Three Pleasures (ePub)

1940s Vancouver. The Japanese have just bombed Pearl Harbour and racial tension is building in Vancouver. The rcmp are rounding up "e;suspicious"e; young men, and fishing boats and property are soon seized from Steveston fishers; internment camps in BC's interior are only months away.Daniel Sugiura, a young reporter for the New Canadian, the only Japanese-Canadian newspaper allowed to keep publishing during the war, narrates The Three Pleasures. The story is told through three main characters in the Japanese community: Watanabe Etsuo, Morii Etsuji and Etsu Kaga, the Three Pleasures. Etsu in Japanese means "e;pleasure"e;; the term is well-suited to these three. Morii Etsuji, the Black Dragon boss, controls the kind of pleasure men pay for: gambling, drink and prostitution - the pleasures of the flesh. Watanabe Etsuo, Secretary of the Steveston Fishermen's Association, makes a deal with the devil to save his loved ones. In the end, he suffers for it and never regains the pleasures of family. And there is Etsu Kaga, a Ganbariya of the Yamato Damashii Group, a real Emperor worshipper. His obsession becomes destructive to himself and all involved with him. He enjoys the pleasure of patriotism until that patriotism becomes a curse.The Three Pleasures is an intimate and passionate novel concerning an unsightly and painful period in Canada's history.