It has been about 20 years since people in Japan became familiar with American Major League Baseball. One after another, Japanese professional baseball players flew out of Narita Airport to play for teams based in stadiums near Los Angeles. When the players were asked to say a greeting in English during a press conference at Narita, they smiled shyly and used grammar at the level of a junior high school student in Japan, and were met with praise.

Their performances aired on the daily news throughout the season. As a pitcher, throwing five innings and becoming a winning pitcher is the best way to get noticed quickly. As for batters and fielders, the local fans are not happy unless they hit a home run. Recently, when Japanese players start a game, it is increasingly broadcast. Japanese fans tend to support players competing abroad more than when they are in Japan. Is this what they call favoritism?  

Makiyama was sitting on his bed reading yesterday’s copy of the Osaka edition of a Japanese newspaper. Downstairs from Makiyama’s bedroom is a store. The sporting goods store here in Little Tokyo receives a large number of Thai and Vietnamese products with logos of franchise teams. These shirts are made in local factories where workers make less than $10 a day. In Little Tokyo, they sell for $10 each. Among them, the ones with the jersey numbers of Japanese players sell well to tourists. Those sent to Japan sell at ten times the price.

In Makiyama’s mind, he thinks that he is not a stranger, but a foreigner. With his Japanese appearance, Blacks and Puerto Ricans see him as a foreigner whenever he walks downtown.  When they see him, they always ask, “Chang, chun, chong. Are you Chinese?” At that point, he responds no, but he doesn’t have any further answer ready beyond that.

Makiyama is a fourth-generation Japanese American man who owns a sporting goods store called “Flyer” on XX Street in Little Tokyo. The store’s name originates from the fact that his second-generation grandfather was a big fan of that Japanese professional baseball team. When asked, the shop owner Makiyama seems annoyed to answer questions about his middle name.

From the looks of it, he is Japanese. However, he rarely speaks Japanese in his daily life. In fact, less than 20% of the population in Little Tokyo speaks Japanese. Secretly, Makiyama thinks he might be better at speaking Japanese than English, and so does his family.

His son has never spoken Japanese. Still, Makiyama’s quite concerned about his son’s girlfriend saying that his son speaks English with a Japanese accent. His son’s face is a copy of Makiyama’s and completely indistinguishable from that of a Japanese person. There are still very few fifth-generation Japanese Americans with blonde girlfriends. Makiyama cherishes his son dearly.

In the end, Makiyama could only live within the Nikkei community. He wants his sons' generation to break free of this district and live their lives elsewhere. The second-generation Nikkei who are pushing the baby strollers of their grandkids are aging rapidly.

The Issei, who could only speak Japanese, received considerable sympathy. After the humiliation of being sent to a concentration camp, they returned to Little Tokyo and began walking the path of rebirth. They revitalized this town, layering hardship upon hardship, much like covering the walls of nearly vanished brick blocks with white plaster.

The Nisei are now all waiting for government instructions to receive public assistance benefits. It has become increasingly difficult for them to find their own permanent residence without outside help. Makiyama wanted his son to go to college, preferably law school. He believes all of his business efforts are aimed towards this goal.

A vulgar-looking man with sunglasses and a goatee entered the store smelling of cigarettes. Behind him was a tall, lanky man in dirty jeans. Both of them were chewing gum.

“Hi, Chief.” they said. The men introduced themselves as local staff for a major TV network in Japan. They initially spoke in Japanese, but as soon as Makiyama gave them a puzzled look, they quickly switched to English. This man claimed he’d been in the United States for four years.

The man behind him stayed silent. It was unclear whether he was Japanese or Nikkei. His strangely pale face made it look like he was on drugs, and he was noisily chewing gum using his cheek muscles. Quite rude, if he was genuinely Japanese.

“You are aware of pitcher N’s outstanding performance, right? We’ve heard that you have a lot of Angels-related merchandise here,” the man said. The network requested that they provide local coverage on how much attention Japanese players were getting in the US and the capabilities of those Japanese players. Makiyama replied in not very good English that the men should inquire directly with the team in that case. The men said that the real problem was that the broadcast rights after negotiating with the team were ridiculously expensive. Therefore, they did not interview the players themselves. They only obtained video footage about the players from other businesses.

They were insisting on conducting an interview inside his shop for second-rate coverage. What really dismayed Makiyama was their refusal to pay compensation to the store. They claimed the interview would bring considerable advertising benefits to the store and would drive profits. Due to such conflicts of interest, they could not offer monetary compensation.

Then, why bother dealing with this shop at all? Makiyama repeatedly replied that they could go to any number of other sporting goods stores and places that sell licensed Angels-related merchandise. The man with the beard and sunglasses insisted that their staff alone could not infiltrate the Angels-related      agents to negotiate a deal. He said that he had paid his expenses out of his own pocket to get the coverage.

In an extremely misguided argument reminiscent of pre-war rhetoric, the man with the beard and sunglasses suggested that as representatives of Japanese compatriots fighting against discrimination abroad, the residents of Little Tokyo should actively cooperate.

Makiyama began to think that he needed to explain that Little Tokyo was not the overseas enclave of Tokyo that they might think. Certainly, just by looking at his face, 90 out of 100 people might assume he’s Japanese. However, our chewing muscles and cheek muscles are clearly different from those of Japanese people, even at a microscopic level. Japanese Americans no longer speak Japanese. It's been a long time since they spoke Japanese in daily conversation.

Even the final words his grandfather spoke, which were his dying words, were actually in English. That’s certainly what Makiyama remembers from his childhood. It is true that they held a Japanese-style funeral at Higashi Honganji Temple. There were Buddhist monks present. However, the men in attendance wore suits and the women wore veils on their heads. Wasn’t Grandfather in the coffin wearing a tuxedo? At the very least, he wasn’t wearing a white Buddhist robe. Even his grandfather no longer thought of adhering to Japanese traditions in his life.

Apparently, he was expelled from Little Tokyo and was in a concentration camp somewhere, but Makiyama doesn’t know the details. If he had a typical Japanese temperament, he might have passed down the truth to his grandchildren and vowed revenge on the United States in the spirit of Uchiteshiyamamu,¹ rather than “Remember Pearl Harbor.”

Faced with Makiyama’s stubborn refusal, the TV station crew started making phone calls from payphones. They appeared to be arguing with their superiors. In the end, the man in sunglasses who smelled of cigarettes and the lanky man who looked like a drug addict went out onto the main street and hailed a taxi to return home.

Many tourists from Japan visit in May. Since the Major League season started, noticeably more Japanese people have been strolling around Little Tokyo because of this. The local team initially suffered three consecutive losses, making local fans anxious, but now they had managed to finish in the top four. Next week, they will play against a team in San Francisco.

Makiyama ordered the Latino store clerk to display the merchandise imported from Vietnam on the shelves. “Boss, this is terrible. The merchandise has been eaten by insects. I don’t think half of them can be sold!” the clerk exclaimed. This is common with sea freight. However, for small businesses like Makiyama’s that rely on overseas factories, they must purchase merchandise cheaply to make a profit. “It can’t be helped, we have no choice but to dry them in the sun. Get some people together,” said Makiyama.

Items eaten by bugs cannot be sold as merchandise. Even if he complained, the local factory can’t do anything about it. The cost is too low. Like a poor return on an abundant harvest, he had to dispose of the unusable shirts. If they were crops, he might consider consuming them at home, but there’s no way to reuse this many shirts. The only option was for a neighborhood nursing home to donate some of the shirts to a children’s baseball team. This alone resulted in considerable losses. Makiyama thought of the two men who visited the store the other day. They jinxed him.

Makiyama’s family and two store clerks set up a drying tent. Fortunately, the sunny weather was forecast to continue for a while. Only the sun seemed to be on his side. The Latino clerk hung the shirts one by one on hangers at spaced intervals.

Come to think of it, the friction with the Mexican American community was also something that was highlighted in the past. Japanese American had lived with Blacks, Puerto Ricans, and Filipinos in this area. Makiyama’s father taught him that within an area of just a 3-mile radius, people of different ethnicities, some foreign-born, some not, lived within close proximity of one another. Sometimes they clashed, and other times they leaned on each other, embracing one another to carve out their lives and histories together.

How much longer can the Japanese community continue to exist? The era of the second generation was coming to an end. Will Makiyama’s sons weave this history together, or will it fall apart into pieces? Makiyama adjusted his cap and rearranged the ledger.

Three months had passed since then. When Makiyama suddenly turned on the TV, what do you know, one of those two men appeared on the screen. The man in sunglasses was holding a microphone and gesturing dramatically at the shirts that Makiyama was drying under the tent.  “Everyone, please look. Here we have shirts of Japanese players. They all have N’s jersey number,” he said. “You can see how brilliantly he is performing. The entire town is selling his shirts.”

Makiyama could only laugh. It wasn’t about broadcasting rights or fees. In the scenery captured outdoors, there was a tent with shirts flapping in the sun. Makiyama realized that this man was just fine airing that scene. It didn’t cost him a penny. The man in sunglasses never said that this was Little Tokyo. The broadcast, which gave the impression that the shirts were being sold everywhere across America, ended in just one minute.

Makiyama was looking for his son around the stadium. On this rare occasion, his son had bought tickets and invited him to watch baseball together. He had mentioned that his girlfriend would be joining them today. Apparently, he wanted to formally introduce her to Makiyama. That's why Makiyama dressed more stylishly than usual when he went to the stadium. He even arranged for a meal after the game ended.

As expected, the crowds increased as the season approached its climax. Seventy percent were White, and the rest were of several different races. Makiyama searched among the White people for someone with a Japanese face. A couple who appeared to be tourists from Japan saw Makiyama as they passed and kindly asked, “Are you Japanese? We’re not sure where the entrance is.” Makiyama bluntly answered, “No.” The tourists looked puzzled. Makiyama spotted his lookalike in the distance and hurried over. As he ran, he was trying to figure out how to address his son’s girlfriend in English.

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Note:

1. Uchiteshiyamamu（撃ちてし止まむ）; a slogan used during World War II meaning ”to strike and halt.”

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*This story received honorable mention in the Japanese category of the Little Tokyo Historical Society’s 11th Imagine Little Tokyo Short Story Contest.

© 2024 Koh Hirano