and the wives of the bosses do not prostitute themselves, but instead they only serve alcohol on clients’ demands, and during the daytime, they supervise the domestic economy. Prostitutes take turns and do mopping and laundry, and use the remaining time for their own studies. They were able to come to this state after the four caves had a discussion and formed something like a union and worked hard, but previously they had many women who visited gambling places. Well, it does not mean that I am eulogizing current situation of Nelson caves. I am simply introducing general facts.

I can almost guarantee that they are exclusively having Japanese food. They order groceries from Vancouver.

Besides what mentioned above, there are many caves in places such as Revelstoke, Calgary, Lethbridge, and Hosmer, but there is not much difference in their everyday lives. Some difference exists depending on the number of prostitutes, but I will leave it to the reader’s imagination, and lay down my pen here to finish this section.