7: February, 2020

The short of it is that I got more from Makiko Okano than I had bargained for. Far more. My memory of our last meeting was pretty hazy when I sat down across from her at this yakiniku place on the east side of town. I knew the restaurant to be a little out of the way and quiet. A place where I wouldn’t be likely to run into anyone from the office. I had parted from Daisuke Wakabayashi a few days earlier, I to return to Naha, and he to begin what he called his ‘world tour’, meeting with regional scouts in various localities, looking for overlooked players to go into our new international complex.

She had arrived early, and I found her already ensconced at a table, busily tapping away on a laptop keyboard. She wore a blue baseball cap whose logo I did not recognize, her hair in a ponytail. She stood up to greet me as I approached the table, which reminded me that she was only a couple inches shorter than I am. She was lithe and graceful in her movements, though I imagine that she must have been a gangly and rawboned teenager.

“Good afternoon, Kusonoki-san,” she said with a slight bow and a smile.

 I returned her greeting and we both took a seat.

We spoke a bit about the party a couple of weeks before, my work and recent travel. I placed our order and we talked about her own background. She is hafu, that is, of mixed race, born of Japanese and American parents, though I would say that her Japanese half seems to predominate. Makiko recently graduated with a degree in journalism and called herself a full-time blogger. I’ll confess to being so charmed by her manner, a curious blend of eastern demureness and western confidence, that this fact did not perhaps ring the alarm bells it should have. I made the mistaken assumption that her father was American. In fact, her father is a native of Okinawa, and it is her mother that was a helicopter pilot in the U.S. Air Force. It was then that I learned that Makiko’s surname is Okano.

The shichirin was brought to the table, and I did the honors, placing bits of meat on the grid iron. Then the conversation turned to baseball.

Makiko’s mother was from the U.S. city of Madison, in the state of Wisconsin, and was a longtime fan of the Brewers, who played in Milwaukee, not far away. The cap Makiko wore was of this defunct team. After the MLB folded, and no team from the PEBA came to Wisconsin, her mother turned her back on the game. The Okano family adopted the Shisa soon after the LRS formed, though Makiko wondered if her mother’s heart was really over the loss of her Brewers.

 We began eating and Wakabayashi’s words to me a from few days ago re-entered my mind: “This has all happened before, and it will happen again.” I wondered how many Japanese fans might be turning their back on the game for good? How many had done so when the Nippon League folded? I was ruminating over these things when Makiko brought me out of my revery with a comment about Iyou Seigyoki, the Shisa team owner.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “What was that?”

“I asked you if you had ever met Seigyoki-san,” she said.

“No,” I said, with a chuckle, “few have. Why do you ask?”

“There are many rumors surrounding him and Seigyoki Kabushiki Gaisha.“

She let the matter drop for the time being and my mind returned to the as yet unanswered question: is this a date? I could reach no definitive conclusion on the matter, to my growing frustration.

Toward the end of the meal she returned to the subject of my employer. “For instance,” she said, “there’s the situation on Okidaitō-jima.”

I had never heard of Okidaitō-jima, and certainly knew nothing of a ‘situation’ there. I openly confessed my ignorance to Makiko.

She informed me that Okidaitō-jima, also known as Rasa Island, was formerly the property of Rasa Industries, a mining concern. It lies roughly 250 miles to the southeast of Okinawa. It hadn’t been used for mining since the second world war, but was the scene of military exercises for much of the twentieth century. In 2013 the JSDF held live fire exercises there, and the area around the island was declared off limits to commercial air and sea traffic. In 2016, Rasa Industries sold the island to Seigyoki Corporation. She turned her laptop around to show me a picture of a scallop-shaped island that resembled the surface of the moon.

“So what’s the situation, then?” I asked.

“The government never lifted the ban on travel around the island,” she said. “You can’t go near it. It’s the most private island on earth.”

“It’s abandoned, clearly,” I said, pointing to the screen.

“Look at the watermark,” she said. “The copyright is from 2013. There are no images of the island available that aren’t at least seven years old.”

“What are you suggesting, a conspiracy of some kind? Sounds like garden variety bureaucratic negligence to me. And why bother taking pictures of an abandoned island?”

She gave me a dismissive gesture, “There are other things. Your mysterious warehouse fire, fishing boats that catch no fish. There’s much more to it.” I began to get this sinking feeling, like I was sharing grilled meat with a mental patient.

“Surely you don’t think I’d have some insight into any of this … whatever it is you think you’re on to.”

“No, but I thought you’d be curious, Kusonoki-san.” She gave me a doubtful look. “I’ll admit, though, that you were more animated the other night.”

I sighed. “Give me some time to verify some of these things for myself,” I said. “Maybe we can meet again next week?”

Her face lit up when I said this, and that pretty much defeated every natural misgiving I had for this venture, if you could call it that. I had at least leveraged this thing into a second meeting.

I paid.

We parted.