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Fiction Literary

The Three Pleasures

by (author) Terry Watada

Publisher
Anvil Press
Initial publish date
Oct 2017
Category
Literary
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781772140958
    Publish Date
    Oct 2017
    List Price
    $24
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781772141337
    Publish Date
    Oct 2018
    List Price
    $17.99
  • Downloadable audio file

    ISBN
    9781773055565
    Publish Date
    Oct 2020
    List Price
    $32.99

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Description

2017 Foreword INDIES Finalist (Historical, Adult Fiction). 1940s Vancouver. The Japanese have just bombed Pearl Harbour and racial tension is building in Vancouver. The RCMP are rounding up "suspicious" 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 "pleasure"; 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.

"Terry Watada's literary tour de force, The Three Pleasures, lifts the Japanese Canadian internment experience beyond passive victimization by giving life to a host of historical figures – heroes, villians and tragic characters – in a fascinating yet little-known resistance movement within the camps. An absolute page-turner and worthy read." (jim wong-chu)

About the author

Terry Watada is the author of numerous books of history, fiction, and poetry, including Daruma Days, Ten Thousand Views of Rain, Seeing the Invisible, and Bukkyo Tozen: A History of Buddhism in Canada. His latest poetry book is Obon: The Festival Of the Dead. He lives in Toronto.

Terry Watada's profile page

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